"I promise," answered Everett with a laugh. "I tell you what I think I
will do. As I understand it, the Briars has about three hundred acres,
all told. I have been all over it for the oil and there is none in any
paying quantities. But in this kind of formation any number of other
things may crop up or out. I am going to go over every acre of it
carefully and find exactly what can be expected of it. There may be
nothing of any value in a mineral way, but as I go I am going to make
soil tests, and then put it all down on a complete map and figure out
just what your Uncle Tucker ought to plant in each place for years to
come. It will kill a lot of time, and then it might be doing something
for you dear people, who have taken a miserable, cross invalid of a
stranger man in out of the wet and made a well chap of him again.

"Do you know what you have done for me? That day when I had tramped
over from Boliver just to get away from the Citizens' Hotel and myself
and perched upon Mr. Alloway's north lot fence like a miserable
funeral crow, I had reached my limit, and my spirit had turned its
face to the wall. I had been down South six weeks and couldn't see
that I felt one bit stronger. I had just heard of this copper
expedition from one of the chaps, who had written me a heedlessly
exultant letter about it, and I was down and out and no strength left
to fight. I was too weak to take it like a man, and couldn't make up
my mind to cry like a woman, though I wanted to. Just as it was at its
worst your Uncle Tucker appeared on the other side of the fence, and
when he looked at me with those great, heaven-big eyes of his I fell
over into his arms with a funny, help-has-come dying gasp. As you
know, when I woke I was anchored in the middle of that puffy old
four-poster in my room under the blessed roof of the Briars and you
were pouring something glorious and hot down my throat, while the
wonderful old angel-man in the big gray hat, who had got me out in the