Tregarvon still felt the presence of a reservation; of many of them; but he was too weak to fight for the clearer explication.
“How is Hartridge getting along?” he asked, sinking back upon the pillows.
“Rather slowly. It was a bad fracture. But the doctor says he won’t be a cripple.”
“That’s good. I want him to get well so that I can drag him into court. He set the leaf fire that blew us up. Did you know that?”
The golden youth nodded gravely. “I know a good many things that I didn’t know before you got your knockout.”
“Bring me down to date,” said the sick man impatiently. “What have you done about the mine?”
Carfax seemed to welcome the change to the more material field.
“Any number of things,” he answered cheerfully. “In the first place we—the judge and I—swore everybody to secrecy on that Monday night of smashing catastrophes, and the secret has been kept from the world at large, and from Consolidated Coal in particular. The wrecked drilling plant has been left just as it was; your laboring force has been discharged; and the impression has been given that if you ever recovered your wits, you’d go straight away back to Philadelphia, a sadder and much wiser young man.”
“Fine!” approved the listener. “But that isn’t all?”
“Not by a jugful. Two days after you were hurt, Wilmerding resigned from the C. C. & I. service and disappeared. He has been North buying machinery and material and shipping it in as far as Hesterville by littles. The explanation given and accepted is that a new company has been formed to develop some coal lands in the Hesterville vicinity, and the C. C. & I. people are running around in circles and uttering loud cries in their effort to find out where the lands are and who is going to develop them.”