Once more he slipped off into the forests and took unto himself
additional sections of virgin timber at inconceivably low prices.
Other men made much of the wheat-field and the town-lot, but Joseph
Hooper saw fortune in the forests. Again and again he increased his
timber land holdings. People thought he was buying up town-sites and
smiled smugly among themselves as they discussed the dreadful shock he
was to have when the time came for him to begin clearing away the
timber!
All this time he was known as Joseph H. Grimwell. There was no such
person as Joseph Hooper. That discredited individual had died, so to
speak, by the wayside, a vagabond. New York had lost track of him; his
family believed him to be dead--or in prison! It is barely possible
that he ought to have been incarcerated for some of his skilfully
manipulated enterprises, but that has nothing to do with this
narrative. It is relevant to dwell only upon the contention that
riches come swiftly to him who makes use of both hands without caring
whether the left knows what the right is doing or the other way about.
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