loughbys had been their well-known possession of property in land.
"Land" was always felt to be dignified, and somehow it seemed
additionally so when it gained a luxuriously superfluous character by
merely lying in huge, uncultivated tracts, and representing nothing but
wide areas and taxes.

"Them big D'Willerbys of D'lisleville owns thousands of acres as never
brings 'em a cent," Mr. Stamps had said to his friends at the Cross-roads
at the time Big Tom had first appeared among them. It was Mr. Stamps who
had astutely suggested that the stranger was possibly "kin" to the
Delisleville family, and in his discreet pursuit of knowledge he had made
divers discoveries.

"'Twarn't Jedge D'Willerby bought the land," he went on to explain, "'n'
it seems like he would hev bin a fool to hev done it, bein' as 'tain't
worked an' brings in nothin'. But ye never know how things may turn out.
'Twas the Jedge's gran'father, old Isham D'Willerby bought it fer a
kinder joke. Some said he was blind drunk when he done it, but he warn't
so drunk but what he got a cl'ar title, an' he got it mighty cheap too.
Folks ses as he use ter laugh an' say he war goin' to find gold on it,
but he never dug fer none--nor fer crops nuther, an' thar it lies to-day
in the mountains, an' no one goin' nigh it."

In truth, Judge De Willoughby merely paid his taxes upon it from a sense
of patriarchal pride.

"My ancestor bought it," he would say. "I will hand it to my sons. In
England it would be an estate for an earldom, here it means merely
tax-paying. Still, I shall not sell it."

Nobody, in fact, would have been inclined to buy it in those days. But
there came a time when its value increased hour by hour in the public
mind, until it was almost beyond computation.

A chance visitor from the outside world made an interesting discovery. On
this wild tract of hill and forest was a vein of coal so valuable that,
to the practical mind of the discoverer, the Judge's unconsciousness of
its existence was amazing. He himself was a practical, driving, business
schemer from New York. He knew the value of what he saw, and the
availability of the material in consequence of a certain position in
which the mines lay. Before he left Delisleville he had explained this
with such a presenting of facts that the Judge had awakened to an
enthusiasm as Southern as his previous indifference had been. He had no
knowledge of business methods; he had practised his profession in