“Then it sums itself up about like this: You haven’t anything at present, and if you succeed in getting anything, the other fellows will nab it,” he said, when Tregarvon had finished. “Is that about the size of it?” “You have surrounded it completely. Only I am eliminating the ‘if.’ I mean to get something, and I don’t mean to let the other fellows get away with it.” “Any move made yet?” queried Carfax, between delicate little puffs at the pipe of hospitality. “Not visibly. The trust people will scarcely move in the matter until after I have proved my first proposition, which is that the two veins of coal become one farther back in the mountain. But the McNabbs may not wait that long.” “Who are the McNabbs?” Tregarvon explained again, at some length, not omitting mention of a mysterious leaf fire which had threatened to destroy a tramway trestle, and other small accidents which had somewhat impeded the work of the past fortnight, and which were blankly unaccountable save upon a theory of somebody’s malice. “Why don’t you buy ’em off?” said Carfax casually. Money was his cure-all for most human ills. “For one reason, they haven’t given me a chance. For another, I don’t propose to be held up and robbed. They haven’t any title to the land; they have never had a shadow of a title.” Then he broke off suddenly, glanced at his watch, and changed the subject. “How much too tired are you to take a five-mile spin with me up the mountain in the car, Poictiers?” he asked. Carfax’s eyebrows went up in mild surprise. Nevertheless, he said: “Call it a go--if you can find Rucker.” “Never mind Rucker; I’ll drive you myself,” said Tregarvon, and a few minutes later the big car, with its dazzling headlamps picking out the way, was storming up the steep grades of the Pisgah pike to Highmount. IV In Which Carfax Enlists On the broad veranda of the administration building at Highmount, which looked down sidewise upon the twinkling light or two of Coalville and faced on even terms an opposing shoulder of the mountain where the newly erected drill derrick stood, Carfax was holding Miss Farron and four privileged members of the senior class at bay, while Tregarvon contentedly monopolized Miss Richardia Birrell. The two thus comfortably isolated had quickly exhausted the commonplaces. Tregarvon was made to know thus early that one of Miss Richardia’s charms was her ability to plunge at once into the heart of things; and the talk had turned upon Carfax, distance and the hubbub of the others sanctioning personalities. “Oh, you don’t know him yet,” Tregarvon protested, in refutation of a remark of Miss Birrell’s based upon Carfax’s apparent satisfaction with his present besetment. “He is anything but a butterfly, in the meaning you imply; and I say this in spite of his pretty face and airy gabble, and the lisp and his bad habit of slipping instinctively, as you might say, into the easiest chair in sight. I’ve summered him and wintered him, and I know.”