Wallingford shook his head.
“She’d turn it black,” he gravely objected.
“Why, it is black,” protested Bob, opening his eyes in bewilderment.
In reply to this Wallingford merely chuckled. Bob, regarding him in perplexity for a while, suddenly saw that this was a joke, and on the way to the mill he snickered a score of times. Queer chap, this Wallingford; rich, no doubt, and smart as a whip; and something mysterious about him, too!
Wallingford found Jonas Bubble in flour-sifted garments in his office, going over a dusty file of bills.
“Mr. Bubble,” said he, “I have been down to your swamp and have investigated its possibilities. I am now prepared, since I have secured the right to purchase this land, to confide to you the business search in which I have for some time been engaged, and which now, I hope, is concluded. Do you know, Mr. Bubble, the valuable deposit I think I have found in my swamp?”
“No!” ejaculated Bubble, stricken solemn by the confidential tone. “What is it?”
Wallingford took a long breath, swelling out his already broad chest, and, leaning over most impressively, tapped his compelling finger upon Jonas Bubble’s knee. Then said he, with almost tragic earnestness:
“Black Mud!”