When every available cent had been raised and sunk, the oil spouted out. Who looked at the fountain in the patch of lawn by the old fig trees? Possibly Mrs. Panel. Not Uncle Jap. He, the most temperate of men, became furiously drunk on petroleum. He exuded it from every pore. Of course he was acclaimed by the county and the State (the Sunday editions published his portrait) as the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there.
At this point we must present, with apologies, the agent of the Autocrat, the agent, the High-muck-a-muck of the Pacific Slope, with a salary of a hundred thousand a year and perks! In his youth Nat Levi smelt of fried fish, unless the smell was overpowered by onions, and he changed his lodgings more often than he changed his linen. Now you meet him as Nathaniel Leveson, Esquire, who travelled in his private car, who assumed the God, when the God was elsewhere, who owned a palace on Nob Hill, and some of the worst, and therefore the most paying, rookeries in Chinatown, who never refused to give a cheque for charitable purposes when it was demanded in a becomingly public manner, who, like the Autocrat, had endowed Christian Churches, and had successfully eliminated out of his life everything which smacked of the Ghetto, except his nose.
Nathaniel Leveson visited our county, opened an office, and began to lay his pulpy white hands upon everything which directly or indirectly might produce petroleum. In due season he invited Uncle Jap to dine with him at the Paloma Hotel, in San Lorenzo. The old man, with the hayseed in his hair, and the stains of bitumen upon his gnarled hands, ate and drank of the best, seeing a glorified vision of his Lily crowned with diamonds at last. The vision faded somewhat when Nathaniel began to talk dollars and cents. Even to Uncle Jap, unversed in such high matters as finance, it seemed plain that Leveson & Company were to have the dollars, and that to him, the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there were to be apportioned the cents.
"Lemme see," he said, with the slow, puzzled intonation of the man who does not understand; "I own this yere oil----"
"Subject to the mortgage, Mr. Panel, I believe?"
"That don't amount to shucks," said Uncle Jap.
"Quite so. Forgive me for interrupting you."
"I own this yere oil-field, lake I call it, and, bar the mortgage, it's bin paid for with the sweat of my--soul."
He brought out the word with such startling emphasis, that Nathaniel nearly upset the glass of fine old cognac which he was raising to his lips.
"Yas, my soul," continued Uncle Jap, meditatively. "I risked everything I'd got. Man," he leant across the gaily decorated table, with its crystal, its pink shades, its pretty flowers, and compelled his host to meet his flaming eyes,--"man, I risked my wife's love and respect. And," he drew a deep breath, "by God, I was justified. I got there. If I hadn't," the fire died down in his mild blue eyes, and the thin body seemed to wither and shrink,--"if I hadn't struck it, it would hev killed her, the finest lady in the land, an' me too. It was nip an' tuck with both of us. And now," his voice warmed into life again,--"and now you offer me fifty thousand dollars."