with extraordinary inducements for the investment of capital in the projected working of an old mine.  If I had had any difficulty in recognizing in the extravagant style the flamboyant hand of Enriquez in English writing, I might have read his name plainly enough displayed as president of the company.  It was evidently the prospectus of one of the ventures he had shown me.  I was more amused than indignant at the little trick he had played upon my editorial astuteness.  After all, if I had thus benefited the young couple I was satisfied.  I had not seen them since my first visit, as I was very busy,—­my communications with Mrs. Saltillo had been carried on by letters and proofs,—­and when I did finally call at their house, it was only to find that they were visiting at San Jose.  I wondered whether the baby was still hanging on the wall, or, if he was taken with them, who carried him.

A week later the stock of El Bolero was quoted at par.  More than that, an incomprehensible activity had been given to all the deserted Mexican mines, and people began to look up scrip hitherto thrown aside as worthless.  Whether it was one of those extraordinary fevers which attacked Californian speculation in the early days, or whether Enriquez Saltillo had infected the stock-market with his own extravagance, I never knew; but plans as wild, inventions as fantastic, and arguments as illogical as ever emanated from his own brain, were set forth “on ’Change” with a gravity equal to his own.  The most reasonable hypothesis was that it was the effect of the well-known fact that the Spanish Californian hitherto had not been a mining speculator, nor connected in any way with the gold production on his native soil, deeming it inconsistent with his patriarchal life and landed dignity, and that when a “son of one of the oldest Spanish families, identified with the land and its peculiar character for centuries, lent himself to its mineral exploitations,”—­I beg to say that I am quoting from the advertisement in the “Excelsior,”—­“it was a guerdon of success.”  This was so far true that in a week Enriquez Saltillo was rich, and in a fair way to become a millionaire.

It was a hot afternoon when I alighted from the stifling Wingdam coach, and stood upon the cool, deep veranda of the Carquinez Springs Hotel.  After I had shaken off the dust which had lazily followed us, in our descent of the mountain road, like a red smoke, occasionally overflowing the coach windows, I went up to the room I had engaged for my brief holiday.  I knew the place well, although I could see that the hotel itself had lately been redecorated and enlarged to meet the increasing requirements of fashion.  I knew the forest of enormous redwoods where one might lose one’s self in a five minutes’ walk from the veranda.  I knew the rocky trail that climbed the mountain to the springs, twisting between giant boulders.  I knew the arid garden, deep in the wayside dust, with its hurriedly planted tropical plants, already