"No, I s'pose it's a matter of chance. The chance comes, and you've just got to grab it right and hold it."
"Sure. Chance! If chance hits you, why, don't go to hit back. Jest hug it—same as you would your best gal."
Gordon laughed and peered into the shadowy interior of the barn.
"Guess that's good talk," he said, "and I'm going to listen. I've got right hold of that chance, and I'm hugging it. Seems to me I'll need to get out and get a peek at Silas Mallinsbee's coal. Can you hire me a rig?"
"I got a dandy top buggy an' team," cried the man, now alert and ready for business. "Ten dollars to supper-time. How?"
Gordon nodded, and the man vanished within the barn.
Left alone, he reflected on the rapidity of the movement of events. He had had a luck that he surely could not have anticipated. Why, under the influence of the prevailing enthusiasm of the place, he seemed to feel that the whole thing was too utterly simple. He wondered what his father would have said had he been there. It would be a glorious coup to return home with that one hundred thousand dollars well before the expiry of his time limit.
From the dark interior of the barn came the sounds of horses' hoofs clattering on the boarded floor.
Presently his thoughts drifted from the important matters in hand to a far less consequent matter. It was not in his nature to be long enamored of the hunt for fortune, no matter what the consequences attached to it.
He began to think of the vision in fawn-colored riding-costume. So her name was Hazel. Hazel—what? he wondered. A pretty name, and well suited to her. Hazel. Those eyes, and the gorgeous masses of her hair! He sighed. For a moment he thought of inquiring of the livery man her other name. Then he smilingly shook his head and decided to let that remain a secret for the present. It added to the romance of the thing. Of one thing he was certain: he must contrive to see her again, and get to know her. Fortune or no fortune, if his father were to cut him off with the proverbial shilling as a spendthrift and waster, if he never saw a partnership in the greatest financial corporation in the United States, that girl could not be allowed to flash into his life like a ray of spring sunshine, and pass out of it again because he hadn't the snap to get to know her.