Twenty years ago it was the ambition of every Californian, no matter how blatant his state pride, to move to New York. Today he hopes to live and die in California, the main reason being that the women of his family find themselves members of a comparatively old and settled community, enjoying many advantages and no little importance; given frequent trips abroad they are content to remain at home in houses of modern architecture, and to command a social position that New York has granted to only two or three of California’s heiresses and millionaires. Montanans, at present, those that are rich or merely independent, are in the migratory phase of the earlier Californian; but as New York has extended to them an even more grudging welcome than it did to aspirants from the more picturesque state, they visit it, after successive social disappointments, merely for its dressmakers and those exterior advantages that may be exchanged for gold; the majority migrate to “The Coast,” more particularly to Southern California. There they not only find relief on the sea-level from an altitude that plays havoc with the nerves, but, in the mushroom Southern cities, social position may be had for the asking, and every advantage for growing children. Gregory had heard of a man named Griffiths, owner of the Circle-G Ranch, a tract of land covering seventy-five thousand acres, who was anxious to sell and move to Los Angeles. As the ranch was practically waterless and thirty miles from a railroad, his only chance of disposing of it was by means of an alluring bargain. He was willing to sell the ranch, his large herds of horses and cattle, and bands of sheep for half a million dollars. Gregory returned to Butte without the engineer, went directly to Blake’s office, and laid his programme before his astounded friend and legal adviser. He had found Griffiths a man unaccustomed to business but with his mind set upon retiring with a capital of half a million dollars. His efforts in money-making hitherto, had been confined to acquiring rather than disposing of property, and his trading consisted of converting live stock into such cash as was necessary for the purchase of necessities not raised on his property. But he was nearly sixty, his wife and four daughters had besought him for years to sell out and take them to California, and he was now persuaded that he was as tired of life in the wilds of Montana as they were. He was, however, possessed of one fixed idea, to leave each of his “women folks” a hundred thousand dollars when he died. Therefore would he not take a cent less than five times that amount for his fine property; but although he inserted the advertisement that had caught Gregory’s eye, so far he had been unsuccessful. One man found the ranch too far from a railroad, another no good for farming, save intensive, as it was without a water supply; still another was willing to pay only a third of the amount down, with easy terms for the remainder.