At last, catching sight of the astonished faces of his
listeners, his own lighted with pleasure, as he exclaimed, joyously,—
"I wanted to test myself and see if it would come back to me, and it has! I believed it would, and it has!"
"What has come back to you?" queried Mr. Underwood, too bewildered himself to catch the drift of Darrell's meaning.
"The knowledge of all this," Darrell answered, indicating the collection with a swift gesture; "it began to come to me as soon as I saw the rocks on our way up; it confused me at first, but it is all clear now. Take me to your mill, Mr. Underwood; I want to see what I can do with the ores there."
At that moment Mr. Hathaway entered to summon the party to dinner, and seeing Darrell standing by the case, his hands filled with specimens, he said, addressing Mr. Underwood with a pleasant tone of inquiry,—
"Mr. Darrell is a mining man?"
But Mr. Underwood was still too confused to answer intelligibly, and it was Mr. Britton who replied, as he linked his arm within Darrell's on turning to leave the room,—
"Mr. Darrell is a mineralogist."
At dinner Darrell found himself too excited to eat, so overjoyed was he at the discovery of attainments he had not dreamed he possessed, and so eager to put them to every test possible.