nt. Fairness to the corporation is fairness to the
farmer, and we won't expect you to readjust the whole matter out of
hand. Take your time. We can afford to wait."

"And suppose the next commission is a railroad board, and reverses all
our figures?"

The one-time mining king, the most redoubtable poker player of Calaveras
County, permitted himself a momentary twinkle of his eyes.

"By then it will be too late. We will, all of us, have made our fortunes
by then."

The remark left Presley astonished out of all measure He never could
accustom himself to these strange lapses in the Governor's character.
Magnus was by nature a public man, judicious, deliberate, standing firm
for principle, yet upon rare occasion, by some such remark as this, he
would betray the presence of a sub-nature of recklessness, inconsistent,
all at variance with his creeds and tenets.

At the very bottom, when all was said and done, Magnus remained the
Forty-niner. Deep down in his heart the spirit of the Adventurer yet
persisted. "We will all of us have made fortunes by then." That was it
precisely. "After us the deluge." For all his public spirit, for all his
championship of justice and truth, his respect for law, Magnus remained
the gambler, willing to play for colossal stakes, to hazard a fortune on
the chance of winning a million. It was the true California spirit
that found expression through him, the spirit of the West, unwilling to
occupy itself with details, refusing to wait, to be patient, to achieve
by legitimate plodding; the miner's instinct of wealth acquired in a
single night prevailed, in spite of all. It was in this frame of mind
that Magnus and the multitude of other ranchers of whom he was a type,
farmed their ranches. They had no love for their land. They were not
attached to the soil. They worked their ranches as a quarter of a
century before they had worked their mines. To husband the resources of
their marvellous San Joaquin, they considered niggardly, petty, Hebraic.
To get all there was out of the land, to squeeze it dry, to exhaust it,
seemed their policy. When, at last, the land worn out, would refuse to
yield, they would invest their money in something else; by then, they
would all have made fortunes. They did not care. "After us the deluge."

Lyman, however, was obviously uneasy, willing to change the subject. He
rose to his feet, pulling down his cuffs.

"By the way," he observed, "I want you three to lunch with