University of Virginia Library

49. CHAPTER XLIX.

“We've struck it!”

This was the electric announcement at the tent door
that woke Philip out of a sound sleep at dead of night, and
shook all the sleepiness out of him in a trice.

“What! Where is it? When? Coal? Let me see it.
What quality is it?” were some of the rapid questions that
Philip poured out as he hurriedly dressed. “Hary, wake
up, my boy. The coal train is coming. Struck it, eh? Let's
see?”

The foreman put down his lantern, and handed Philip a
black lump. There was no mistake about it, it was the hard,
shining anthracite, and its freshly fractured surface, glistened
in the light like polished steel. Diamond never shone with
such lustre in the eyes of Philip.

Harry was exuberaut, but Philip's natural caution found
expression in his next remark.

“Now, Roberts, you are sure about this?”

“What—sure that it's coal?”

“O, no, sure that it's the main vein.”

“Well, yes. We took it to be that.”

[ILLUSTRATION]

"WE'VE STRUCK IT."

[Description: 499EAF. Page 444. In-line image of three men together, one is holding a latern, the other is putting on his shoes.]

“Did you from the first?”

“I can't say we did at first. No, we didn't. Most of the
indications were there, but not all of them, not all of them.
So we thought we'd prospect a bit.”

“Well?”

“It was tolerable thick, and looked as if it might be the
vein—looked as if it ought to be the vein. Then we went down
on it a little. Looked better all the time.”

“When did you strike it?”

“About ten o'clock.”

“Then you've been prospecting about four hours.”

“Yes, been sinking on it something over four hours.”

“I'm afraid you couldn't go down very far in four hours
—could you?”

“O yes—it's a good deal broke up, nothing but picking and
gadding stuff.”

“Well, it does look encouraging, sure enough—but then
the lacking indications—”

“I'd rather we had them, Mr. Sterling, but I've seen more
than one good permanent mine struck without 'em in my
time.”

“Well, that is encouraging too.”

“Yes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black
Mohawk—all good, sound mines, you know—all just exactly
like this one when we first struck them.”

“Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy. I guess we've
really got it. I remember hearing them tell about the Black
Mohawk.”

“I'm free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so
too. They are all old hands at this business.”

“Come Harry, let's go up and look at it, just for the comfort
of it,” said Philip. They came back in the course of an
hour, satisfied and happy.

There was no more sleep for them that night. They lit
their pipes, put a specimen of the coal on the table, and made
it a kind of loadstone of thought and conversation.

“Of course,” said Harry, “there will have to be a branch
track built, and a `switch-back' up the hill.”

“Yes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for
that now. We could sell out to-morrow for a handsome sum.
That sort of coal doesn't go begging within a mile of a rail-road.
I wonder if Mr. Bolton would rather sell out or work it?”

“Oh, work it,” says Harry, “probably the whole mountain
is coal now you've got to it.”

“Possibly it might not be much of a vein after all,” suggested
Philip.

“Possibly it is; I'll bet it's forty feet thick. I told you. I
knew the sort of thing as soon as I put my eyes on it.”

Philip's next thought was to write to his friends and announce
their good fortune. To Mr. Bolton he wrote a short,
business letter, as calm as he could make it. They had found
coal of excellent quality, but they could not yet tell with absolute
certainty what the vein was. The prospecting was still
going on. Philip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter
may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning

anthracite. He needed no artificial heat to warm his pen
and kindle his ardor when he sat down to write to Ruth. But
it must be confessed that the words never flowed so easily
before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the extravagance
of his imagination. When Ruth read it, she
doubted if the fellow had not gone out of his senses. And it
was not until she reached the postscript that she discovered
the cause of the exhilaration. “P. S.—We have found
coal.”

The news couldn't have come to Mr. Bolton in better time.
He had never been so sorely pressed. A dozen schemes which
he had in hand, any one of which might turn up a fortune,
all languished, and each needed just a little more money to
save that which had been invested. He hadn't a piece of
real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the
wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had
no marketable value above the incumbrance on it.

