"Well, good morning, Wiley," he began with unction, and then he looked grievously about. The expensive gas engine which he had bought and installed was already unwatering the mine; spare timbers were going down, the new blacksmith-shop was running and Wiley was sitting at his desk. Everything was there, just the way he had left it, except that it belonged to Wiley. Blount heaved a heavy sigh and then set his features resolutely, for the battle was not over yet. To be sure the mine was bonded for a measly fifty thousand dollars, and his stock was tied up under an option; but many things can happen in six months' time and Wiley was only a boy. Granted that he was a miner and understood ore, there is such a thing as an "Act of God." Cables break without reason, mines cave and timbers fall; and certainly if there is a God of Ten Per Cent his just wrath would be visited upon Wiley. Blount knew that great god and worshipped him continually and he felt certain that something would happen, for when boys out of college take money away from bank presidents it comes dangerously close to sacrilege. "Well, well," murmured Blount, "quite a change, quite a change. Are you sure that stuff is tungsten, Wiley?" "Yes," responded Wiley, affecting a becoming modesty to cover up his youthful smirk. "Would you like to see it tested?" "Very much," answered Blount, and followed after him to the assay office, which Wiley had hurriedly fitted up. Wiley took a piece of scheelite and pounded it in a mortar until it was fine as flour, then dropped it into a test-tube and boiled it over a flame in a solution of hydrochloric and nitric acids. "Now," he said, when the tungstic acid had been dissolved, and he had dropped a small bar of tin into the solution. It turned a dark blue and Blount sighed again, for he had looked up the test in advance. "If it turns blue," a prospector had told him, "like the color of me overalls, then, sure as hell, it's tungsten." "Well, well," commented Blount, gazing mildly about, for great men do not stop to repine, "and what do you use these big scales for?" "That's for the quantitative test," explained Wiley importantly. "By weighing the sample first and extracting the tungsten we get the percentage, when it's been filtered and dried and weighed again, of the tungstic acid in the ore. But it's quite an elaborate process." "Yes, yes," assented Blount, still managing to smile pleasantly. "Rather out of my line, I guess. What per cent do your samples average?" "Oh, between sixty and seventy when I pick my specimens. I'm rigging up a jigger to separate the ore until I can get capital to start up the mill. It ought to be milled, by rights, and only the concentrates shipped; but while I'm getting started----" "Oh, draw on me--any time," broke in Blount, smiling radiantly. "I'd be only too glad to accommodate you. That's my business, you know; loaning out money on good security, and you're good up to fifty thousand dollars."