Once more he slipped off into the forests and took unto himself additional sections of virgin timber at inconceivably low prices. Other men made much of the wheat-field and the town-lot, but Joseph Hooper saw fortune in the forests. Again and again he increased his timber land holdings. People thought he was buying up town-sites and smiled smugly among themselves as they discussed the dreadful shock he was to have when the time came for him to begin clearing away the timber!
All this time he was known as Joseph H. Grimwell. There was no such person as Joseph Hooper. That discredited individual had died, so to speak, by the wayside, a vagabond. New York had lost track of him; his family believed him to be dead—or in prison! It is barely possible that he ought to have been incarcerated for some of his skilfully manipulated enterprises, but that has nothing to do with this narrative. It is relevant to dwell only upon the contention that riches come swiftly to him who makes use of both hands without caring whether the left knows what the right is doing or the other way about. At any rate, Joseph Grimwell was a better man than Joseph Hooper ever had been, and he was a wiser man in many respects than Solomon the historic.
In brief, there came a day when his timber turned to gold. The name of Grimwell became a household word. It even penetrated to the secret crannies of Wall Street. Men who did not know oak from soft pine began to plead with him to be "let in on the ground floor." Gentlemen who sat in mahogany offices and worshipped at unseen shrines, took notice of this man of the West who was getting more than his share of the pillage. Promoters sought him out and haggled with him—haggled with the prince of promoters! They tried to let him into the secret of making money!
Fortune may not always favour the brave, but it continues to do a little something every now and then for the bold. In Joseph Grimwell's case, it overlooked the fact that he was neither brave nor bold but rewarded him for being interestingly tricky. Out of sheer respect for his cleverness in acquiring all of the timber land available, Fortune set about to outdo him in productiveness. It suddenly remembered that it had placed three rich copper deposits in separate and distinct parts of his land and kindly directed him to the spots.
Now, copper can be turned into gold quite as readily as ice, or beef, or hops, or any of the products of man's experimentation, just as one can make hay while the sun shines, even though his field of activity lies at the bottom of an oil-well. Mr. Grimwell made gold out of his copper, just as he made it out of oak and pine and ash, and when he came to be three score years and ten he had so many dollars that, like Old Mother Hubbard, he didn't know what to do with them.
It suddenly dawned upon him that there was no one to whom he could leave this vast accumulation unless he made peace with his past.
He sold out all of his holdings, reducing everything to coin of the realm, and once more became a wanderer in search of a place to lay his head. With fourteen or fifteen millions of dollars in his purse, so to speak, he slunk into New York, a beggar still and hungrier than he had ever been in his life.
Then he tried out the plan that failed. His lawyer and his doctor alone knew that Joseph Grimwell and Joseph Hooper were one and the same person, and they were pledged to secrecy. One of them drew up his will and the other made death as easy as possible for him. His nephew, poor wretch, buried him in a grave alongside a devoted sister, froze his ears while doing so—and lost his job in the bank besides!
The new will was read in the offices of Bradlee, Sigsbee & Oppenheim on the day following Mr. Bingle's first ride in a taxi-cab. The heir was too bewildered to attend the meeting arranged for the same afternoon, and it had to be postponed. As a matter of fact, he sent word to the lawyers that his wife was too ill to come down that afternoon but would doubtless be better on the following day. When informed that his wife's presence was unnecessary and that his cousins were even then on their way down town and that there was no way to head them off, he blandly inquired if it wouldn't be possible to postpone the whole matter for a week or two, assuring the gentlemen that he wouldn't, for all the world, disturb Mrs. Bingle, who appeared to be sleeping comfortably for the first time in twenty-four hours. In fact, he informed them that he thought it would be a mistake to break the news to her while her cold was so bad; as for himself, he didn't mind waiting a week or two—not in the least—if it was all the same to Mr. Sigsbee.
It was Melissa who broke the news to Mrs. Bingle, and it was at once apparent that it was not a mistake to do so. The good lady improved so rapidly that she sent for the expensive Dr. Fiddler, dismissing the cheap Dr. Smith, and by seven o'clock that evening declared that she had never felt better in all of her life.