found that old mortgage carried in its list of assets. You also
discovered that it had been renewed several times, each time for a
larger sum, from which you deduced that the prospects for the ultimate
payment of the mortgage were nebulous and distant. Your hypothesis was
correct. The Farrels never did to-day a task that could be deferred
until to-morrow. Well, you went out and looked over the security for
that mortgage. You found it to be ample--about three to one, as a very
conservative appraisal. You discovered that all of the stockholders in
the First National were old friends of my father and extremely
reluctant to foreclose on him. As a newcomer; you preferred not to
antagonize your associates by forcing the issue upon them, so you
waited until the annual election of stockholders, when you elected your
own Board of Directors. Then this Board of Directors sold you the
mortgage, and you promptly foreclosed it. The shock of this unexpected
move was a severe one on my father; the erroneous report of my death
killed him, and here you are, where you have every legal right in the
world to be. We were never entitled to pity, never entitled to the
half-century of courtesy and consideration we received from the bank.
We met the fate that is bound to overtake impractical dreamers and
non-hustlers in this generation. The Mission Indian disappeared before
the onslaught of the earlier Californians, and the old-time
Californians have had to take a back seat before the onslaught of the
Go-get-'em boys from the Middle West and the East. Presently they,
too, will disappear before the hordes of Japanese that are invading our
state. Perhaps that is progress--the survival of the fittest. _Quién
sabe_?"

He paused and smoked contemplatively. Parker cast a sidelong glance of
curiosity at him, but said nothing, by his silence giving assent to all
that the younger man had said.