FRUITION.
The syndicate that bought the "Wedge of Gold" put some of the stock on
the market. A few days later another shipment of bullion was received,
another dividend was declared, and the stock advanced to £10 per share.
The happy owners gave an entertainment in honor of the mine, and called
it "The Wedge of Gold Reception." Sedgwick and Browning with their wives
and Captain McGregor attended.
As they returned, the dawn was breaking in the East, and mighty London
with its five millions of people began to awaken. There were confused
murmurs, which swelled in volume every moment; these were interspersed
with distinct clamors, as one industry after another took up anew its
daily work. Then there was the whistle of trains; the deeper calls and
answers of boats on the river; the louder and louder hum of the awaking
millions, until with the coming of the full dawn the roar of the swelling
hosts became a full diapason.
"What a monster this great handiwork of man is, Sedgwick," said McGregor;
"I wonder if there is anything else like it in this whole world."
"I guess not," was Sedgwick's reply; "but, strangely enough, it reminds
me of something not at all like it, but which impressed me quite as much
as does this. As you say, this is man's handiwork. I saw another dawn
once which had little in it save God's handiwork.
"While mining in Virginia City, I determined one summer day to give up
work for a week and to make a visit to the high Sierras. One day's ride
takes you from the Comstock into the very fastnesses of the mountains.
There were five of us in the party. We went to Lake Tahoe, crossed the
lake, and kept on to a spring and stream of water beyond, a few miles.
We had a camping outfit, and determined to sleep in no house while
absent. We spread our beds in a little grassy glen; to the east there was
no forest, but on the north and south the trees were immense, and to the
west, a mile or two away, the mountains rose abruptly to a height which
held the snows in their arms all the summer long.
"The good-night hoot of an owl or some other sound awakened me just as
the first streaks of the dawn began to flush the face of the east.
"I sat up, and while my friends were sleeping around me, I watched
the transformation scene of that dawn. There were not many birds to
awake--our altitude was too high for them--and so the panorama moved
on almost in silence. But it was the more impressive because of its
stillness. The east grew warmer and warmer, and the solemn night began
to spread her black wings, under which she had brooded the world, in
preparation for flight. The shadows began to retreat from where they had
shrouded the nearest trees. The air grew softer; from it a noiseless
breeze just touched the great arms of the pines as though to waken them
and gave to them an almost imperceptible motion. The stars and planets
began to faint in the heavens. As the waves of light increased in the
east, the snow on the high mountains to the west took on the hue of the
opal, and when the last shadow fled away and the sun flashed gloriously
above the eastern horizon, and another day was born, I knew just how
the ancient Fire Worshipers felt when they bowed their heads in reverence
before the splendors of the rising sun."
* * * * *
It was a good while ago that the events out of which this story was woven
transpired.
Now, at different seasons of the year, these families, with two
gray-haired old ladies and a gray-haired old man with a sailor's rolling
walk, may be seen, sometimes in London, sometimes on a fair estate in
Devonshire, sometimes in a stately home in the Miami Valley, and again
down on the Brazos in Texas.
Around and among them are playing broods of little Jacks, Jims, Toms,
Roses, Graces, and Margarets, and older children are away at school. All
the children call the old ladies "Grandma" and the gray man with the
sailor's walk "Grand-uncle," and all who see them declare that no other
such a happy company can be found in all the world.
The place on the Brazos is superintended by a shrewd Irishman, while the
village physician, formerly a ship surgeon, is named Craig, and his
wife's name is Nora; and the people there say there is not in all Texas
another woman who is more of a lady or has a complexion so clear, a face
so fair, or such a wealth of hair, which in color is between flaxen and
gold.