“If your two veins are not one and the same, they ought to be. I couldn’t sift out the slightest difference between the two specimens.”
There was some further talk about the characteristics, analytical and otherwise, of the Ocoee coal, and Wilmerding stayed long enough to see the fourth and last drill point withdrawn from the hole. The cutter, like its predecessors, was a mechanical ruin; and Wilmerding again made the proffer of the Whitlow repair-plant. Tregarvon promised to send Rucker and the burrs up from Coalville in the morning, and the young superintendent climbed upon his nag and rode away.
“Tools up, men!” Tregarvon called to the drilling squad, when Wilmerding had disappeared among the trees. “We’ll call it a day; and to-morrow you may all go on the track-repairing with Tryon.”
Rucker was busying himself about the machinery after the laborers had gone, and as yet he had said nothing about wishing to be relieved from the night-watching. But it was clear that a man who put in full time during the day could scarcely be expected to sleep with one eye open at night. Moreover, if Rucker were to start in the morning for Whitlow with the drills, it would be necessary for him to sleep at Coalville.
“What is your programme for to-night?” asked Carfax, as he walked with Tregarvon to the tool-house. “I suppose you’ll send Rucker down for the early start to Whitlow. You’ll hardly care to leave things up here without a watchman, will you?”
“Not at the present stage of the game,” was the prompt reply. “You may go down in the car with Rucker, and I’ll stay here for the night. I’d like to see some of these queer happenings for myself.”
“I can beat that plan,” Carfax put in. “You’ve forgotten that we have an invitation to Highmount for dinner this evening. Mrs. Caswell gave it, and I accepted for both of us. We’ll go down and dress, and come back in the car, leaving Rucker to stand watch here while we do the social act. Later, Rucker can come for us, trundling us over here, first, and himself and the drills to Coalville afterward. How will that answer?”
Tregarvon demurred upon two counts. “You mean that you’ll sit up with me? You don’t have to play night-watchman to this sick project of mine, Poictiers. Besides, I don’t care to go to the Highmount faculty dinner. More than that, you ought to be the last man in the world to put me in for it. I’ve already wasted too much time in that way, and you know it.”
“In the present instance I’ve promised for you, and I guess you’ll have to go,” said Carfax quietly. “And as for my sitting up with you afterward, that’s a part of the game. I’m immensely interested in skulls and things.”
And thus, without further argument, it was decided.