Both of the young men protested their disappointment. They had been too busy to see anything of their guest in a comradely way, and they had been looking forward to the lull in the activities which would follow the opening celebration and promising themselves a more hospitable entertainment of the man who had been both Mentor and elder brother to them in the Boston years.
"You are not regretting it half as keenly as I am," the guest assured them. "Apart from losing the chance to thresh it out with you two, I have never been on more fascinatingly interesting geological ground. I could spend an entire summer among these wonderful hills of yours without exhausting their astonishing resources."
Ballard made allowances for scholastic enthusiasm. He had slighted geology for the more strictly practical studies in his college course.
"Meaning the broken formations?" he asked.
"Meaning the general topsyturvyism of all the formations. Where you might reasonably expect to find one stratum, you find others perhaps thousands of years older—or younger—in the geological chronology. I wonder you haven't galvanised a little enthusiasm over it: you discredit your alma mater and me when you regard these marvellous hills merely as convenient buttresses for your wall of masonry. And, by the way, that reminds me: neither of you two youngsters is responsible for the foundations of that dam; isn't that the fact?"
"It is," said Bromley, answering for both. Then he added that the specifications called for bed-rock, which Fitzpatrick, who had worked under Braithwaite, said had been uncovered and properly benched for the structure.
"'Bed-rock,'" said the geologist, reflectively. "That is a workman's term, and is apt to be misleading. The vital question, under such abnormal conditions as those presenting themselves in your canyon, is, What kind of rock was it?"
Bromley shook his head. "You can't prove it by me. The foundations were all in before I came on the job. But from Fitzpatrick's description I should take it to be the close-grained limestone."
"H'm," said Gardiner. "Dam-building isn't precisely in my line; but I shouldn't care to trust anything short of the granites in such a locality as this."
"You've seen something?" queried Ballard.