The lad on his knees was watching it intently. Looking up he saw the old expression of despair returning to the ashen face of the man. That would never do. Hope must be kept alive.
“I say, Mr. Wallace, don’t you think maybe that needle’s held too tight? Have you ever tried loosening that minute screw there? Gee, but I’d jolly like to try that experiment.”
Almost mechanically the inventor put his hand in a large leather pocket and drew out an infinitesimally small screw driver. “Do what you wish,” he said as he sat upon a flat rock and leaned his head on his hands. “I’ve failed. Not that I have any reason to be sure that there is water here, but it did not move over at Slaters and there was water.”
While the man talked, the boy, with heart beating like a trip-hammer, was actually praying for inspiration while he loosened ever so little the tiny screw that held the sensitive needle. But even then, it did not stir.
“I say, Mr. Wallace, may I take it higher up? Way to the very top of the canon?”
The older man shook his head. “No use, son. There aren’t any watermarks farther up and it’s almost impassible.”
“But, may I try?”
A silent, resigned nod was the only answer and so securing the instrument, the lad carefully climbed over boulders, higher and higher. At last he stopped. Mr. Wallace had spoken truly, there were no signs of the water marks that had been made, no one knew how many years before. Retracing his steps, he turned a little to the right. Something seemed to impell him to stoop and look into a fissure where a boulder, perhaps ages before, had been rent asunder by some tremendous power, an earth-quake, without doubt.
It was an almost impossible feat to hold himself so that he could thrust the instrument into the fissure, but he did it, and with a startling suddenness, the sensitive needle dipped straight down.
“Mr. Wallace! Mr. Wallace! Come quick! I’ve found the spring.”