nt success, even if his thought be simply
one of envy."

"Yes!--and as you are aware, my one object in life when I was slightly
younger was to be a successful novelist. But no publisher would look
at me. Then I got my nose in on this penny-a-line Deadwood Dick
stuff--which I shall never despise, for many a square meal I have had
to fill a round hole off the fifty dollars a book they netted me.

"To-day I have a letter from the publishers of these same paper
'Horribles,' enclosing six of my poor, starved, mental offsprings.
They are the pick of fifty which they say I have written."

Jim took off his hat and passed his fingers through his hair.

"Lord! I didn't know, Phil,--honest to goodness!--I didn't know I had
written so many.

"They say these six, with a little toning up in language, a little
toning down in cold-blooded murder and exclamatory remarks, would make
ideal, cloth-bound books for boys, for Sunday School prizes and
junior libraries. They offer me royalties on each if I execute the
work for them under my real name."

"Aren't you going to take it on? I really think you should. It would
give you a certain amount of literary permanency. I've told you all
along that you ought to be doing nobler work in that line than
ten-cent 'hair-raisers.'"

"Me? No, thanks! Captain Mayne Plunkett is as dead a deader as Aunt
Christina. _Requiescat in pace_."

He waved his hand in dismissal of the subject.

"'On with the dance--let joy be unconfined.'"

"Phil," said Jim seriously, half an hour afterwards, "Royce Pederstone
is going to come a terrible cropper over this business. He is
mortgaged up to the neck and, singly or with some of the political
gang, he is in almost every realty proposition we hear of."

"I know it. I've tried my best to make him see it, but he says if he
doesn't have faith in the Valley, who will."

"But this isn't a question of faith;--it is a shortage of money and a
tightening up of foreign capital chiefly."

"I've told him. I am worried sick over it. But he refuses to move."

"Let's send him a wire now," suggested Jim.

In five minutes the message in cipher was on the way.

"Definite information banks closing down immediately with loans on
realty. Mortgagees not renewing. Advise prompt sale. Wire lowest
prices."

The reply came in an hour and a half.

"Think information canard. Sell Remington Ranch eighty thousand
dollars, Pedloe Ranch fifty thousand dollars, Bonnington Ranch for