Ralston leaned back comfortably, his folded hands across his middle.  His speculative stare was on a marble statue.  At length he spoke.  “Does Sharon win or lose?”

“Well,” the other man admitted, “I must say he wins....”

“Then he’s just the man I want,” Ralston spoke with emphasis.  He rose, held out his hand toward the flustered visitor.  “Thanks for telling me....  And now we’ll all go for a drink together.”

* * * * *

“That’s Bill Ralston!” said Benito to his wife.  They laughed about the anecdote which Windham had related at the dinner table.  Robert, in his new letter-carrier’s uniform, spoke up.  “I saw him at the bank this afternoon....  There was a letter from Virginia City and he kept me waiting till he opened it.  Then he slapped me on the shoulder.  ’If the contents of that letter had been known to certain people, son,’ he told me, ‘they’d have cleaned up a fortune on the information.’  Then he handed me a gold-piece.  But I wouldn’t take it.  ‘Don’t be proud,’ he said and poked me in the ribs.  ’And don’t forget that Bill Ralston’s your friend.’”

“Everybody calls him ‘Bill,’” his mother added.  “Washerwomen, teamsters, beggars, millionaires.  If ever there was a friend of the people it is he.”

“Some day, though, he’ll overplay his game,” Benito prophesied.

Ralston had been euchered out of a railroad to Eureka, planned by Harpending and himself and opposed by the Big Four; “Montgomery to the Bay” was meeting with a host of difficulties; the Grand Hotel was building and Kearny street, where he owned property, was being widened.  Ralston’s genial countenance showed sometimes a little strained pucker between the eyes.

* * * * *

Now and then Benito met a man named Adolph Sutro.  They called him “The Man With a Dream.”  Stocky, under average height, intensely businesslike, he was—­a German Burgomeister type, with Burnside whiskers and a purpose.  He proposed to drive a tunnel four miles long from Carson valley, and strike the Comstock levels 1800 feet below the surface.

An English syndicate was backing him.  The work was going on.

Much of Sutro’s time was spent in Virginia City, superintending the work on his tunnel.  But he fell into the habit of finding Benito whenever he came to town—­dragging him from home with awkward but sincere apologies to Alice.

“You will lend me your husband, Hein?” he would say.  “I like to tell him of my fancies, for he understands ... the others laugh at me.”

Alice smiled into his broad, good humored face.  “That’s very silly of them.”

“Donnerwetter!  Some day they will laugh the other way around,” he threatened.

* * * * *

Benito and Sutro usually drove or rode through the Presidio and out along a road which skirted cliffs and terminated at the Seal Rock House.  There they dined and watched the seals disporting on some sea-drenched rocks, a stone’s throw distant.  And there Sutro indulged in more dreams.