“Such was the monotony of the life of Virginia Dawson. My father thought little of the future, not that he failed to care, but that he failed to see that the future held anything in store for him or his children. He had been taught the lesson of frugality, the same being demonstrated by poverty. It seems strange that a discovery of nature’s deposits would be the turning point in my humdrum existence, but such was the case. My parental home was but a few miles from the now busy city of Anderson, Ind., and it was the finding of natural gas near our house that threw me into the company of Arthur Blake. He was the son of wealthy parents and, though all my sufferings are directly traceable to my early association with him, I must say that he is one of the most noble of men. He came to the community in which we dwelt as a civil engineer, having fancied that profession more than any other. A firm of Boston capitalists had employed him to investigate the extent and certainty of the gas belt. He was instructed to keep his business quiet and to conceal his real identity. To do this, he assumed the role of a laborer, going about and actually toiling with the derricks, ropes and pipes just as though he was not an heir to a large fortune. “While thus engaged he came to our humble home to board. I was just such a strip of awkward girlhood as any man might expect to find in a child of the rural district. “I know I was the most unsophisticated creature that ever lived. I knew nothing of life outside the five-room house in which my parents had lived for twenty years and in which I had been born nearly seventeen years before I met Arthur Blake. “He remained at our house for three months, and so refined and dignified was he that he won a place in our hearts that was hard to fill by any others. He was rather reticent and made few friends. My father was dumfounded when one day Arthur proposed that he, my father, go and buy a new buggy. “‘What would I buy a buggy with and what for?’” asked my father. “‘With this,’ said Arthur, as he handed father a roll of bills, ‘and for my use. I shall have to do a great deal of driving. I will hire a horse from you, but I want everyone to understand that the whole outfit is yours.’ “So it was arranged, and it was generally said by less fortunate neighbors that ‘Dawson must be makin’ money keepin’ boarders.’