He had come home that day early, unusually dejected.

“I am afraid,” he said to his wife, “that we shall have to
give up our house. I don't care for myself, but for thee and
the children.”

“That will be the least of misfortunes,” said Mrs. Bolton,
cheerfully, “if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety,
which is wearing thee out, we can live any where. Thee
knows we were never happier than when we were in a much
humbler home.”

“The truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's
has come on me just when I couldn't stand another ounce.
They have made another failure of it. I might have known
they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I don't know which,
have contrived to involve me for three times as much as the
first obligation. The security is in my hands, but it is good
for nothing to me. I have not the money to do anything
with the contract.”

Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise. She
had long felt that they were living on a volcano, that might
go in to active operation at any hour. Inheriting from her

father an active brain and the courage to undertake new
things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which
blinds one to difficulties and possible failures. She had little
confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift
her father out of all his embarassments and into great wealth,
ever since she was a child; as she grew older, she
rather wondered that they were as prosperous as they
seemed to be, and that they did not all go to smash amid so
many brilliant projects. She was nothing but a woman, and
did not know how much of the business prosperity of the
world is only a bubble of credit and speculation, one scheme
helping to float another which is no better than it, and the
whole liable to come to naught and confusion as soon as the
busy brain that conceived them ceases its power to devise, or
when some accident produces a sudden panic.

“Perhaps, I shall be the stay of the family, yet,” said Ruth,
with an approach to gaiety. “When we move into a little
house in town, will thee let me put a little sign on the door—
Dr. Ruth Bolton? Mrs. Dr. Longstreet, thee knows, has a
great income.”

“Who will pay for the sign, Ruth?” asked Mr. Bolton.

A servant entered with the afternoon mail from the office.
Mr. Bolton took his letters listlessly, dreading to open them.
He knew well what they contained, new difficulties, more
urgent demands for money.

“Oh, here is one from Philip. Poor fellow. I shall feel
his disappointment as much as my own bad luck. It is hard
to bear when one is young.”

He opened the letter and read. As he read his face lightened,
and he fetched such a sigh of relief, that Mrs. Bolton
and Ruth both exclaimed.

“Read that,” he cried, “Philip has found coal!”

The world was changed in a moment. One little sentence
had done it. There was no more trouble. Philip had found
coal. That meant relief. That meant fortune. A great
weight was taken off, and the spirits of the whole household
rose magically. Good Money! beautiful demon of Money,

what an enchanter thou art! Ruth felt that she was of less
consequence in the household, now that Philip had found
coal, and perhaps she was not sorry to feel so.

Mr. Bolton was ten years younger the next morning. He
went into the city, and showed his letter on change. It
was the sort of news his friends were quite willing to listen
to. They took a new interest in him. If it was confirmed,
Bolton would come right up again. There would be no difficulty
about his getting all the money he wanted. The
money market did not seem to be half so tight as it was the day
before. Mr. Bolton spent a very pleasant day in his office,
and went home revolving some new plans, and the execution
of some projects he had long been prevented from entering
upon by the lack of money.

The day had been spent by Philip in no less excitement.
By daylight, with Philip's letters to the mail, word had gone
down to Ilium that coal had been found, and very early a
crowd of eager spectators had come up to see for themselves.

The “prospecting” continued day and night for upwards
of a week, and during the first four or five days the indications
grew more and more promising, and the telegrams and letters
kept Mr. Bolton duly posted. But at last a change came,
and the promises began to fail with alarming rapidity. In
the end it was demonstrated without the possibility of a doubt
that the great “find” was nothing but a worthless seam.

Philip was cast down, all the more so because he had been
so foolish as to send the news to Philadelphia before he
knew what he was writing about. And now he must contradict
it. “It turns out to be only a mere seam,” he wrote, “but
we look upon it as an indication of better further in.”

