“But I wander!  That is my fault, as you know, Sir Chaps.  Well, we come to the end of the weaving; to the finality of John Wingfield’s victory.  Little Rivers was getting out of hand.  I could plan a ranch, but I had not a business head.  I had neither the gift nor the experience to deal with lawyers and land-grabbers.  I knew that with the increase of population and development our position was exciting the cupidity of those who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than in building on their own account.  I knew that we ought to have a great dam; that there was water to irrigate ten times the present irrigated area.

“Then came John Prather.  I saw in him the judgment, energy, and ability for organization of a real man of affairs.  He was young, self-made, engaging and convincing of manner.  He liked our life and ideals in Little Rivers; he wanted to share our future.  In his resemblance to you I saw nothing but a coincidence that I passed over lightly.  He knew how to handle the difficult situation that arose with the reappearance of old man Lefferts’ partners.  He would get the water rights legalized beyond dispute and turn them over to the water users’ association; he would bring in capital for the dam; the value of our property would be enhanced; Little Rivers would become a city in her own right, while I was growing old delectably in the pride of founder.  So he pictured it and so I dreamed.  I was so sure of the future that I dared the expense of a trip to New York.

“And always to me, when I looked at you and when I thought of you, you were the son of John Wingfield; you incarnated the inheritance of his strength.  But when, from the drawing-room, I saw your father, whom I had not seen for fifteen years, then—­well, the thing came to me in a burning second, the while I glimpsed his face before he saw mine.  He was smiling as if pleased with himself and his power; he was rubbing the palms of his hands together; and I saw that it was John Prather who was like John Wingfield in manner, pose, and feature.  You were like the fighting man, your ancestor, and your airy confidence was his.  And I, witless and unperceiving, had been won by the same methods of ingratiation with which John Wingfield had won the assistance of the Ewold fortune for the first step of his career; with which he had won Alice Jamison and kept me unaware of his plan while he was lying to her.

“Finally, let us say, in all charity, that your father is what he is because of what is born in him and for the same reason that the snowball gathers size as it rolls; and I am what I am for the same reason that the wind scatter the sands of the desert—­a man full of books and tangent inconsequence of ideas, without sense; a simpleton who knows a painting but does not know men; a garrulous, philosophizing, blind, old simpleton, whose pompous incompetency has betrayed a trust!  Through me, men and women came here to settle and make a home!  Through me they lose—­to my shame!”