“Ah,” said the stranger, after a moment of mental figuring, “then I gather that you must have dug down four or five hundred feet before you struck oil.”
“More than that,” replied Tom. “Fourteen hundred feet is nearer the figure.”
The newcomer looked bewildered.
“Then I must have misunderstood you as to the time you started drilling,” he remarked.
“I guess not,” said Tom, repeating the same date as before.
“Oh,” said the man. “I suppose you must have worked in three shifts day and night,” he added.
“No, Mr. Blythe,” replied Tom, with a glance at the card he held in his hand. “We’ve had only the ordinary day crew.”
“Then,” returned Mr. Blythe, “you must have worked in softer soil than I knew was to be found in this section of Texas. Perhaps you didn’t come across rock of any account.”
“On the contrary,” replied Tom, with secret amusement, for he had fathomed the cause of his interrogator’s perplexity, “my foreman tells me that we had to bore through some of the most stubborn rock that he has come across in his long experience. And the specimens we brought up confirm this.”
Mr. Blythe threw up his hands in a gesture of amazement. Tom’s sincerity was apparent, but what he said seemed incredible.