“Yes, he’s rich—rich as mud, they say, an’ I ain’t sorry, neither. There ain’t anyone I know that I’d as soon would have a streak o’ luck as Hustler Joe.”
Pedler Jim was across the room, but he heard.
“Rich! Hustler Joe rich!” he demanded, springing to his feet.
“That’s what he is!”
“Jiminy Christmas!” shouted the hunchback. “I’ve found him—he was the lamp himself!”
XI
It was in Dalton, the nearest large city to Skinner Valley, that Hustler Joe began his career as a rich man.
He built him a house—a house so rare and costly that people came from miles around to stare and wonder. Society not only opened its doors to him, but reached out persuasive hands and displayed its most alluring charms. She demanded but one thing—a new name: “Hustler Joe” could scarcely be tolerated in the aristocratic drawing-rooms of the inner circle! He gave her “Westbrook,” and thenceforth “Mr. Joseph Westbrook” was a power in the city.
He was petted by maneuvering mamas, flattered by doting papas, and beamed upon by aspiring daughters; yet the firm lips seldom relaxed in a smile, and his groom told of long night rides when the master would come home in the gray of the morning with his horse covered with mud and foam. But society cared not. Society loves a Mystery—if the Mystery be rich.
When Joseph Westbrook’s mansion was finished and furnished from cellar to garret and placed in the hands of a dignified, black-robed housekeeper at the head of a corps of servants, and when his stables were filled with thoroughbreds and equipped with all things needful, from a gold-tipped whip to a liveried coachman, Mr. Joseph Westbrook himself was as restless and ill at ease as Hustler Joe had been in the renovated shanty on the hillside.