past.

The party of investigators had found such remarkable conditions that
they were eager to buy up the ground at once; but they met with
unexpected opposition.

At a meeting which will go down to posterity in the annals of Cove City,
the Turtle Creek Land Company, piloted by the intrepid Mr. Opp, had held
its course against persuasion, threats, and bribes. There was but one
plank in the company's platform, and that was a determination not to
sell. To this plank they clung through the storm of opposition, through
the trying calm of indifference that followed, until a truce was
declared.

Finally an agreement was reached by which the Turtle Creek Land Company
was to lease its ground to the capitalists, receive a given per cent. of
the oil produced, and maintain the right to buy stock up to a large and
impossible amount at any time during the ensuing year.

Close upon this contract came men and machinery to open up a test well.
For weeks hauling was done up the creek bottom, there being no road
leading to the oil spring where the first drilling was to be done.

The town watched the operations with alternate scorn and interest. It
was facetious when water and quicksands were encountered, and inclined
to be sarcastic when work was suspended on account of the weather. But
one day, after the pipe had been driven to a considerable depth and the
rock below had been drilled for six inches, the drill suddenly fell into
a crevice, and upon investigation the hole was found to be nearly full
of petroleum.

The Cove promptly went into a state of acute hysteria. Speculation
spread like the measles, breaking out in all manner of queer and
unexpected places. Everybody who could command a dollar promptly
converted it into oil stock. Miss Jim Fenton borrowed money from her
cousin in the city, and plunged recklessly; the Missionary Band raffled
off three quilts and bought a share with the proceeds; Mr. Tucker
foreclosed two mortgages on life-long friends in order to raise more
money; while the amount of stock purchased by Mr. D. Webster Opp was
limited only by his credit at the bank.

The one note of warning that was sounded came from Mrs. Fallows, who sat
on the porch of Your Hotel, and, like the Greek Chorus, foretold the
disasters that would befall, and prophesied nothing but evil for the
entire enterprise. Even the urbane Jimmy became ruffled by her insistent
iteration, and declared that she "put him in mind of a darned old