d this time
brought with me all the money I had saved, but it proved insufficient
to cope with the situation. In his early days my father was a mining
engineer. He was successful, and might have been a very rich man to-day
if---- But that 'if' always intervened. Nevertheless, he accumulated
money, and bought this ranch, determined to retire.

"The lower part of the ranch is good grazing ground, but the upper or
western part is rocky, rising to the foothills. My father was not a
success as a rancher, partly because we are too far from the markets,
and partly because he chose as cowboys men who did not understand their
business. I told you that my father is a sympathetic man. No one ever
appealed to him in vain. He has always been very popular, but it seems
to me that his friends are always poorer than himself. Thus it came
about that miners who knew him, and were out of work, applied for
something to do, and he engaged them as cowboys, until he had half a
dozen on his pay roll, and thus began the gradual loss of his money.
These men were excellent as miners, but useless as cowboys, and there
was no one here to teach them their duties, my father being himself a
miner. It seemed, then, a dispensation of Providence that as he rambled
over the western part of his property he struck signs of silver. He was
not mistaken in his prospecting. He and the cowboys took hilariously to
their old trade, and worked away at the rocks until all his money was
gone."

"Did they find any real silver?" asked Stranleigh, interested.

"Oh yes, plenty of it," answered the girl. "It is evident they have
opened a very rich mine."

"Then where is the difficulty?"

"The difficulty is the want of machinery, which there is no capital to
purchase. My father tried to get that capital in this district, but
there is very little ready money to be obtained out here. He enlisted
the interest of Mr. Ricketts, a lawyer in Bleachers, and reputed the
only rich man in the town. Ricketts came to the ranch with a mining
engineer, and they examined the opening. Seemingly they were not
impressed with the contents, and Ricketts advised my father to go East
and form a company.

"My father explained his financial situation, and Ricketts, with
apparent generosity, offered to lend him five thousand dollars on his
note, to be paid on demand, with the ranch as security. Thus my father
put himself entirely in the other's power. Ricketts gave him the
address of a lawy