Jess asked a good many other questions which, with their answers, not being pertinent to the thread of this narrative, need not be quoted. When Winn left him that night, after he had gone over in detail all he knew regarding Weston & Hill and their business, it was with the feeling that he had conquered Rockhaven and its oracle without an effort. He little realized that a far more subtile influence than dividends had interested Jess Hutton, and a desire to conserve matters to the end that Mona might be made the happier, was the motive force that governed him. "I've noticed," he said a little later to Mrs. Hutton, "that this young man sorter takes to Mona n' she kinder cottons to him. I think it 'ud be a good idee if ye'd jest caution her not to be free with him 'n' kinder hold herself off as it were. These city chaps have a winnin' way with 'em to a gal, n' I'd hate to see her git a heartache out on't." He did not tell Mrs. Hutton he had bought five hundred shares of Rockhaven stock and insisted that Winn also keep the matter a secret. A week later Winn received the following missive from Jack Nickerson, only a portion of which it is necessary to quote. "... I hear," he wrote, "that you have captured an island and are sending it here in shiploads according to the _Market News_ (two clippings of which I enclose). They show the fine Italian hand of Weston or Simmons. I hope you are enjoying yourself and drawing your per annum with promptness and regularity. The street is growing curious as to what deep-laid scheme Weston & Hill are preparing to spring upon it, and Rockhaven stock is not as yet selling to any extent. I saw the gay and festive Weston out driving yesterday and Simmons was with him. They are a pair that will bear watching. I hope they won't play you for a tenderfoot in this new deal. Last week I took a run up to the mountain where Ethel Sherman and her mother are spending the summer. Ethel was, as might be expected, deep in a flirtation with a young idiot in golf clothes and hardly noticed me. Incidentally I heard that he was possible heir to millions." "What an inveterate scoffer Jack is," was Winn's mental comment on this missive. "He sees no good motive in any one;" and then he re-read the long and flowery letter from Weston received the same time and congratulating him on his excellent work. Also notifying him they had as usual anticipated his pay-roll and expressed sufficient currency to meet it. And of the two letters the one from Weston seemed to him just then to be honest and business-like, and Jack's as but the sneering of a confirmed cynic. "They wouldn't be putting good money into this quarry if they did not see a safe and sure return," he thought, and then he took Ethel Sherman's letter that had been lying for weeks unanswered on his table and tore it into shreds.