She had risen while he was speaking, and with a face full of sympathy and kindness, thanked him for his promise; and before he realized what was transpiring, the hall door closed and she was gone. The house from which she had taken her leave was one of the best overlooking Central Park, in New York City. Vance Gilder, the elder, was a man of great determination of character, and had accumulated a fortune while yet in the prime of life. He built for himself this house. It was surrounded by elegantly kept gardens and velvet lawns. He retired from business late in the ‘60’., intending to devote himself to his wife and only son, then a mere child, and his library. Scarcely a year of such enjoyment was allowed him before his wife sickened and died, leaving him his son and his fortune. It was hardly more than natural that he should lavish a great deal of attention and wealth upon his child. As his son grew to manhood, his father discovered a recklessness and extravagance which was sadly at variance with those economic principles which he himself had so studiously practiced. Vance stood fairly well in his classes, and after graduating at Princeton, went abroad, visiting the principal cities of Europe, and spending money in such a lavish way that at the expiration of a [17] year his father summoned him home and remonstrated with him severely on his manner of living and his expensive habits. Piqued at the rebuke, he quarreled with his father, and started out to make his way in the world alone. The estrangement was of short duration, however, and soon after the reconciliation he secured a position on the __Banner_ _, and assiduously devoted himself to the study of journalism. He gave up his follies and fast living, and found more enjoyment in his work on the Banner than he had ever found in swell dinners and midnight carousals at his club. CHAPTER II.—THE OLD MINER. 9026 ROOM [18] in which we have introduced Vance Gilder to the reader, in the home overlooking Central Park, had been his from childhood, and furnished by his father in its present luxurious style, as a reward for his devotion to the profession of journalism. His father had invested his income in real estate, and in the lapse of years found himself possessed of a fortune many times greater than he had ever anticipated. He traveled a great deal over the west, and at Gold Bluff, Idaho, he found in Ben Bonifield, the owner of Gray Rocks, a playmate of his youth. Ben Bonifield had staked out a claim which he called “Gray Rocks,” and had worked away for several years with pick and shovel, believing that some day he would “strike it rich”—and from the output of other mining properties in that vicinity, it seemed as if his expectations might be realized some day.