Above all, sheer and steep, circling about, sheltering, brooding, hung Saragossa Mountain, rose and gold in mid-day or morning sun; blue and rose-edged when the long shadows thrust eastward stealthily, steadily--crept like kittens at play, or like them fell off, down those old, old steps. Something of all this Neighbor saw and put into thoughts--not into words. Saw, too, all beyond and all about, the vast and sun-drenched land of all colors and all shapes--valley and plain and mesa, shelf and slope and curve, and bend and broken ridge and hill; great ranges against the turquoise sky, near or far, or far beyond belief, saw-toothed or wall-straight or rounded--every one precisely unlike any other visible mountain or any other possible mountain. By this cause his step was sprightly and glad, his eye bright, his chin well up--a very sincere way of thanking God. Now, as he swung along the street, he voiced these thoughts in a little hymn of praise. At least it sounded like a hymn of praise as he sang it to a healthy and manful tune; resonant, ringing, reverberant: “_Plunged in a gulf of dark despair-- Maryland, my Maryland!_” On three sides of the shaded plaza business was housed in modern comfort. In sharp contrast, all along the north, sprawled an unbroken, staring huddle of haphazard buildings--frame, brick and adobe, tall and squat jumbled together, broad fronted or pinched. At the riverward corner, massive, ill-kept but dominant still, was a great structure of gray-stone once the luckless home of Brown and Almandares. Squalid, faded and time-stained, like Falstaff’s rabble of recruits, this long row struck sinister to the eye. Any stranger, seeing what blight had fallen ominous and threatening all about him, seeing on door after door the same repeated name, might well guess the whole ugly story. For this long, forlorn row housed Bennett’s General Stores. Bennett sold everything but tunnels. Here was Neighbor’s nearest errand. After a little delay he was shown into the great man’s private office. Bennett turned slowly in his revolving chair; a tall spare man, with a thin straggle of sandy hair and a sharp, narrow face, close-shaven; which might have been a pleasant face but for a pinched and cruel mouth, a mean, pinched nose, and a shifty eye. Here arose a curious contradiction. The man had held the whip hand for years, his conscious manner was overbearing and arrogant, but his eyes betrayed him, and all the unconscious lines of his face were slinking and furtive. He now wore an austere frown. “Mr. Jones, I hear you have been gambling.” “Oh, _si_!” said Mr. Jones; and he made those simple words convey enthusiasm, brightness and joy. “And--but, also, what do you suppose I hear about you? Give you three guesses.” “What!” Bennett gasped incredulously; he crashed his fist down on the desk. “How about that mortgage?” Jones beamed triumphant. “You see? You don’t like it yourself--meddlin’, pryin’ and loose talk.”