“Like Lorry Tuck?” Harvey put in.

“Yep; or the two De Vitre boys or old man McQuade’s son.  California’s full of ’em, and here’s an Eastern sample while we’re talking.”

A shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some New York club.  Two young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily.

“Shouldn’t care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze.  No beam,” said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy.

“They’re having what stands them for a good time.  I can give you that, and twice as much as that, Harve.  How’d you like it?”

“Caesar!  That’s no way to get a dinghy overside,” said Harvey, still intent on the yacht.  “If I couldn’t slip a tackle better than that I’d stay ashore. . . .  What if I don’t?”

“Stay ashore—­or what?”

“Yacht and ranch and live on ‘the old man,’ and—­get behind Mama where there’s trouble,” said Harvey, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son.”

“Ten dollars a month?” Another twinkle.

“Not a cent more until you’re worth it, and you won’t begin to touch that for a few years.”

“I’d sooner begin sweeping out the office—­isn’t that how the big bugs start?—­and touch something now than—­”

“I know it; we all feel that way.  But I guess we can hire any sweeping we need.  I made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon.”

“Thirty million dollars’ worth o’ mistake, wasn’t it?  I’d risk it for that.”

“I lost some; and I gained some.  I’ll tell you.”

Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from Harvey, who presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life.  He talked in a low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many dollars—­the story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the New West, whose story is yet to be written.

It began with a kinless boy turned loose in Texas, and went on fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes shifting from State after Western State, from cities that sprang up in a month and—­in a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved municipalities.  It covered the building of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of a fourth.  It told of steamers, townships, forests, and mines, and the men of every nation under heaven, manning, creating, hewing, and digging these.  It touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by the merest accident