It was impossible to have all this happen without misgivings and questioning on the part of his guest.
"I appreciate all this," Hamlen said to him one evening; "but don't for a minute think that I take credit for the sudden interest on the part of the fellows who never noticed me when I was in college. That belongs to you. With the position you had then, and which you hold in the Class to-day, the boys would drink healths and sing, 'For he's a jolly good fellow' to a Fiji islander if he happened to be your friend."
"Suppose we grant all that," Huntington answered frankly; "what difference does it make? Didn't you tell me that you owned a piece of land in Oklahoma on which oil was struck?"
"Yes," Hamlen replied; surprised that his friend should so abruptly turn the conversation. "What has that to do with our discussion?"
"How much did you value it before you discovered what it contained?"
"It was a joke; I begrudged even paying the taxes."
"Now you consider it well worth including among your investments?"
"Naturally. It is one of the best things I own."
Huntington smiled at him quietly. "Don't you see the application? It is no reflection on those who walked over that land that they were ignorant of the riches which lay beneath their feet. It is no reflection on the sincerity of your classmates that they like you now and did not know you before. I discovered what you really are, Hamlen, quite as accidentally as you struck oil in that apparently worthless land in Oklahoma. Now I stand simply as the promoter of a property which has proved its worth."
When Hamlen unpacked his trunk at Huntington's house he produced a volume of Milton's "Areopagitica" which he placed in his friend's hand.