n, and his collection of nice old relatives--what did
these assets look like from an automobile, or on board the launch of
a modern steam yacht? And wouldn't it be amusing if John should grow
needlessly jealous, and have a "difficulty" with Charley? not a mere
flinging of torn paper money in the banker's face, but some more decided
punishment for the banker's presuming to rest his predatory eyes upon
John's affianced lady.

I stared at the now broadening river, where the reappearance of the
bridge, and of Kings Port, and the nearer chimneys pouring out their
smoke a few miles above the town, betokened that our excursion was
drawing to its end. And then from the chimney's neighborhood, from
the waterside where their factories stood, there shot out into the
smoothness of the stream a launch. It crossed into our course ahead
of us, preceded us quickly, growing soon into a dot, went through the
bridge, and so was seen no longer; and its occupants must have reached
town a good half hour before we did. And now, suddenly, I was stunned
with a great discovery. The bride's voice sounded in my ear. "Well, I'll
always say you're a prophet, anyhow!"

I looked at her, dull and dazed by the internal commotion the discovery
had raised in me.

"You said we wouldn't get stuck in the mud, and we didn't," said the
bride.

I pointed to the chimneys. "Are those the phosphate works?"

"Yais. Didn't you know?"

"The V-C phosphate works?"

"Why, yais. Haven't you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn't he,
David? 'Specially now they've found those deposits up the river were
just as rich as they hoped, after all."

"Whose? Mr. Mayrant's?" I asked with such sharpness that the bride was
surprised.

David hadn't attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought;
Regent Tom, or some such thing.

"And they thought it was no good," said the bride. "And it's aivry bit
as good as the Coosaw used to be. Better than Florida or Tennessee."

My eyes instinctively turned to where they had last seen the launch; of
course it wasn't there any more. Then I spoke to David.

"Do you know what a phosphate bed looks like? Can one see it?"

"This kind you can," he answered. "But it's not worth your trouble.
Just a kind of a square hole you dig along the river till you strike the
stuff. What you want to see is the works."

No, I didn't want to see even the works; they smelt atrociously, and I
do not care for vats, and acids, and process