So he went, disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and unable to travel--and meantime listening to the dispatches as they passed clicking through the machine from Virginia.

Finally the private dispatch announcing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon as he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco: "Am tired waiting.

Shall sell the team and go home." It was the signal agreed upon.

The word "waiting" left out, would have signified that the suit had gone the other way.
The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at low figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result.
For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had been incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the hands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers.

The stock became very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but he had disappeared.