excitement having partially subsided, Rufus Barrington drew his son within the mellow circle of lamp light and examined him critically.

"Four years," he muttered, "have made a change."

"Not in you, Daddy," said the young man, with a marked English accent. "You're not a day older. Time has stood still with you. I can see that mother's hair is whiter, but she is prettier than ever. And Henry I say, old chap, your mustache is—"

"Out of sight," said Helen with a laugh.

"By Jove, it has n't come on as I expected. And you, Nell! What a

swell!"

Mr. Barrington's eyes sparkled with pride.

"Yes, yes, Helen is a young woman. She has put away childish things. And she rules us all with a rod of iron."

"With a two-edged sword," murmured Henry.

The sister noticed the thrust, but parried it with a cutting glance of indifference. Then she turned, smiling, to the stranger..

"Dear Dick, "she said softly, "you are changed most of all."

"Am I? Why, of course. Let me see. Four years ago I was a boy and now behold a sage, a Bachelor of Arts. You must all treat me with respect."

The light fell upon his careless, laughing face. Certainly this was the ugly duckling. Unlike the rest of the family he was afflicted with a slight stoop, the stoop of the burner of midnight oil. But his depth of chest and clear complexion gave evidence of robust health. He wore loose well fitting tweeds that had seen service; the clothes of a man who did n't care whether his trousers bagged at the knee or not, and who habitually carried a book in his pocket. Henry

noted these details with disfavor. He patronized an English tailor himself, Mr. Poole in fact, and was fully alive to the advantage of a well ordered toilet.

"Glad to get back, Dick?"

"Rather. They called me Stars and Stripes at Oxford."

"Well, my boy, never be ashamed of being an American. It's a prouder citizenship than that of Rome in her palmiest days. And now run along and slip into your dress clothes. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes."

Dick left the room with his mother and sister.

"He is very English," said Rufus Barrington to his eldest son.

"What did you expect, sir? You send him to Oxford for four or five years and are surprised to find his vowels as broad as his shoulders."

"It will rub off, that confounded accent. We must give the lad time. His mother was very anxious he should go to an English university and as I had my own way about your education, I was willing to gratify her whim. The boy

is not a dude at any rate."

"I wish," said Henry, "that you had sent me to a university."

"Pooh, pooh! what can a man learn from books? Experience is the only teacher worth having. The years you have spent with me are worth a million to you.''

His son smiled.

"I will take back what I said just now, sir. Money is everything."

But Rufus Barrington was evidently at issue with this sweeping assertion.

"Money," he remarked sententiously, "is valuable according to the use you make of it."

His eye had been arrested by a picture which hung above the fire place. It was a masterpiece of Jean François Millet. The face of a peasant, clearly outlined against the familiar gray tones of a Barbizon sky. The patient, toil-worn serf seemed out of place, his glance conveyed reproach. To the owner it represented forty thousand dollars. The other pictures comprised a doubtful Sir Joshua, an exquisite Greuze in remarkable preservation, a Claude Lorraine, a Bastien Lepage, and half a dozen exemplars of the modern Italian school, principally the works of Vinea and Andreotti.

"How about our meeting today?" asked his son.

shall see some queer changes, my boy, if we live another five years. Prices must fall and there is going to be grave trouble in the East. The labor problem will demand solution. I foresee strikes and all manner of complications."

"We are well heeled," said his son significantly.

"When the crash comes, there will be pickings," continued the old man. "Of course the fools and knaves will be snowed in, but it won't hurt us. I tell you Henry, it pays to be honest! Do business on a high plane and a broad gauge and it will win every time. No man in this State can say that I ever broke my word, or went back on a friend unless

"The friend went back on you first,

eh?"

The old gentleman chuckled. A certain reminiscence tickled him consumedly. "Ah! I've made some corpses in my day. There was Pixler. You don't remember Pixler, Henry, he was before

A

It was the close of the year 1888. memorable year in the history of California. The year of the boom in the Southern half of the State, when all values were inflated and lots in Los Angeles and San Diego sold for fabulous prices; when large towns were surveyed one day and put up at auction the next.

"No, it won't last," continued Mr. Barrington. "Already I can see a cloud in the sky. However, the wise man will take the current when it serves. The tide will ebb soon enough, and we

out and out rascal Pixler was hard to beat! He had a corner in wheat, early in the seventies, and by Jupiter, he nearly made it stick. He would have made a cool two millions if it had n't been for me."

"What did you do, si?"

"Never mind what I did," replied his father humorously, showing a row of strong even teeth as he smiled, "I fixed Pixler. That is enough for you to know. I don't talk about these things. Early in life I learned to hold my tongue. If I had n't I should not be sitting here today."

"What became of Pixler," said the young man, with languid curiosity.

"He dropped out of the game. Went to Mexico, I believe. He came to me after his failure and swore by the gods to get even."

"You have lots of enemies, father. Is it wise to laugh at them?"

"I have lots of friends, Henry. That's where I get my pull. I have strings to almost every man in California worth tying to. That has been my policy from a boy. It's the secret of success. I use my friends and am willing to be used by them. That is the combination; that, and square dealing."

