Somehow, although Jack was Tom's elder brother, the Doctor and indeed the whole company had learned to think of Tom as essentially the head of his family. Curiously enough his mother and the other boys themselves had learned to regard Tom in precisely the same way.
"But Doctor," said Tom, eager to divert the conversation, "why were you in such a hurry to put out the fire here that night when we first discovered the coal? Would it have burned any considerable way into the vein?"
"I can best answer you, Tom, by telling you that about fifteen or twenty miles back of Mauch Chunk, in Pennsylvania, there is a bed of coal that has been burning for about half a century. Everything that human ingenuity could do to put it out has been done, but all to no avail. The whole mountain is slowly burning away, and when one walks about on the crust he is liable at any moment to have a foot sink into the fire below. So you see why I didn't want our mine to begin its career by getting afire."
The next thing on the day's program was work upon the second truss for supporting the mine roof, and this was got into place before midday, so that the afternoon was given to vigorous digging into the coal bank. About five o'clock the Doctor called out:
"You needn't dig any further, boys, we've got it safe enough!" Then he began singing "Old King Coal," as he hugged some specimens of the coal he had dug out of the extreme end of their little shaft to his bosom.
"Got what?" asked Tom, who watched the Doctor's antics with eager interest.
"Why, we've got what we've been looking for, coal equal to the very best that was ever mined in Virginia or West Virginia. I was sure I could not be mistaken. Now I know." And with that the Doctor danced and sang again.
"Now," he said, "you boys come here. I want to talk with you. I'm going down to the station to-morrow to see my father. I propose, if you approve the plan, to have him come up here to inspect our find. Then I'm going to get him and my brothers and their financial associates to make a plan for capitalizing and working the mine. When their plan is made, you, Tom, and I will go to your mother and see what she thinks of it. You see the mine belongs to her absolutely, and any interest that any of the rest of us get in it we must buy from her. But, by way of preparing for such a purchase, I'm going down to the contractor's camp to-morrow, to get my father to come up here with a mining expert and an engineer, to look at the property and make up their minds about it."
The suggestion was welcomed by the three boys concerned, and so the Doctor made his preparations for an early departure in the morning.
The distance was not over two or three miles, and, as the Doctor had no wagon road to look out for, it took him less than an hour and a half to reach his father's headquarters. Early in the afternoon a cavalcade reached the camp. It consisted of the Doctor, his father, one of his brothers, a mining expert and two engineers.