McNatt considered in silence a moment. Then he shook his head. “I can’t say,” he replied. “Perhaps you couldn’t tell. Though, as gold is generally located away from water you would hardly expect that the diving-rod was indicating anything but gold.”
“Isn’t gold sometimes found in the beds of rivers and streams?” asked Willard. “Seems to me your diving-rod would get sort of mixed, wouldn’t it? And how about silver? Can you find silver that way, too?”
McNatt looked almost distressed. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I haven’t devoted any study to the use of the diving-rod in the location of metals. Your questions open up an interesting field, though, and some time I’ll go into the subject thoroughly. And still, as I haven’t yet demonstrated the—ah—power of the instrument in the finding of water, possibly it would be idle to extend the experiments. There’s one possible explanation of failure that just occurs to me. Old Man Hildreth said he used a hazel stick. He didn’t say whether it was the hazel of the nut tribe—”
“I think it must have been,” said Willard emphatically.
“Or the witch-hazel. The ordinary hazel is a member of the oak family, but does the witch-hazel belong to the same family? There are certain similarities between the two, and yet they may not be botanically related.” McNatt presented a puzzled countenance to Willard. “What would be your opinion?”
“Search me,” said Willard cheerfully. “I thought a hazel was a hazel.”
“I’m afraid not. That may account for my lack of success. You see, I jumped to the conclusion that the witch-hazel was the proper one, probably because the word ‘witch’ suggested—ah—divination. So I may have been wrong.” McNatt’s face cleared and he looked quite cheerful again. “I’ll have to try again. Only—” He paused and pursed his lips dubiously. “Do you happen to know if the hazel grows about here?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” said Willard.
“Nor I. I’ll have to look that up when I get back. It’s strange that the encyclopedias give so little information on the subject of the diving-rod. I wonder—” McNatt fell silent, and after a minute Willard arose.
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting back,” he announced. It was, he concluded, too late to meet Martin and the others now.