Disembarrassed of the grave priest, Hardin at once sends orders for his prospectors. A new man appears to superintend the grant.
It is with grim satisfaction he reflects that the hand of fate has removed every obstacle to his control. His fiery energy is shown by the rapidity with which hundreds of men swarm on ditch and flume. They are working at mill and giant water-wheels. They are delving and tracing the fat brown quartz, gold laden, from between the streaks of rifted basalt and porphyry.
There is no one to spy, none to hinder now. Before the straggling veterans of Lee and Johnston wander back to the golden West, the quartz mine of Lagunitas yields fabulous returns.
The legacy of "Kaintuck" was wonderful. The golden bars, run out roughly at the mine, represented to Hardin the anchor of his tottering credit. They are the basis of a great fortune, and the means of political prestige.
When the crash came, when the Southern flags were furled in the awful silence of defeat and despair, the wily lawyer, safe in Lagunitas, was crowning his golden fortunes.
Penniless, broken in pride and war-worn, the survivors of the men whom he urged into the toils of secession, returned sadly home, scattering aimlessly over the West. 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.