" But many things, your majesties, are
hidden from your wisdom and your greatness, and are given to the simple
--to babes, and the mothers of babes.
It was upon this very night that Falding the Englishman sat with other
men in a London tavern, talking joyously. "There's been the luck of
Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for
months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an
island and pitched tents. Not a dozen yards from where we camped was a
rose-tree-think of it, Belgard, a rose-tree on a rag-tag island of Lake
Superior! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's
luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's
the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital of two
hundred thousand; the whole island in our hands in a week; and Antoine
squatting on it now like Bonaparte on Elbe."
"And what does Antoine get out of this?" said Belgard.
"Forty dollars a month and his keep."
"Why not write him off twenty shares to propitiate the gods--gifts unto
the needy, eh!--a thousand-fold--what?"
"Yes; it might be done, Belgard, if--"
But someone just then proposed the toast, "The Rose Tree Mine!" and the
souls of these men waxed proud and merry, for they had seen the
investor's palm filled with gold, the maker of conquest.
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