weakness.

He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been
lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his
shoulders, and locked the front door of the house behind him. It
was well that the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet
instinctively found the trail, for the night was very dark. At
times he was warned only by the gurgling of water of little
rivulets that descended the hill and crossed his path. Without the
slightest fear, and with neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he
recalled how, the winter before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros,
crossing this hill at night, had fallen down the chasm of a
landslip caused by the rain, and was found the next morning with
his neck broken in the gully. Don Caesar had to take care of the
man's family. Suppose such an accident should happen to him?
Well, he had made his will. His wife and children would be
provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he
had arranged for that. Would anybody miss him? Would his wife, or
his son, or his daughter? No. He felt such a sudden and
overwhelming conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as
suddenly as if the chasm had opened before him. No! It was the
truth. If he were to disappear forever in the darkness of the
Christmas night there was none to feel his loss. His wife would
take care of Mamie; his son would take care of himself, as he had
before--relieved of even the scant paternal authority he rebelled
against. A more imaginative man than Mulrady would have combated
or have followed out this idea, and then dismissed it; to the
millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a deduction that, having
once presented itself to his perception, was already a recognized
fact. For the first time in his life he felt a sudden instinct of