The butler opened the door.
"Dinner is on the table, sir."

"I am hungry as a wolf," cried the millionaire. At sixty-five he had still the appetite that accompanies perfect digestion. He rose from his chair with the alacrity of youth, and looked complacently down at his stalwart limbs. had, as he said, many friends, among the poor as well as among the rich. His bonhomie, his slang, his well fed, well dressed person, were all factors of this popularity.

He

"I think I'll make myself a cocktail," he said genially. "That fool"-he apostrophized the butler "always puts in too much Angostura. Come on, Henry, and join me. No? Afraid of your wretched stomach, eh? Well, if you won't drink with me, run and tell your brother that the soup is getting cold."

He left the room as his son rose reluctantly to do his bidding. Evidently the young man had none of his sire's energy. He moved languidly to the door leading into the entrance hall, but paused for a moment before the portrait of his father. It had been painted some years before, but was still a striking likeness. Henry Barrington examined critically the square brow overhanging the deep-set eyes, the heavy clean-cut features, and in particular the large, well-shaven chin. The friends of the great financier, and their name was legion, said that his mouth and chin denoted inflexible resolution. His enemies whispered the ugly

word obstinacy. Both, perhaps, were in the right.

"The old gentleman is a curio," mused Henry. "He really thinks himself the soul of honor. Well, why not? Who is going to define the word honor? Not I assuredly. If each nation has its own code, why not each man? My father draws what he considers a rigid line between right and wrong. I draw my line, too, somewhere. Dick, I presume, has built up a stone wall of solid English masonry which it will take time to destroy."

He laughed and strolled to the foot of the grand staircase, and finding a servant, dispatched him with a message. Returning, his eye once more fell on his father's portrait. It seemed, somehow, to have a curious fascination for him.

"A successful man," he thought. "Yes. And why? Is he made of superior clay? No.. Brains? Pshaw, I know a dozen miserable devils in this town, scribbling night and day for bread and butter, who have ten times his brain! No, he gives himself the true reason. He knows how to use men, and everything he does or says has definite purpose behind it. Good Lord, what a power he is! - what a power!"

II.

NOT the least instructive chapter in the history of California is the story of the life of Rufus Barrington, embodying as it does his early struggles with hardship and grinding poverty; his adventures in mining camps, his forensic triumphs in the court of Judge Lynch, his many failures, and still more numerous successes, in commerce and finance. These things, however, are written - as all the world knows - in the book entitled "Chronicles of the Pioneers," and the facts set forth in detail in that monu

ment of erudition and research may be depended upon, for they were furnished by the millionaire himself, together with a little check, and an excellent steel engraving which, it will be remembered, adorns the first page of the first volume.

Nevertheless Mr. Barrington took much pride in relating, for the benefit of strangers, the oft-told tale of his first start.

"I was born," he would say, in his sonorous, flexible slang, in the State of Maine, and my father was a Presbyterian preacher. My mother died when I was a baby, and I ran away from home on my fifteenth birthday, but my recollection of the old man is still lively. He whacked religion into me with a club, and yanked it out again with everlasting homilies. I tell you I believed in a personal Devil in those days, and in eternal punishment. Well, I cut loose one fine morning from the Mosaic cosmogony and everything connected with it, and for six years led the life of a dog. Then Fortune smiled on me. A petty tradesman in New York, whom I had befriended, died, and left me sole legatee. I went through his papers, and by Jupiter, I found among them a plan of a machine. for engraving with exquisite delicacy the back of bank notes. I examined it carefully and became convinced of its superlative merit. The Bank Note Company, at that time, had a monopoly of the business, so I called around and asked to see the president.

"Does the president know you?' asked one of the clerks.

"No,' said 1, he does n't, but you can bet your bottom dollar that he'll be glad enough to know me when he sees what I have in my pocket.'

"That is the way I talked to the young fellow, and it had its effect. I was shown in to the great man's private office and produced my plan. His experienced eye took it in in a jiffy.

"I'll give you just ten minutes,' I said. I knew my man. He hemmed and hawed but I got the money, and I got the friendship of the president of the Bank Note Company. That was worth more to me than the ten thousand dollars. To cut the story short, I prospered and turned over my capital several times, but I wasn't satisfied and when, six years later, gold was discovered in California I pulled up stakes and sailed round the Horn. I was one of the few men who came here with money, and money

was

power indeed in those days."

At this point Mr. Barrington usually stopped. He might have added that when the war broke out he cheerfully abandoned his immense interests, to shoulder a private's musket in the ranks of the Federal army; that he marched with Sherman to the sea; that he was wounded again and again; that for four weary years he endured cheerfully the horrors and privations of campaigning!

At the close of the war he returned to San Francisco and turned his attention to the construction of an East and West railroad. Into this gigantic enterprise he plunged head foremost, and the story of that amazing dive is too well known to repeat here. He took to the water, a man of moderate means, he emerged a multi-millionaire ! After this perilous feat he organized and established that monument of his energy and genius, the Barrington Bank.

During his first campaign he met the daughter of a retired English officer and married her. Some men would have pleaded marriage as an excuse for leaving the army, but the son of the old Presbyterian preacher was made of