“Good, dev’lish good!” chuckled the visitor. “Couldn’t have turned it more neatly myself, ’pon my word! I’m Thaxter; Wilmerding’s bookkeeper at Whitlow. One of my fads is to take a drive before breakfast. Excellent habit, Mr. Tregarvon; I can recommend it most highly. Gives you an appetite like a coal-heaver. Speaking of coal--how are you getting along taking soundings on the old Ocoee? Have you hit it yet?” “Not yet,” Tregarvon admitted, warming to the little man’s friendly interest. “But I am still living in hopes.” Mr. Thaxter pursed his lips in a way to make them match the general effect of rotundity. “Mighty mean thing to say to a man before breakfast--you haven’t breakfasted yet, I dare say--but you are butting your head against a stone wall, Mr. Tregarvon. Haven’t they told you that?” “If your ‘they’ refers to the Coalville gossips, I have been duly warned. They told me, with all the variations, before I’d had time to climb the mountain on my first exploring expedition.” “Just so; but not specifically, I suppose. You should have come to me. While I am an employee of the C. C. & I. Company, my pay-roll connection wouldn’t have kept me from doing you a good turn. And I could have given you chapter, page, and verse.” For the moment Tregarvon lost sight of the fact that Wilmerding had reported his bookkeeper totally barren of Ocoee information. So he said: “Possibly you will do it now, Mr. Thaxter. We are mere babes in the wood, Carfax and I, needing a guardian angel pretty severely, if we are to believe what other people say of us.” “You have certainly been needing a little friendly counsel from some one who was in a position to know what he was talking about. You’ll never find your coal up here, Mr. Tregarvon.” “That is what they all say; but they don’t tell us precisely why we shan’t.” “Ah,” said the kindly one, shaking his head in deprecation. “Human nature is the same everywhere. Tait could have told you, or Tryon, or Walters; all of them who have lived here long enough. But you had money and were willing to spend it. It would have been killing the golden-egged goose to have driven you away.” Tregarvon grinned. “Thank you for trying to break it gently to me, Mr. Thaxter; but I am braced for it now. Hurl it in.” “They could have told you that this test-boring experiment of yours has been tried before, all over the mountain top. I presume I could show you a dozen holes, if they are not all filled up with wash and hidden under the leaves.” Tregarvon was thinking hard. “Does Captain Duncan know this?” he asked. “I should suppose so; he ought to know it. The testing was done by the New Ocoee Coal Company, and it may have timed itself during the summer that Duncan spent in the West. Come to think, I believe it did. You advised with him, of course; surely he didn’t encourage you to spend money on the property, did he?” “No; I am obliged to confess that he did not. On the contrary, he advised me not to.”