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he mining boom was on, and Springtown, that famous Colorado health-resort and paradise of idlers, was wide awake to the situation. The few rods of sidewalk which might fairly be called "the street," was thronged all day with eager speculators. Everybody was "in it," from the pillars of society down to the slenderest reed of an errand boy who could scrape together ten dollars for a ten-cent stock. As a natural consequence real estate was, for the moment, as flat as a poor joke, and people who had put their money into town "additions" were beginning to think seriously of planting potatoes where they had once dreamed of rearing marketable dwelling-houses.

Hillerton, the oldest real-estate man in town, was one of the few among the fraternity who had not branched out into stock brokerage.