“I can’t understand it, Poictiers. These McNabbs and their cousins might very properly have it in for me on the old score of the land lawsuit; and, as you know, we have been suspecting them, more or less, all along. But now they turn out to give me a lift, just as I am about to lose my grip. What’s the answer?” Carfax’s grin was as nearly impish as his cherubic semblance would permit. “Call it an attack of conscience,” he suggested playfully. “The other night we decided that it was one of the McNabbs who put the dynamite into the old boiler. Perhaps they have all had a change of heart, and this is their way of showing it. Will you be ready to go on drilling this afternoon?” “I am afraid not. We shall have the machinery unloaded in another hour or so, and I can let these outsiders go home. But it will take the remainder of the day to get the engine in working order, so Rucker says.” “How about the C. C. & I. buying offer? The option expires with to-day, doesn’t it?” Tregarvon turned quickly upon the questioner. “Do you advise me to take the offer, Poictiers? You will remember that after our talk with Hartridge a week ago you said I was not to sell.” “I know; but only idiots and corpses are unable to change their minds. You owe it to your people at home not to fall between two stools. After all is said, a sure hundred thousand is better than nothing.” “Hartridge has been working on you again,” said Tregarvon accusingly. “And this time he has taken the other tack. Isn’t that so?” Carfax neither admitted nor denied a later talk with the schoolmaster. “He asserts positively that you will find the two thin veins again here, with the rock between. He ought to know.” Tregarvon was silenced for the moment. Then he broke out impatiently. “I’ve got to know for myself, Poictiers. If I don’t stay with it long enough to prove up, I shall be a quitter. I’m all the other things you have occasionally called me, but not that!” “No; I know you are not. I was just thinking: if you could meet Thaxter and talk with him? Possibly you could get the option time extended for a few days. You have a good reason for asking--apart from the real one, which is to find out what this drill-hole is going to say to you. You might urge that you’d like to have time to communicate with your lawyers. Suppose we drive up to Whitlow this afternoon?” “We’ll see,” Tregarvon conceded. “It is barely possible that we shall get the drill in operation again to-day, and in that case I shall know definitely what to do. Do you lunch at Highmount?” “I do,” laughed the golden youth. “The Caswells have adopted me, and I shall get square with them a little further along by financing the new gymnasium. How about paying this miracle gang? Have you money enough with you?” “I haven’t, and I was going to ask if you would drive down to the office and break into the safe for me.”