no doubt, by his predecessor.

"Now I reckon you know that I know why you came over hyeh."

Hale started to answer, but he saw it was no use.

"Yes--and I'm coming again--for the same reason."

"Shore--come agin and come often."

The little girl was standing on the porch as he rode past the milk
house. He waved his hand to her, but she did not move nor answer.
What a life for a child--for that keen-eyed, sweet-faced child!
But that coal, cannel, rich as oil, above water, five feet in
thickness, easy to mine, with a solid roof and perhaps self-
drainage, if he could judge from the dip of the vein: and a market
everywhere--England, Spain, Italy, Brazil. The coal, to be sure,
might not be persistent--thirty yards within it might change in
quality to ordinary bituminous coal, but he could settle that only
with a steam drill. A steam drill! He would as well ask for the
wagon that he had long ago hitched to a star; and then there might
be a fault in the formation. But why bother now? The coal would
stay there, and now he had other plans that made even that find
insignificant. And yet if he bought that coal now--what a bargain!
It was not that the ideals of his college days were tarnished, but
he was a man of business now, and if he would take the old man's
land for a song--it was because others of his kind would do the
same! But why bother, he asked himself again, when his brain was
in a ferment with a colossal scheme that would make dizzy the
magnates who would some day drive their roadways of steel into