at for more than two hours; he swabbed it out, and poured in the powder
and inserted the fuse; then filled up the rest of the hole with dirt and
small fragments of stone; tamped it down firmly, touched his candle to
the fuse, and ran. By and by the I dull report came, and he was about to
walk back mechanically and see what was accomplished; but he halted;
presently turned on his heel and thought, rather than said:
“No, this is useless, this is absurd. If I found anything it would only
be one of those little aggravating seams of coal which doesn’t mean
anything, and–”
By this time he was walking out of the tunnel. His thought ran on:
“I am conquered . . . . . . I am out of provisions, out of money.
. . . . I have got to give it up . . . . . . All this hard work
lost! But I am not conquered! I will go and work for money, and come
back and have another fight with fate. Ah me, it may be years, it may,
be years.”
Arrived at the mouth of the tunnel, he threw his coat upon the ground,
sat down on, a stone, and his eye sought the westering sun and dwelt upon
the charming landscape which stretched its woody ridges, wave upon wave,
to the golden horizon.
Something was taking place at his feet which did not attract his
attention.
His reverie continued, and its burden grew more and more gloomy.
Presently he rose up and, cast a look far away toward the valley, and his
thoughts took a new direction:
“There it is! How good it looks! But down there is not up here. Well,
I will go home and pack up–there is nothing else to do”
He moved off moodily toward his cabin. He had gone some distance before
he thought of his coat; then he was about to turn back, but he smiled at
the thought, and continued his journey–such a coat as that could be of
little use in a civilized land; a little further on, he remembered that
there were some papers of value in one of the pockets of the relic, and
then with a penitent ejaculation he turned back picked up the coat and
put it on.
He made a dozen steps, and then stopped very suddenly. He stood still a
moment, as one who is trying to believe something and cannot. He put a
hand up over his shoulder and felt his back, and a great thrill shot
through him. He grasped the skirt of the coat impulsively and another
thrill followed. He snatched the coat from his back, glanced at it,
threw it from him and flew back to the tunnel. He sought the spot where
the coat had lain–he had to look close, for the light was waning–then
to make sure, he put his hand to the ground and a little stream of water
swept against his fingers:
“Thank God, I’ve struck it at last!”
He lit a candle and ran into the tunnel; he picked up a piece of rubbish
cast out by the last blast, and said:
“This clayey stuff is what I’ve longed for–I know what is behind it.”
He swung his pick with hearty good will till long after the darkness had
gathered upon the earth, and when he trudged home at length he knew he
had a coal vein and that it was seven feet thick from wall to wall.
He found a yellow envelope lying on his rickety table, and recognized
that it was of a family sacred to the transmission of telegrams.
He opened it, read it, crushed it in his hand and threw it down. It
simply said:
“Ruth is very ill.”
CHAPTER LXIII.
It was evening when Philip took the cars at the Ilium station. The news
of, his success had preceded him, and while he waited for the train, he
was the center of a group of eager questioners, who asked him a hundred
things about the mine, and magnified his good fortune. There was no
mistake this time.
Philip, in luck, had become suddenly a person of consideration, whose