"Soft, suh, and fairly good coal, I understand, although I have never
used it, suh; my ancestors always burned wood."

Fitz heard the statement in undisguised wonder. In all his intercourse
with the colonel he had never before known him to depart so much as
a razor's edge from the truth.

The fat man communed with himself a moment, and then said suddenly,
"I'll take the papers and give you an answer in a week," and hurried
away.

"Do you really mean, Colonel," said Fitz, determined to pin him down,
"that there is a single pound of coal in Cartersville?"

"Do I mean it, Fitz? Don't it crop out in half a dozen spots right on
our own place? One haalf of my estate, suh, is a coal-field."

"You never told me a word about it."

"I don't know that I did, Fitz. But it has never been of any use to
me. Besides, suh, we have plenty of wood. We never burn coal at Caarter
Hall."

Fitz did not take that view of it. He went into an exhaustive
cross-examination of the colonel on the coal question: who had tested
it, the character of the soil, width of the vein, and dip of the land.
This information he carefully recorded in a small book which he took
from his inside pocket.