Meanwhile work on the great surface chamber of Perch of the Devil Mine was drawing to a close. It had proved to be a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, and seventy feet deep, and had netted half a million dollars. Some time since one of the larger houses on the West Side in Butte, built by a millionaire while still faithful to Montana, but whose family now spent twelve months of the year in Europe, New York, or California, had been thrown on the market for less than a third of its cost; new millionaires are not as plentiful in Amalgamated Butte as of old, and that unique camp is still a perch, even for those that make moderate fortunes; if no longer for the devil. It never will be a favourite roost for the gamecock’s hens and chicks. The hotels and “blocks” are always overcrowded, and even bungalows are in demand by the energetic but impermanent young engineers and managers of the various companies; but “palatial residences,” built by enthusiastic citizens who either died promptly or retired in favour of their families, are a drug on that great market they helped to build. When the Murphy house, therefore, was advertised for sale Gregory bought it for Ida and cabled her the news together with five thousand dollars Mark had recently made for him on the stock-market. Above these and other expenditures, he now had half a million dollars to his credit, but he wanted a million more. The new vein was very rich for chalcopyrite, but its depth was problematical, and it might drop in values at any moment. If his belief in his hill was justified and there were huge primary deposits below, there would be no end to his riches; but it would take a year or more to determine that point; and meanwhile he wanted at least a million and a half, not only to meet the possible expenses of litigation, but to mine at depth and to open up his other claims in case Amalgamated, when it reached the chalcopyrite vein, claimed that it apexed in their property, got out an injunction, and forced him to cease work on it.