Beyond it, stretches of rolling country ran back league after league into the vast blue distance where Vermont lay.

Still, Weston, who was jaded and cast down, frowned at the city and felt that he had a grievance against it.

During the last week or two he had, for the most part vainly, endeavored to interview men of importance connected with finance and company promoting.

Very few of them would see him at all, and those with whom he gained audience listened to what he had to say with open impatience, or with a half-amused toleration that was almost as difficult to bear.

Perhaps this was not astonishing, as most of them already had had somewhat costly experiences with what they called wild-cat mining schemes.
There was, however, a certain vein of dogged persistency in Clarence Weston; and, almost intolerably galling as he-found it, he would still have continued to obtrude his presence on gentlemen who had no desire whatever to be favored with it, and to waylay them in the hotels, but for the fact that the little money he had brought with him was rapidly running out.