Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than
a small way, for esthetic amusement.

Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of
Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small
hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements
of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and
neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man;
a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill,
and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the
swale between was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying
Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand
dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three
million.

Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There
were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other