thirty,” he said to himself. “Fifty left . . . . . . It is enough
to get me home . . . .. . . Shall I do it, or shall I not? . . .
. . . . I wish I had somebody to decide for me.”
The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise’s small letter in view.
His eye fell upon that, and it decided him.
“It shall go for taxes,” he said, “and never tempt me or mine any more!”
He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax bill to bits and
watching the breeze waft them away, till all were gone.
“The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!” he said. “Let us
go.”
The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the two friends were
mounted upon their luggage in it, and rattling off toward the station,
the Colonel endeavoring to sing “Homeward Bound,” a song whose words he
knew, but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors.
CHAPTER LXII
Philip Sterling’s circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect
was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell
upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable
fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now.
That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was
considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according to all his
calculations) if there were a coal vein there; and so, every foot that
the tunnel now progressed seemed to carry it further away from the object
of the search.
Sometimes he ventured to hope that he had made a mistake in estimating
the direction which the vein should naturally take after crossing the
valley and entering the hill. Upon such occasions he would go into the
nearest mine on the vein he was hunting for, and once more get the
bearings of the deposit and mark out its probable course; but the result
was the same every time; his tunnel had manifestly pierced beyond the
natural point of junction; and then his, spirits fell a little lower.
His men had already lost faith, and he often overheard them saying it was
perfectly plain that there was no coal in the hill.
Foremen and laborers from neighboring mines, and no end of experienced
loafers from the village, visited the tunnel from time to time, and their
verdicts were always the same and always disheartening–“No coal in that
hill.” Now and then Philip would sit down and think it all over and
wonder what the mystery meant; then he would go into the tunnel and ask
the men if there were no signs yet? None–always “none.”
He would bring out a piece of rock and examine it, and say to himself,
“It is limestone–it has crinoids and corals in it–the rock is right”
Then he would throw it down with a sigh, and say, “But that is nothing;
where coal is, limestone with these fossils in it is pretty certain to
lie against its foot casing; but it does not necessarily follow that
where this peculiar rock is coal must lie above it or beyond it; this
sign is not sufficient.”
The thought usually followed:–“There is one infallible sign–if I could
only strike that!”
Three or four tines in as many weeks he said to himself, “Am I a
visionary? I must be a visionary; everybody is in these days; everybody
chases butterflies: everybody seeks sudden fortune and will not lay one
up by slow toil. This is not right, I will discharge the men and go at
some honest work. There is no coal here. What a fool I have been; I
will give it up.”
But he never could do it. A half hour of profound thinking always
followed; and at the end of it he was sure to get up and straighten
himself and say: “There is coal there; I will not give it up; and coal
or no coal I will drive the tunnel clear through the hill; I will not
surrender while I am alive.”
He never thought of asking Mr. Montague for more money. He said there