For many years the old squire had lived upon less than half his income; the remainder he had invested and speculated with, and as often happens to the miser, the luck of Midas had fallen upon him.
Everything he touched had turned to gold. The most unlikely speculations had proved successful; properties which he had bought for a mere song, and which had been regarded by the most wary as dangerous and profitless, had become profitable and valuable.
Some of these risky speculations he had, not unnaturally, kept concealed from the prudent Hudsley, who only now, by the discovery of scrip and bonds in out-of-the-way desks and bureaus, learned what kind of man his old friend had really been.
Not a day passed but it brought to light some addition to the old man's gains, and served to swell the immense total.
Even the lands round Hurst had been manipulated by the old man, so that leases ran out almost at his death, and rents were raised.
One speculation will serve as an instance; he had purchased, some fifteen years before his death, the freehold of an estate bordering upon London; and in a locality which was then regarded as hopelessly unfashionable. A great capitalist had ruined himself by building large houses on the property, foreseeing that at some time or other the tide of the great city would reach this hitherto high and dry spot. But he had made a miscalculation, and he died before the tide which was to bring him wealth reached his property; old Ralph had then stepped in and bought it--houses, land, everything. In ten years' time the tide of fashion rolled that way, and now what had once been a neglected and forgotten quarter was the center of fashionable London.
It reads like a romance, but like many other romances, it was true.
Old Ralph himself had no idea of his own wealth, and that when he died he should leave behind him one of the most colossal fortunes in England.
Almost stunned by the immense total--so far as it had been arrived at--Stephen went about the place silent and overwhelmed.
But one thought was always ringing like a bell in his brain--"And I had nearly lost all this!"
Sometimes, in the quiet of the library, where he sat surrounded by books and papers, by accountants' statements and estimates, he would grow pale and tremble as he reflected by what a narrow chance he had secured this Midas-like wealth.