Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/214

202 The one diversion of the colonel's life was the society of his fellow-boarders. Though he abused them roundly up-stairs to Viola, he took undoubted satisfaction in regaling them with the stories of his past greatness. Night after night he bestrode his hobby, and entertained an admiring circle with its evolutions. It was many years since he had had so large and so attentive an audience, and he profited by the occasion, giving even more remarkable accounts of the men he had made than those with which he had once amused John Gault.

For some time his listeners awarded him a half-credulous attention; but soon their interest in the garrulous old man died away. Miss Mercer expressed the opinion that the colonel was "no better than an old, worn-out fake," a sentiment which found an echo in the breasts of every other inmate of the house—even Mrs. Seymour quietly, in her own mind, relegating him to the ranks of harmless frauds. The traditions of San Francisco were not known of all men in Sacramento. The colonel found that he was singing the songs of Zion in a strange land. No one believed him. When he spoke of his friendship with Adolphus Maroney, and how thirty years before he had laid the foundation of Jerry McCormick's fortune, the listeners made little attempt to hide their disbelief, and Mr. Betts and Charley Ryan took much delight