He crushed the cigar beneath his heel. "You're much too sentimental, sometimes, Mary. The children wouldn't thank me to hold on to the land, when I can get a hundred and ten a foot for inside lots." "We have all the money we can possibly use now, Paul. You must have made a hundred and fifty thousand this year----" "That hardly touches it." "It makes me afraid, sometimes--our having so much, when so many people have so little. If we could just keep Hillcrest as it is----" "We haven't anything," he answered sharply. "Jack Lamar and his brother came here just before I did; they've five million apiece. And God only knows how much Russell Ross has made out of iron. He's in with that South Atlantic Steel bunch; he could sell out for twenty-five millions to-morrow, I verily believe.... I'd be lucky to get a million." She stubbornly returned to what was on her mind. "And now you are willing to take this wonderful estate you have worked over for ten years, and throw it away, because Russell Ross has more money than you! Think what the Rosses were." "My father wouldn't have wiped his shoes on them. And any one of them could buy out Jackson three or four times now. This mountain--if it's handled right--it will simply mint money. It will be a mountain of gold." She shuddered. "Paul----" "I can imagine what you would say, if I hadn't made what I have out of it. You spend what I make quickly enough." "I save everywhere I can----" "Oh, you, and the place, and the girls; and it costs a lot to keep Pelham going. We need every cent of it. I tell you, this mountain is worth millions! And I won't stop until I've gotten every red cent out of it." It was in that mood that he went to the conference with the iron men. One Sunday morning, when the negotiations had been carried over until the next week, Nathaniel's housekeeper phoned that the old man had died shortly before daybreak. Paul took charge of the funeral, saw to the shipping of the body to the Ohio home, and turned the matter over to the lawyers for the estate. Within a month he had secured his partner's interest in the whole property, and was the sole owner of the mountain. "If we do mine," he told Mary, "Pelham's mining engineering course will make him the man for the place. He'll get Nate's share, if he's worth it." In June Snell and Judson threw open another large subdivision, in a cheaper suburb near Hazelton, and Mr. Snell's incapacity put the burden of this on Paul's shoulders. Further plans for Hillcrest were laid over until he could find time to take them up again. VII The day after the next Thanksgiving, Paul, excited and jubilant, drove up the graveled path to the side door of Hillcrest. "Read those," he pushed three papers into Mary's hands, as she rose from the veranda rocker.