one of twenty-three flowing wells on the despised thirty-eight acres! Companies and individuals tugged and strained to get even the smallest lease Hyde & Egbert would grant. The Keystone, Gettysburg, Kepler, Eagle, Benton, Olive Branch, Laurel Hill, Bird and Potts wells, not to mention a score of minor note, helped maintain a production that paid the holders of the royalty eight-thousand dollars a day in 1864-5! E. B. Grandin and William C. Hyde, partners of Charles Hyde in a store at Hydetown, A. C. Kepler and Titus Ridgway obtained a lease of one acre on the west side of the lot, north of the wells already down, subject to _three-quarters royalty_. A bit of romance attaches to the transaction. Kepler dreamed that an Indian menaced him with bow and arrow. A young lady, considered somewhat coquettish, handed him a rifle and he fired at the dusky foe. The redskin vamoosed and a stream of oil burst forth. Visiting his brother, who superintended the farm, he recognized the scene of his dream. The lease was secured, on the biggest royalty ever offered. Kepler chose the location and bored the Coquette well. The dream was a nightmare? Wait and see. Drilling began in the spring of 1864 and the work went merrily on. Each partner would be entitled to one-sixteenth of the oil. Hyde & Ridgway sold their interest for ten-thousand dollars a few days before the tools reached the sand. This interest Dr. M. C. Egbert, brother of the original purchaser of the farm, next bought at a large advance. He had acquired one-sixth of the property in fee and wished to own the Coquette. Grandin and Kepler declined to sell. The well was finished and did not flow! Tubed and pumped a week, gas checked its working and the sucker-rods were pulled. Immediately the oil streamed high in the air! Twelve-hundred barrels a day was the gauge at first, settling to steady business for a year at eight-hundred. A double row of tanks lined the bank, connected by pipes to load boats in bulk. Oil was “on the jump” and the first cargo of ten-thousand barrels brought ninety-thousand dollars, representing ten days’ production! Three months later Grandin and Kepler sold their one-eighth for one-hundred-and-forty-five thousand dollars, quitting the Coquette with eighty-thousand apiece in their pockets. Kepler was a dreamer whom Joseph might be proud to accept as a chum. [Illustration: DR. M. C. EGBERT.]