“Men, I’m sorry to lose my house, of course—that goes without saying—but when I think of what might have happened it doesn’t trouble me that much”—snapping his finger and thumb. “I tell you, men, I’m downright thankful it was my house that was blown up and nobody else’s.”
As he said this he looked at Joe and me, and I felt convinced that it was to us and not to the assembled throng that he addressed his remark. The people, however, not knowing what we did, loudly applauded the magnanimity of the sentiment, and many of them pressed forward to shake hands again.
Yetmore had never been so popular as he was at that moment. Everybody sympathized with him over his loss; everybody admired the dignified way in which he accepted it; and everybody would have been delighted to hear that some compensating piece of good fortune had befallen him.
Strange to say, at that very moment that very thing happened.
Suddenly we were all attracted by a distant shouting up the street. Looking through the front window, we saw that all the people outside had turned and were gazing in that direction. By one impulse everybody in the store surged out through the doorways, when we saw, still some distance away, a man running down the middle of the street, waving his cap and shouting some words we could not distinguish. We were all on tiptoe with expectation.
At length the man approached, broke through the group, ran up to Yetmore, who was standing on his door-step, shook hands with him, and then turning round, he shouted out:
“Great strike in the Pelican, boys! In the old workings above the fifth—Yetmore’s lease. One of those pockets of tellurium that’s never been known to run less than twenty thousand to the ton. Hooray for Yetmore!”
The shout that went up was genuinely hearty. Once more the mayor was mobbed by his enthusiastic fellow citizens and once more he shook hands till his arm ached—during which proceeding Joe and I slipped away.
We had not gone far when I heard my name called, and turning round I saw a man on horseback who handed me a letter.
“I’ve just come up through your place,”said he, “and your father asked me to give you this if I should see you.”