Then he must tell her.  To do this he found it necessary to sit on the sofa close to her.  What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment.  And no, she would not listen to him—­she did not believe a word he said; and—­yes, of course, she was glad to see any old friend; and no, he should not go.  He must stay with them.  They expected him to do so.

So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at Squire Rawson’s, and put in the best work he was capable of during that time.  He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat coldly and send away one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all the bravery of long broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.

But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate himself on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in the other.  Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but her grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward seeming, was in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher.  Wickersham spread out before him maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which overlapped those under which the old man claimed.

“Don’t you see my patents are older than yours?”

“Looks so,” said the old man, calmly.  “But patents is somethin’ like folks:  they may be too old.”

The young man tried another line.

The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet their titles, etc.  But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.

In fact, he did not want to sell.  He had bought the land for mountain pasture, and he didn’t know about these railroads and mines and such like.  Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she wished with it after he was dead and gone.

“He is a fool!” thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but the old fellow was obdurate.  He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but told her that women-folks didn’t understand about business.  So Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.

* * * * *

The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt.  Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey’s soul with disgust.  But the vehicle of honor was still “Gilsey’s stage.”  It carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the mountains, and was known as the “reg’lar.”  On bad nights the road was a little less crowded.  And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took for his journey to Gumbolt.