wiggs had departed again, accompanied by a partner to guide
him past the dangerous shoals of Tomlinson's grocery, Rice clapped his
hand on Wells's shoulder. "If it hadn't been for me, sonny, that shark
would have landed you into some compromise with that red-haired gal! I
saw you weakenin', and then I chipped in. I may have piled up the agony
a little on your love for old Quince, but if you aren't an ungrateful
cub, that's how you ought to hev been feein', anyhow!"

Nevertheless, the youthful Wells, although touched by his elder
partner's loyalty, and convinced of his own disinterestedness, felt a
painful sense of lost chivalrous opportunity.

*****

On mature consideration it was finally settled that Jackson Wells should
make his preliminary examination of his inheritance alone, as it might
seem inconsistent with the previous indifferent attitude of his
partners if they accompanied him. But he was implored to yield to no
blandishments of the enemy, and to even make his visit a secret.

He went. The familiar flower-spiked trees which had given their name
to Buckeye Hollow had never yielded entirely to improvements and the
incursions of mining enterprise, and many of them had even survived the
disused ditches, the scarred flats, the discarded levels, ruined flumes,
and roofless cabins of the earlier occupation, so that when Jackson
Wells entered the wide, straggling street of Buckeye, that summer
morning was filled with the radiance of its blossoms and fragrant with
their incense. His first visit there, ten years ago, had been a purely
perfunctory and hasty one, yet he remembered the ostentatious hotel,
built in the "flush time" of its prosperity, and already in a green
premature decay; he recalled the Express Office and Town Hall, also
passing away in a kind of similar green deliquescence; the little zinc
church, now overgrown with fern and brambles, and the two or three fine
substantial houses in the outskirts, which seemed to have sucked the
vitality of the little settlement. One of these--he had been told--was
the property of his rich and wicked maternal uncle, the hated
appropriator of his red-headed cousin's affections. He recalled his
brief visit to the departed testator's claim and market garden, and his
by no means favorable impression of the lonely, crabbed old man, as well
as his relief that his objectionable cousin, whom he had not seen since
he was a boy, was then absent at the rival uncle's. He made his