"Well, you see, unfortunately, no one knew where it was, and old Roger Gale had taken that particular day, of all others, to fall off his hay-riggin' and break his neck, and he hadn't happened to mention to any one before doing so where he found the rock! He was a close-mouthed old chap, Roger was. For ten years after that, folks that hadn't anything else to do went about hunting for the silver-mine, but they gradooally got tired, and now it's nothin' more than an old story. Does to amuse boarders with in the summer," concluded Mr. Swift, with a twinkle. "For my part, I don't believe there ever was a mine."
"But there was the piece of ore to prove it."
"Oh, that don't prove anything, because it got lost. No one knows what became of it. An' sixty years is long enough for a story to get exaggerated in."
"I don't see why there shouldn't be silver in Beulah township," remarked the lady on the back seat. "You have all kinds of other minerals here,—soapstone and mica and emery and tourmalines and beryls."
"Well, ma'am, I don't see nuther, unless, mebbe, it's the Lord's will there shouldn't be."
"It would be so interesting if the mine could be found!" said the pretty girl.
"It would be so, especially to the Gale family,—that is, if it was found on their land. The widow's a smart, capable woman, but it's as much as she can do, turn and twist how she may, to make both ends meet. And there's that boy of hers, a likely boy as ever you see, and just hungry for book-l'arnin', the minister says. The chance of an eddication would be just everything to him, and the widow can't give him one."
"It's really a romance," said the pretty girl, carelessly, the wants and cravings of others slipping off her young sympathies easily.
Then the horses reached the top of the long hill they had been climbing, Hiram put on the brake, and they began to grind down a hill equally long, with a soft panorama of plumy tree-clad summits before them, shimmering in the June sunshine. Drives in Beulah township were apt to be rather perpendicular, however you took them.
Some one, high up on the hill behind the farmhouse, heard the clank of the brakes, and lifted up her head to listen. It was Hester Gale,—a brown little girl, with quick dark eyes, and a mane of curly chestnut hair, only too apt to get into tangles. She was just eight years old, and to her the old farmstead, which the neighbors scorned as worthless, was a sort of enchanted land, full of delights and surprises,—hiding-places which no one but herself knew, rocks and thickets where she was sure real fairies dwelt, and cubby-houses sacred to the use of "Bunny," who was her sole playmate and companion, and the confidant to whom she told all her plans and secrets.