However, he got it. He bought up all the shares, and became practically owner of the new line. He completed it, and rode on the first locomotive in triumph, surrounded by his parasites. For alas! he had yielded to parasites at last, who flattered and fooled him to perfection. This was the state of affairs when the second mortal wound was given. It happened in this way. The “Life of Sternhold Baskette, Esq,” had, as was stated, got abroad, and penetrated even to the Rocky Mountains. It was quoted, and long extracts made from it in the cheap press—they had a cheap press in the United States thirty years before we had, which accounts for the larger proportion of educated or partly educated people, and the wider spread of intelligence. After a while, somehow or other, the marvellous story reached the ears of one or two persons who happened to sign their names Baskette, and they began to say to themselves, “What the deuce is this? We rather guess we come from Stirmingham or somewhere thereabouts. Now, why shouldn’t we share in this mine of wealth?” The sharp Yankee intellect began to have “idees.” Most of the cotters whom Sternhold had transhipped to America thirty years or more previous, were dead and buried—that is to say, the old people were. The air of America is too thin and fine, and the life too fast, for middle-aged men who have been accustomed to the foggy atmosphere and the slow passage of events in the Old Country. But it is a tremendous place for increase of population. The United States are only just a century old, and they have a population larger than Great Britain, which has a history of twenty centuries, or nearly so. So it happened that, although the old people were dead, the tribe had marvellously increased. Half who were transhipped had borne the name of Baskette. This same question was asked in forty or fifty places at once—“My name is Baskette; why should not I share?” These people had, of course, little or no recollection of the deed signed by their forefathers: and if they had had a perfect knowledge, such a trifling difficulty as that was not one calculated to appal a Yankee’s ingenuity. When once the question had been asked it was repeated, and grew and grew, and passed from man to man, made its appearance in the newspapers, who even went so far as to say that the finest city in England, the very workshop of the Britishers, belonged to United States citizens. Some editor keener than the rest, or who had read the book more carefully, pointed out that the capitalist had no heirs living, that he had never been married, and no one knew to whom all this vast wealth would descend. Twenty millions sterling begging a heir! This was enough to set the American mind aflame. It was just like applying a lighted match to one of their petroleum wells.