The Admiral quickly took a letter from his pocket and drew on the back of it a plan of the country as he remembered it. Then he consulted Jermyn, who had dropped into the club.
"Very good," said Jermyn, looking at the sketch, "although it might be improved a little, I think. I've done some shooting on that very ground, so I remember it pretty well."
"How fortunate," said the Admiral. "Mr. Blogsham, my friend Jermyn is a good engineer, so he may be of more service than I."
"Good!" said Blogsham. "The better the plan, the more it will be worth to us. There's a block of stock for you too, Mr. Jermyn, if you can make the water within reach."
Jermyn opened the sheet of paper and made another sketch; then he turned the paper over, supposing it might contain some memoranda on the subject, but he saw something that so upset his mind that in the next ten minutes he talked so vaguely about the ground and the water that his own chance of getting any stock in the proposed mine seemed to him very small.
[CHAPTER X.]
A SCRAP OF PAPER.
BRUCE JERMYN was as honorable a gentleman as could be found anywhere, but for two or three days and nights he wished he had read farther in that letter upon which he and the Admiral had made their sketches of the surroundings of the placer mine. No one knew better than he the rights and sanctity of private correspondence, but could any man be blamed for wanting to know who it was who was planning to marry him to Kate Trewman?