New
York--should go, was so much a matter of course that Price had taken the
first Overland train that left New York after the receipt of his uncle's
despairing telegram.

In spite of the fortune behind him and his own expert training, the
struggle to rebuild the old business to its former standard had been
unintermittent. The terrific shock to the city's energies was followed
by a general depression, and the insane spending of a certain class of
San Franciscans when their insurance money was paid, was like a brief
last crackling in a cold stove, and, moreover, was of no help to the
wholesale houses.

But Price Ruyler, like so many of his new associates in like case, had
emerged triumphant; and with the unqualified approval and respect of the
substantial citizens of San Francisco.

It was this position he had won in a community where he had experienced
the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great
city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared
California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New
York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he
found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for
a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a racing car, or
tramp, for at least eight months of the year with no menace of sudden
downpour, and hardly a change in the weight of his clothes.

To-day the rain was dashing against his windows and the wind howled about
the exposed angles of his house with that personal fury of assault with
which storms brewed out in the vast wastes of the Pacific deride the
enthusiastic baptism of a too confident explorer. All he could see of the
bay was a mad race of white caps, and dark blurs which only memory
assured him were rocky storm-beaten islands; mountain tops, so geological
tradition ran, whose roots were in an unquiet valley long since dropped
from mortal gaze.

The waves were leaping high against the old forts at the entrance to the
Golden Gate, and occasionally he saw a small craft drift perilously near
to the rocks. But he loved the wild weather of San Francisco, for he was
by nature an imaginative man and he liked to think that he would have
followed the career of letters had not the traditions of the great
commercial house of Ruyler and Sons, forced him to carry on the burden.

The men of his family had never been idlers since the recrudescence of
a