“The kind that hits you plumb between the eyes like a bolt of lightning. Did you ever think you were smart, and then wake up and find yourself the biggest fool in seven states? No, I don’t reckon you ever did. That’s not the way Pard Matt is built.” “That’s where you’re wrong, Joe. I’ve been there. We all of us take a wrong course, now and then. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.” “Sufferin’ horn toads! Why, I thought all along I was starring myself, and that I’d laugh at you in a few days for being the one who’d made the bobble.” “The trouble with you was, Joe, Colonel Billings had too much influence over you.” “He’s got an oily tongue, Matt, and a brain that’s a wonder. After you dropped from the window, the colonel nailed me and pinned me down in a chair. I was as mad as a hornet, and ready to give him a right hook to the jaw, or any other kind of a right-hander that would make him take the count. That’s how I felt for about a minute--red-hot and boiling. But only for a minute. The colonel started his tongue, and I fell on his neck and shed tears of joy because he had singled me out to help feather-finger the kicks of the plutocrats. Not in those words, however. The colonel made it look like a just and warranted proceeding. “The colonel allows Pard Matt is a blockhead, and that he’s taken a few facts and used ’em as signboards for the wrong trail. The colonel admits hiring Levitt to make a bogus report; but the bogus report, according to the colonel, was the one we found, and not the other gilt-edged prospectus submitted to the syndicate.” “Why did he hire Levitt to make a report saying that the mine was no good?” inquired the amazed Matt. “He didn’t, pard; he only said he did. I find there’s some sort of a difference between what the colonel really does and what he tells people he does. He knew the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ was rich, long before he sold me my stock. Then some of the stockholders who knew the same thing tried to freeze the colonel out. But the colonel was too wise. He sank the shaft without finding any gold--just to fool the stockholders who wanted to get rid of him. These fellows immediately sold out to the colonel, so that the colonel got hold of the majority of the stock. That means, of course, that he had the entire say about everything connected with the mine.