“The dam burst yesterday! Twenty streams from the sides of the hollow are tearing into the basin, and what silt is left by to-morrow I will sell you for a ten dollar note!”
The clerks outside were startled by the sound of a heavy fall.
Phil Gormley had given way under the blow.
A fortune lost! you will say. Yes; part of the fourteen millions was washed away, part was covered by the debris of land slides which the unusual freshet of that spring caused. What remained amounted to nothing in comparison. That was five years ago. The Placer Notch Mining Company has been reorganized since—just a few weeks ago, in fact, and this whole matter was only brought back to my mind at this time by the receipt of a letter from a friend of mine, who announced that he has just been put in on the reorganization as secretary of the company. I refer, of course, to Phil Gormley. He lost his lucky fortune, but he is working out a better one, because it is coming slowly and with honest difficulty. But it was his idea of working the “duck pond” that planted this slow-growing tree of fortune, for it was that which took him to the company’s office.
Out here on my quiet farm I do not hear many echoes from the busy outside world, but none could give me greater pleasure than does such news of my dear friend Phil—for I am no other than Doubting Thomas Danvers.