“I know, boy—your mother's darkened mind.”
Jim nodded.
“When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a knife. Will she ever get over it?”
“We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she will.”
“You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?” he pleaded pathetically. “You won't forget her a single day? If you can't cure her, nobody can.”
“I'll do my level best, boy.”
Jim pressed his hand again.
“Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such men in the world as you!”
For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output. Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good his departure for the South.
The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which overlooks the valley toward Asheville.