andards more than he deserved; how he
reached California, how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, and
starved; how he was at last taken up by charitable folk, restored to
some degree of self-complacency, and installed as a clerk in a bank in
San Francisco, it would take too long to tell; nor in these episodes
were there any marks of the peculiar Nicholsonic destiny, for they were
just such matters as befell some thousands of other young adventurers in
the same days and places. But once posted in the bank, he fell for a
time into a high degree of good fortune, which, as it was only a longer
way about to fresh disaster, it behoves me to explain.

It was his luck to meet a young man in what is technically called a
"dive," and, thanks to his monthly wages, to extricate this new
acquaintance from a position of present disgrace and possible danger in
the future. This young man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill
magnates, who run the San Francisco Stock Exchange much as more humble
adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may be seen to
perform the simple artifice of pea and thimble: for their own profit,
that is to say, and the discouragement of public gambling. It was hence
in his power--and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the things
that he desired--to put John in the way of growing rich; and thus,
without thought or industry, or so much as even understanding the game
at which he played, but by simply buying and selling what he was told to
buy and sell, that plaything of fortune was presently at the head of
between eleven and twelve thousand pounds, or, as he reckoned it, of
upwards of sixty thousand dollars.

How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he had formerly
earned disgrace at home, was a problem beyond the reach of his philosophy.
It was true that he had been industrious at the bank, but no more so than
the cashier, who had seven small children and was visibly sinking in a
decline. Nor was the step which had determined his advance--a visit to a
dive with a month's wages in his pocket--an act of such transcendent
virtue, or even wisdom, as to seem to merit the favour of the gods. From
some sense of this and of the dizzy see-saw--heaven-high, hell-deep--on
which men sit clutching; or perhaps fearing that the sources of his
fortune might be insidiously traced to some root in the field of petty
cash; he stuck to his work, said not a word of his new circumstances, and
k