His mood was unusually black when he entered the house. The servant, who came forward to help him off with his coat, knew it the moment he saw the heavy, scowling face. The piece of intelligence the man had to convey--that Mr. Gene Cannon had arrived half an hour earlier from San Luis Obispo--was not calculated to abate the Bonanza King’s irritation. He received it with the expressionless grunt he reserved for displeasing information, and, without further comment or inquiry, went up the stairs to his own rooms. From these he did not emerge till dinner was announced, when he greeted Gene with a bovine glance of inspection and the briefest sentence of welcome. Gene, however, was not at all abashed by any lack of cordiality. At the best of times, he was not a sensitive person, and as this had been his portion since his early manhood, he was now used to it. Moreover, to-night he was in high spirits. In his year of exile he had learned to love the outdoor life for which he was fitted, and had conceived a passionate desire to own the splendid tract of land for which he felt the love and pride of a proprietor. Now it was his without let or hindrance. He was the owner of a principality, the lord of thousands of teeming acres, watered by crystal streams and shadowed by ancient oaks. He glowed with the joy of possession, and if anything was needed to complete his father’s discomfiture, it was Gene’s naïve and bridling triumph. Always a loquacious person, a stream of talk flowed from him to which the old man offered no interruption, and in which even Rose found it difficult to insert an occasional, arresting question. Gene had any number of new plans. His head was fuller than it had been for years with ideas for the improvement of his land, the development of his irrigating system, the planting of new orchards, the erecting of necessary buildings. He used the possessive pronoun continually, rolled it unctuously on his tongue with a new, rich delight. He directed most of his conversation toward Rose, but every now and then he turned on his father, enthusiastically dilating on a projected improvement certain to increase the ranch’s revenues by many thousands per annum. The old man listened without speaking, his chin on his collar, his eyes fixed in a wide, dull stare on his happy boy. At intervals--Gene almost clamoring for a response--he emitted one of those inarticulate sounds with which it was his custom to greet information that he did not like or the exact purport of which he did not fathom.