But a closer inspection proved that Rucker’s boast was loyal to the eye but a traitor to the fact. The drill was merely “jumping up and down.” It was hardly cutting its own clearance; had gained in depth less than half an inch in half an hour, according to the report of Sawyer, who was at his customary post, “churning and turning” at the hole. Rucker looked on critically for a few minutes and then laid a listening ear to the steel, bowing and recovering in unison with the stroke. “She’s hit a bone o’ some kind,” was his verdict; and he stopped the churning machinery and threw in the hoist by means of which the heavy cutting-bar was lifted from the hole. An examination of the drill point amply verified the mechanician’s guess that something much harder than the fine-gritted sandstone of the mountain top had been encountered in the bottom of the test-hole. The cutting edges of the drill burr were completely gone, broken down and gnawed smooth until the steel cutter-bar was no more than a blunt-ended ram. Tregarvon swore painstakingly, anathematizing the demon of ill luck by bell, book, and candle, thereby further emphasizing the distance he had travelled on the road toward things elemental. “Scrap it,” he snapped, meaning the ruined drill point. “How many more have you?” “Three.” “All right; put another one in and drive it!” Rucker got out a fresh point, mounted and lowered it, and the churning was resumed. Three hours of steady thumping showed a gain of less than two inches in the depth of the hole, and at the end of that time the second drill burr was worn as smooth as the first. This went on until the last of the four cutters was put in service. For a wasted day of patient churning the hole had gone down only a few inches, and Rucker was in despair. “When this cutter goes, we’re hung up for more ’n any day ’r two,” he announced. “I can sharpen these points all right enough, but it’ll take scads o’ time with the tools we’ve got here on the job. You two bosses hain’t made up your minds what t’ ’ell it is we’re tryin’ to chew through down yonder, have you?” Tregarvon had taken an engineering course in the university, but he was no geologist; and Carfax’s equipment was even less hopeful. It was a case for a specialist; and the specialist turned up at the opportune moment in the person of Mr. Guy Wilmerding, who had ridden over from Whitlow to see how the Ocoee experiment was progressing. His coming was hailed with acclamations by the two amateurs. “By Jove, Wilmerding, you’re just in time to save us from strait-jackets and a padded cell!” Tregarvon exclaimed. “What kind of rock do you have in this region that will make a drill point look like that?” showing the C. C. & I. superintendent one of the blunted cutters. Wilmerding scrutinized the dulled point carefully. “None of the native rock ought to do that,” he demurred. “This is a poor piece of steel, isn’t it?”