“Well, it does look encouraging, sure enough—but then the lacking indications—”
“I’d rather we had them, Mr. Sterling, but I’ve seen more than one good permanent mine struck without ’em in my time.”
“Well, that is encouraging too.”
“Yes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black Mohawk—all good, sound mines, you know—all just exactly like this one when we first struck them.”
“Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy. I guess we’ve really got it. I remember hearing them tell about the Black Mohawk.”
“I’m free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so too. They are all old hands at this business.”
“Come Harry, let’s go up and look at it, just for the comfort of it,” said Philip. They came back in the course of an hour, satisfied and happy.
There was no more sleep for them that night. They lit their pipes, put a specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of thought and conversation.
“Of course,” said Harry, “there will have to be a branch track built, and a ‘switch-back’ up the hill.”
“Yes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for that now. We could sell-out tomorrow for a handsome sum. That sort of coal doesn’t go begging within a mile of a rail-road. I wonder if Mr. Bolton would rather sell out or work it?”