“As I have just remarked, Jack,” MacFarlane began again, “there is nothing but an earthquake will make your property of any use. It is a low-grade ore, I should say, and tunnelling and shoring would eat it up. Wipe it off the books. There are thousands of acres of this kind of land lying around loose from here to the Cumberland Valley. It may get better as you go down--only an assay can tell about that--but I don't think it will. To begin sinking shafts might mean sinking one or a dozen; and there's nothing so expensive. I am sorry, Jack, but wipe it out. Some bright scoundrel might sell stock on it, but they'll never melt any of it up into stove plate.” “All right, sir,” Jack said at last, with a light laugh. “It is the same old piece of bread, I reckon, and it has fallen on the same old buttered side. Uncle Peter told me to beware of bubbles--said they were hard to carry around. This one has burst before I got my hand on it. All right--let her go! I hope Ruth won't take it too much to heart. Here, boy, get hold of this map and put it with the other traps in the wagon. And now, Mr. MacFarlane, what comes next?” Before the day was over MacFarlane had perfected his plans. The town was to be avoided as too demoralizing a shelter for the men, and barracks were to be erected in which to house them. Locations of the principal derricks were selected and staked, as well as the sites for the entrance to the shaft, for the machine and blacksmith's shops and for a storage shanty for tools: the Maryland Mining Company's work would require at least two years to complete, and a rational, well-studied plan of procedure was imperative. “And now, Jack, where are you going to live,--in the village?” asked his Chief, resting the level and tripod carefully against a tree trunk and seating himself beside Jack on a fallen log. “Out here, if you don't mind, sir, where I can be on top of the work all the time. It's but a short ride for Ruth and she can come and go all the time. I am going to drop some of these trees; get two or three choppers from the village and knock up a log-house like the one I camped in when I was a boy.” “Where will you put it?” asked MacFarlane with a smile, as he turned his head as if in search of a site. It was just where he wanted Jack to live, but he would not have suggested it. “Not a hundred yards from where we sit, sir--a little back of those two big oaks. There's a spring above on the hill and sloping ground for drainage; and shade, and a great sweep of country in front. I've been hungry for this life ever since I left home; now I am going to have it.” “It will be rather lonely, won't it?” The engineer's eyes softened as they rested on the young fellow, his face flushed with the enthusiasm of his new resolve. He and Ruth's mother had lived in just such a shanty, and not so very long ago, either, it seemed,--those were the happiest years of his life.