Fools of fortune.
Philip Hardin, satisfied with the absence of the infant heiress,
coldly stood aloof from the ruin of his friends.
As the months ran on, accumulating his private deposits, Judge
Hardin, engrossed in his affairs, grew indifferent even to the fate
of the woman he had so long cherished. His unacknowledged child is
naught to him.
It was easy to keep the general income and expenses of the ranch
nearly even in amount.
But the MINE was a daily temptation to the only man who knew its
real ownership. It must be his at any cost. Time must show the way.
He must have a title.
Hardin looked far into the future. His very isolation and inaction
was a proof of no overt treason. With the power of this wealth
he might, when a few years rolled away, reach lofty civic honors.
Young at sixty, as public men are considered, he wonders, looking
over the superb estate, if a high political marriage would not
reopen his career. In entertaining royally at San Francisco and
Sacramento, with solid and substantial claims in society, he may
yet be able to place his name first in the annals of the coast. A
senator. Why not? Ambition and avarice.
With prophetic insight, he knows that sectional rancor will not long
exist in California.
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