seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I
mean a sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a
circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to
your gals."

But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently
unfeigned. Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time
of his attack, the incident that caused it had no part in his
recollection. With the exception of these rare intervals of
domestic confidences with his crippled private secretary, Mulrady
gave himself up to money-getting. Without any especial faculty for
it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous financiers--his unfailing
luck, however, carried him safely through, until his very mistakes
seemed to be simply insignificant means to a large significant end
and a part of his original plan. He sank another shaft, at a great
expense, with a view to following the lead he had formerly found,
against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and struck the
artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume of
water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to
furnish supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit.
A league of tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for
which he had paid Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the
presumption that it was auriferous, furnished the most accessible
timber to build the town, at prices which amply remunerated him.
The practical schemes of experienced men, the wildest visions of
daring dreams delayed or abortive for want of capital, eventually
fell into his hands. Men sneered at his methods, but bought his
shares. Some who affected to regard him simply as a man of money
were content to get only his name to any enterprise. Courted by
his superiors, quoted by his equals, and admired by his inferiors,