“Perhaps,” he drawled, “when the gentleman shall have passed the melancholy flood with that grim ferryman whom poets write of unto the Kingdom of Perpetual Night.”
(See Code of West Virginia, Chap, cxxiv., Sec. 14, Chap, cvi., Sec. 25; also Chap. cxxv. See any good text book on Landlord and Tenant. The case also of Martin Admix vs. Smith it al., 25 West Virginia, 579, and casts cited.)
THE GRAZIER
I
THE driller of the Bonnie Mag No. 3 had been keeping his weather eye on the public road all the long summer afternoon; exacting and laborious duties had obtained under the shadow of the oil derrick on this nineteenth day of August, quite sufficient to have distracted the attention of the ordinary man, but through it all the driller had maintained his watch. The pumper, a grimy mortal, who regarded the monster oil company as the sole and omnipotent power of the universe, had marked this apparent anxiety of the driller, and inquired, with some trace of humor, if that gentleman was expecting to see grease gush up out of the road. To which the driller had responded with barbaric profanity that the pumper had been employed to pump, and that he might hold his position by holding his tongue, but not otherwise. A suggestion that banished all levity from the speech of the pumper. Besides, there was a red glint in the eyes of the driller, and the underling of the great oil company appreciated perfectly the full significance of the sign. He had noticed it before on divers eventful occasions, especially on a certain morning when being interrupted by an order of the Circuit Court, the driller had promptly suggested to the deputy sheriff that he might go to the infernal regions with his injunction; and instead of suspending operations until the legal forum could determine the title to the realty, he had complied with his contract by pushing his well through to the Gordon sand.
It was true indeed that the Circuit Court had attached t he body of the driller and bringing him up before its august presence fined him two hundred dollars for contempt, but the old man had paid over the money without the hesitation of a moment and immediately thereafter consigned the Circuit Court to the same heated region originally suggested to the deputy sheriff.