Chad was waiting on the flagstones surrounded by some stray pickaninnies when the procession stopped, and assisted the major to alight, with as much form and ceremony as if he had been the best mounted gentleman in the land. The saddleless fragment was then led to a supporting fence. The judicial equipage was accorded the luxury of a shed, where the annual contract was served with a full measure of oats—Chad's recognition of his more exalted station.
The judge bowed gracefully and with great dignity, and with the air of a chief justice entering the court room; then preceding the colonel and his guests,—without a word having fallen from his lips,—he entered a small room opening into the parlor. There he placed upon a chair certain mysterious-looking packages, long and otherwise, one a tin case, which he uncapped, spreading its contents upon a table.
It proved to be another and larger map than the one Chad had pored over, and showed distinctly the boundary lines between two dots marked "Oak" and "Rock" dividing the Carter and Barbour estates.
Up to this time Fitz and the agent had preserved the outward appearance of two idle gentlemen visiting a friend in the country, with no interest beyond the fresh air and the environments of a charming hospitality. With the unrolling of this map, however, and the discovery of the very boundary points insisted on by Chad in Bedford Place, their excitement could hardly be suppressed. The agent broke loose first.
"Before we find out, Colonel Carter, to whom this coal belongs, which may take some valuable time, I want to examine the quality of the vein itself. I would like to go now."
"By all means, suh; and my people shall go with us," said the colonel, turning to Kerfoot with instructions to bring Chad and all the maps later.—Yancey excused himself on the ground of the heat. Then donning a wide straw hat and picking up a cane,—something he never used in New York,—the colonel led the way through the rear door, across a stone wall, and up a hill covered with a second growth of timber.
The experienced eye of the Englishman took in the lay of the land at a glance, and beckoning Fitz to one side he stooped and picked something from the ground which he examined carefully with a magnifying glass. Then they both disappeared hurriedly over the hill.
When they returned, half an hour later, the perspiration was rolling from the agent, and Fitz's eyes were blazing. Both were loaded down with bundles of broken bits of rock, tied up in their several handkerchiefs, large enough to start a geological collection in a country museum.
"What is it, Fitz—diamonds?" I said, laughing.
"Yes; black ones at that." He was almost breathless. "Solid bed of bituminous! Clear down to China! Don't breathe a word yet, for your life!"