most anything. Good-bye, and when you write to
Guinea, send her my love."

CHAPTER XIX.

Four weeks passed and heavy were the days with anxiety, for I had
received no word from Guinea. I thought of a hundred causes that must
have kept her from writing, but, worst of all, I feared that she had
written and that the letter had gone astray.

One afternoon, having thrown my book aside, weary of causes, reasonings
and developments of law, I sat on a rock near the spring, musing,
wondering, when suddenly I sprang to my feet, with Guinea in my mind,
with Guinea before me, I thought. But this was only for an instant. A
young deer came down the path, gracefully leaping, and my mind flew back
to the time when I had first seen her running down that shining strip of
hard-beat earth. Yes, it was a deer, and it ran down the brook, and
presently I heard the hounds yelping in the woods. I returned to my room
and again I strove to study, but the logical phrasing was harsh to me,
and I threw down the book. I would fish in the pools that lay along the
stream toward the mill. The ground in the yard and about the barn was so
dry that I could find no angle worms, and I decided to dig in the damp
moss-land near the spring. The hoe struck a hard substance and out came
something bright. I stooped to examine it, and at first I thought that
it was silver, but it was not--it was mica. I scraped off the moss and
the thin strata of earth, and there I found a great bed of the ore. I
dug deeper and it came up in chunks, and it was fine and flawless. My
reading taught me that it was valuable, and I was rejoiced to find that
it was on my own land. I got out as much as I could carry--indeed, I
filled a trunk with it, and then carefully replaced the moss, smoothed
it down and made it look as if it had not been displaced. My blood
tingled with excitement and I was afraid that some one might have seen
me. I took the trunk to my room and split off thin sheets of the mica,
and the more I looked at it the more I was thrilled at the prospect that
now lay, not in the future, but under my touch. And I was not long in
resolving upon a course to pursue. I remembered that into our
neighborhood had come from Nashville, Tenn., a large stove with mica in
the doors, and I thought it would be wise to take my trunk to that city
and by exhibiting its contents induce some one to buy the mine. I
hastened to town, after hiding the trunk, and told Conkwright and Alf