It was the summer of 1880 that they had come to San Francisco. Once
settled there, Vandover's father began to build small residence houses
and cheap flats which he rented at various prices, the cheapest at ten
dollars, the more expensive at thirty-five and forty. He had closed out
his business in the East, coming out to California on account of his
wife's ill health. He had made his money in Boston and had intended to
retire.

But he soon found that he could not do this. At this time he was an old
man, nearly sixty. He had given his entire life to his business to the
exclusion of everything else, and now when his fortune had been made and
when he could afford to enjoy it, discovered that he had lost the
capacity for enjoying anything but the business itself. Nothing else
could interest him. He was not what would be called in America a rich
man, but he had made money enough to travel, to allow himself any
reasonable relaxation, to cultivate a taste for art, music, literature
or the drama, to indulge in any harmless fad, such as collecting
etchings, china or bric-à-brac, or even to permit himself the luxury of
horses. In the place of all these he found himself, at nearly sixty
years of age, forced again into the sordid round of business as the only
escape from the mortal _ennui_ and weariness of the spirit that preyed
upon him during every leisure hour of the day.

Early and late he went about the city, personally superintending the
building of his little houses and cheap flats, sitting on saw-horses and
piles of lumber, watching the carpenters at work. In the evening he came
home to a late supper, completely fagged, bringing with him the smell of
mortar and of pine shavings.

On the first of each month when his agents turned over the rents to him