When at last he came back, the passengers flocked around him, grasping his hands and blessing him as the preserver of their money, if not of their lives. After that Arthur was a lion whom all the people in the valley wished to see and talk with, and with whom the landlord bore as he had never borne with a guest before, for Arthur found fault with the rooms, which he likened to bath-tubs, and fault with the smells which came from the river, and fault with the smoke in the parlor, but made ample amends by the money he spent so lavishly, the scores of photographs he bought, and the puffs he wrote for the San Francisco papers, extolling the valley as the very gate of heaven, and the hotel as second only to the Palace, and signing himself "Bumble Bees."
He went on every trail, and climbed the highest possible peak, and when he stood on the top of old Capitan and looked down upon the world below, he capered and shouted like a madman, singing at the top of his voice, "Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord, glory, glory, hallelujah!" until the rocky gorges rang with the wild echoes which went floating down the valley below, where the sun was shining so brightly and the grass was growing so green.
On his return to San Francisco after an absence of several weeks, he took up his abode at the Palace Hotel, which he turned topsy-turvy with his vagaries; but the landlord could afford to bear much from one who spent his money so freely; and so he was allowed to change rooms every day if he liked, and half the plumbers in the city were called in to see what caused the smells which he declared worse than any thing he had ever met in his life, and which were caused in part by the disinfectants which he bought by the wholesale and kept in his bath-room, his wash-room, and under his bed, until the chambermaid tied up her nose in camphor when she went in to do her work.
But his career was brought to a close suddenly one morning, when, just as he was taking his coffee and rolls in his room, Charles brought him the following telegram:
"Come immediately. There's the devil to pay.
"Tom Tracy."
Arthur read the message two or three times, not at all disturbed by it, but vastly amused at its wording; then, putting it down, he went on with his breakfast until it was finished, when he took a card from his pocket and wrote upon it:
"Pay him then, for I sha'nt come.
"Arthur Tracy."
This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it to Tracy Park. This done, he gave no further thought to the message so full of such import to himself, but began to talk of and plan his contemplated trip to Tacoma by the next steamer which sailed. It was six o'clock when he had his dinner in his own private parlor, where he was served by both Charles and a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.
"Confound it," he said, "have they nothing to do at home but to torment me with telegrams? Didn't I tell them to pay the old Harry and done with it? What do they mean?" and putting the envelope down by his plate he went quietly on with his dinner until he was through, when he took it up, and, breaking the seal, read:
"Come at once. I need you.
"Jerrie."