mollifying the conscientious scruples of her husband and of
placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote contingency. It is
but fair to say that this degradation of his father's Castilian
principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't work them
yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way to keep
the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"
argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to
the business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple
suggestion of Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in
money for a few acres that exceeded the last ten years' income of
Don Ramon's seven leagues.

Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the
discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company,
hastily formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down,
leaving him still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine.
With an obstinacy, however, that amounted almost to a moral
conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the
property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined,
with equal tenacity, to part with it to outside speculators on even
the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in
vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of
his former humble occupation was a green blot upon their social
escutcheon.

"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden."
But Mulrady was adamant.

"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil
with my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be