Rucker had come back to report that the motor-car had escaped as by a miracle. A square yard of the boiler shell had been hurled over it to fall accurately in the middle of the road a rod or two farther on. While he was telling about it, a goodly portion of the faculty of Highmount College, followed by a bevy of young women, came upon the scene. Doctor Caswell was heading the column of reconnaissance, and Hartridge also was with it. “Dear me!” exclaimed the president, coming up breathless; “we are all so glad to find you alive! What has happened?” Tregarvon pointed to the tangled mass of wreckage. “Our boiler blew up. It was old, and I suppose we were carrying too much pressure. Luckily, it happened while the men were eating, and there was no one near enough to be hurt. I thought of you people at once. It must have made racket enough to make you think the end of the world was coming.” “It was frightful!” said Miss Farron. “The windows rattled and--” but here her voice was lost in the chorus of excited exclamations pitching themselves in many keys as the young women picked their way over to the wreck and viewed the remains. “It is well, sometimes, to be born both lucky and rich,” Hartridge commented gravely, when his turn came. “The material loss is serious enough, of course; but you ought to be thankful that no lives were lost. Were you near enough at the time to see the explosion?” “We were sitting in the tool-house eating our luncheon,” Carfax explained, “and Rucker was just outside. We had been speaking of the boiler a moment before. We were all three looking at it, I think, when it went up.” Doctor Caswell had taken his wife over to assist in the sight-seeing, but Hartridge lingered behind. “Happening in broad daylight, this way, with three of you looking on, I suppose you are well assured that it was a pure accident?” he suggested quietly. Tregarvon left the answer to Carfax, who made it promptly. “As you say, we are not able, this time, to blame any one but ourselves. The boiler was old, and our mechanic had told us that it was not altogether safe.” “You have been drilling to-day?” Carfax nodded. “May I ask if you found anything?” Tregarvon turned away and busied himself examining the rent in the corner of the tool shanty. Carfax called up the cherubic smile for the inquiring professor and said: “What if I should tell you that we have found our bonanza, Mr. Hartridge?” Hartridge glanced at the drill, which was still standing in the test-hole, and shook his head. “I should say that you are merely talking for effect,” he smiled back. “But we have found the coal,” Carfax persisted. “You have found the upper measure, the same as you have in all the other trials. Beneath it, you will find your sandstone dike again.” “Are you sure of that?” “Quite sure.” “But we have already reached a depth of more than eighteen inches, and the drill was still in coal when we shut down for the noon stop.”