Once more he slipped off into the forests and took unto himself
additional sections of virgin timber at inconceivably low prices.
Other men made much of the wheat-field and the town-lot, but Joseph
Hooper saw fortune in the forests. Again and again he increased his
timber land holdings. People thought he was buying up town-sites and
smiled smugly among themselves as they discussed the dreadful shock he
was to have when the time came for him to begin clearing away the
timber!

All this time he was known as Joseph H. Grimwell. There was no such
person as Joseph Hooper. That discredited individual had died, so to
speak, by the wayside, a vagabond. New York had lost track of him; his
family believed him to be dead--or in prison! It is barely possible
that he ought to have been incarcerated for some of his skilfully
manipulated enterprises, but that has nothing to do with this
narrative. It is relevant to dwell only upon the contention that
riches come swiftly to him who makes use of both hands without caring
whether the left knows what the right is doing or the other way about.
At any rate, Joseph Grimwell was a better man than Joseph Hooper ever
had been, and he was a wiser man in many respects than Solomon the
historic.

In brief, there came a day when his timber turned to gold. The name of
Grimwell became a household word. It even penetrated to the secret
crannies of Wall Street. Men who did not know oak from soft pine began
to plead with him to be "let in on the ground floor." Gentlemen who
sat in mahogany offices and worshipped at unseen shrines, took notice
of this man of the West who was getting more than his share of the
pillage. Promoters sought him out and haggled with him--haggled with
the prince of promoters! They tried to let him into the secret of