"Now to test the brine," said Mr. Vanter, as he sent the men for a pump and the necessary pipes. "But I have no doubt, from the fact that the general character of this valley is the same from here to Syracuse, that we have a fine quality of solution. You have struck it rich, Mr. Kimball," he went on, as the farmer approached, all excitement over the news. "We haven't a mine for you, but we have something better," and he told him what had taken place.
"Wa'al, I knowed suthin' good 'd come outen what seemed dark prospects at fust," said the old farmer, calling to mind the bad news of the loss of his money in the railroad shares, and the mortgage foreclosure. "I knowed suthin' good 'd come, 'n' it's all along a' Roger here. I sha'n't forgit it, nuther," he added, and Roger, fearing some one was going to praise him in public, hurried to the house.
CHAPTER XXV
THE LAST WRESTLING MATCH
The Cardiff stage, next day, took to Syracuse three very much chagrined and disappointed men,—Mr. Ranquist, Mr. Dudley, and their lawyer. They maintained a silence as they climbed aboard the lumbering vehicle, early in the morning, and the usual crowd that gathered to see the stage depart had no words of farewell for the men who had sought to take such an unfair advantage of Mr. Kimball.
"G'lang!" cried Porter Amidown, cracking his whip, and the horses leaped forward with a jingle of harness. It was the last Cardiff saw of the conspirators.
As for the salt well on Mr. Kimball's farm, it turned out better than even Mr. Vanter dared to hope. The brine was of a heavy and saturated quality, and, when evaporated, gave a residue of excellent salt. It compared favorably with the condiment manufactured in Syracuse, which is considered about the best in the world. One day, when Roger and Adrian were at the well, Mr. Vanter told how, in his opinion, the salt springs beneath the surface of the earth came there.
Geologists were agreed, he said, that, thousands of years ago, the whole Onondaga valley was part of an immense sea. This was evidenced by the fossils found in the hills. As the ages passed, there were eruptions and upheavals of the earth's surface. Then the salt water from the sea might have been condensed into solid rocks of salt, or the rock salt away down deep in the earth might have been brought nearer the surface. At any rate, in time, the white crystals were formed in great masses. Then, beneath the surface of the ground, there welled up springs of fresh water, which dissolved, and held in solution, the salt. When the shaft had been sunk on Mr. Kimball's land, Mr. Vanter said, meaning the small hole Mr. Ranquist had bored with his sectional drill, the steel had probably only gone into the thin crust of salt, formed over one of the immense and deep underground springs. He was thus deluded, as was Mr. Vanter himself, into the belief that a mine of rock salt had been discovered.