Alas! Mr. Bolton's affairs could not wait for “indications.”
The future might have a great deal in store, but the present
was black and hopeless. It was doubtful if any sacrifice
could save him from ruin. Yet sacrifice he must make, and
that instantly, in the hope of saving something from the
wreck of his fortune.

His lovely country home must go. That would bring the
most ready money. The house that he had built with loving
thought for each one of his family, as he planned its luxurious
apartments and adorned it; the grounds that he had laid
out, with so much delight in following the tastes of his wife,
with whom the country, the cultivation of rare trees and
flowers, the care of garden and lawn and conservatories were
a passion almost; this home, which he had hoped his children
would enjoy long after he had done with it, must go.

The family bore the sacrifice better than he did. They
declared in fact—women are such hypocrites—that they quite
enjoyed the city (it was in August) after living so long in the
country, that it was a thousand times more convenient in
every respect; Mrs. Bolton said it was a relief from the
worry of a large establishment, and Ruth reminded her father
that she should have had to come to town anyway before
long.

Mr. Bolton was relieved, exactly as a water-logged ship is

lightened by throwing overboard the most valuable portion
of the cargo—but the leak was not stopped. Indeed his credit
was injured instead of helped by the prudent step he had
taken. It was regarded as a sure evidence of his embarrassment,
and it was much more difficult for him to obtain help
than if he had, instead of retrenching, launched into some
new speculation.

Philip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share
in the bringing about of the calamity.

“You must not look at it so!” Mr. Bolton wrote him. “You
have neither helped nor hindered—but you know you may
help by and by. It would have all happened just so, if we
had never begun to dig that hole. That is only a drop.
Work away. I still have hope that something will occur to
relieve me. At any rate we must not give up the mine, so
long as we have any show.”

Alas! the relief did not come. New misfortunes came instead.
When the extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed
there was no more hope that Mr. Bolton could extricate himself,
and he had, as an honest man, no resource except to surrender
all his property for the benefit of his creditors.

The Antumn came and found Philip working with diminished
force but still with hope. He had again and again been
encouraged by good “indications,” but he had again and
again been disappointed. He could not go on much longer,
and almost everybody except himself had thought it was
useless to go on as long as he had been doing.

When the news came of Mr. Bolton's failure, of course the
work stopped. The men were discharged, the tools were
housed, the hopeful noise of pickman and driver ceased, and
the mining camp had that desolate and mournful aspect
which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise.

Philip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he
were buried in them. How distant Ruth was now from him,
now, when she might need him most. How changed was all
the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for the exemplification
of happiness and prosperity.

He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain.
He made a picture of himself living there a hermit in a
shanty by the tunnel, digging away with solitary pick and
wheelbarrow, day after day and year after year, until he grew
gray and aged, and was known in all that region as the old
man of the mountain. Perhaps some day—he felt it must be
so some day—he should strike coal. But what if he did?
Who would be alive to care for it then? What would he care
for it then? No, a man wants riches in his youth, when the
world is fresh to him. He wondered why Providence could
not have reversed the usual process, and let the majority of
men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor
when they no longer needed it.

Harry went back to the city. It was evident that his services
were no longer needed. Indeed, he had letters from his
uncle, which he did not read to Philip, desiring him to go to San
Francisco to look after some government contracts in the
harbor there.

Philip had to look about him for something to do; he was
like Adam; the world was all before him where to choose. He
made, before he went elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to
Philadelphia, painful but yet not without its sweetnesses.
The family had never shown him so much affection before;

they all seemed to think his disappointment of more importance
than their own misfortune. And there was that in
Ruth's manner—in what she gave him and what she withheld
—that would have made a hero of a very much less promising
character than Philip Sterling.

Among the assets of the Bolton property, the Ilium tract
was sold, and Philip bought it in at the vendue, for a song,
for no one cared to even undertake the mortgage on it except
himself. He went away the owner of it, and had ample
time before he reached home in November, to calculate how
much poorer he was by possessing it.