But other Opportunities had left Keeler rich in experience and short of cash. He could not use Robert Palmer's money as his own; so he could only smile, rather sadly, and wish his new friends success. How many of his acquaintances had invested good money in a hole in the ground! Even the most prudent, in some unguarded moment, had parted with thousands of dollars, like the dog in the fable which dropped the real bone to seize the shadow. There was Mack, proprietor of the hotel at Graniteville, making lots of money at his business and losing it all in mining ventures. Only the other day Mack had remarked that if his savings had been allowed to accumulate in some good bank he would now be worth some fifty thousand dollars. As it was, he was as poor as his humblest guest. Even Dr. Mason, canny Scot though he was, could not forget the sight of ninety thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion he had once seen piled up at North Bloomfield, and so was persuaded to gamble with his earnings. He had lost as much as Mack. How rosy is the rainbow, and how evanescent the pot of gold at the end of it! California had swallowed up more wealth than its gold could ever repay, as Keeler well knew. It was only occasionally that some lucky devil, or some prudent, saving man like Robert Palmer, after thirty years in the gold fields, had anything to show for it. So Keeler, pondering the deceitfulness of riches, sadly made his way back across the mountains. Even then Fate was weaving her web about his old friend Palmer, who was soon to lie in a pauper's grave. Francis seized a Golden Opportunity. Francis had so far prospered that he had moved to San Francisco. In the city he could watch the stock market, as he told himself privately. To his friends he announced that failing health demanded the change, albeit the exhilarating air of the Sierras was far more beneficial than the dampness of the sea coast. But Francis, inheriting ten thousand dollars from one of his deceased brothers, had moved to San Francisco, taking with him sundry hundreds and thousands of dollars, entrusted to him by his Pennsylvania friends for investment. Everybody had faith in the integrity of Henry Francis. The next summer, when the blue-bells were in blossom at Grass Valley, he passed through that prosperous mining town on the narrow gauge bound for Nevada City and Moore's Flat. This was the summer of 1881, nearly two years after the murder of Cummins. A still, small voice accused him of something akin to highway robbery; and it gave his conscience a twinge to pass the well-known stump which had concealed the robbers. It was bad enough that the robbers were still at large, a fact that reflected upon him. "Bed-bug Brown's" mission had proved a fiasco. But the thing that really worried Francis was his own mission and not the fruitless one of Brown's. If his own proved fruitless his conscience might be better satisfied.