University of Virginia Library

62. 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 than!”

Three or four times 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 was now but one chance of finding coal against
nine hundred and ninety nine that he would not find it, and
so it would be wrong in him to make the request and foolish
in Mr. Montague to grant it.

He had been working three shifts of men. Finally, the
settling of a weekly account exhausted his means. He could

[ILLUSTRATION]

A PARTING BLAST OFFERED.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 562. In-line image of a group of men gathered around a barrell talking.] not afford to run in debt, and therefore he gave the men their
discharge. They came into his cabin presently, where he sat
with his elbows on his kness and his chin in his hands, the
picture of discouragement and their spokesman said:

“Mr. Sterling, when Tim was down a week with his fall
you kept him on half wages and it was a mighty help to his
family; whenever any of us was in trouble you've done
what you could to help us out; you've acted fair and square
with us every time, and I reckon we are men and know a
man when we see him. We haven't got any faith in that
hill, but we have a respect for a man that's got the pluck
that you've showed; youv'e fought a good fight, with everybody
agin you and if we had grub to go on, I'm d—d if we
wouldn't stand by you till the cows come home! That is
what the boys say. Now we want to put in one parting blast
for luck. We want to work three days more; if we don't find
anything, we won't bring in no bill against you. That is
what we've come to say.”

Philip was touched. If he had had money enough to buy
three days' “grub” he would have accepted the generous offer,

but as it was, he could not consent to be less magnanimous
than the men, and so he declined in a manly speech, shook
hands all around and resumed his solitary communings.
The men went back to the tunnel and “put in a parting
blast for luck” anyhow. They did a full day's work and
then took their leave. They called at his cabin and gave
him good-bye, but were not able to tell him their day's effort
had given things a more promising look.

The next day Philip sold all the tools but two or three sets;
he also sold one of the now deserted cabins as old lumber,
together with its domestic wares, and made up his mind that
he would buy provisions with the trifle of money thus gained
and continue his work alone. About the middle of the afternoon
he put on his roughest clothes and went to the tunnel.
He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard
the sound of a pick or a drill, and wondered what it meant.
A spark of light now appeared in the far end of the tunnel,
and when he arrived there he found the man Tim at work.
Tim said:

“I'm to have a job in the Golden Brier mine by and by—
in a week or ten days—and I'm going to work here till then.
A man might as well be at some thing, and besides I consider
that I owe you what you paid me when I was laid up.”

Philip said, Oh, no, he didn't owe anything; but Tim
persisted, and then Philip said he had a little provision, now,
and would share. So for several days Philip held the drill and
Tim did the striking. At first Philip was impatient to see
the result of every blast, and was always back and peering
among the smoke the moment after the explosion. But
there was never any encouraging result; and therefore he
finally lost almost all interest, and hardly troubled himself
to inspect results at all. He simply labored on, stubbornly
and with little hope.

Tim staid with him till the last moment, and then took up
his job at the Golden Brier, apparently as depressed by the
continued barrenness of their mutual labors as Philip was

himself. After that, Philip fought his battle alone, day after
day, and slow work it was; he could scarcely see that he made
any progress.

Late one afternoon he finished drilling a hole which he had
been at work 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 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 petulant 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 envelop 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.”