s. I set to work and I got a
man down from Boston; and I carried him out to the farm, and he
analysed it--made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and
we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the
Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in the ore
showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he
found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. of the
peroxide of iron."

Lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort of reverent
satisfaction, as if awed through his pride by a little lingering
uncertainty as to what peroxide was. He accented it as if it were
purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley had to get him to spell it.

"Well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note of the
percentage.

"What then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set down and told
me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he, 'that's going to drive every
other mineral paint out of the market. Why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em
right into the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what the Back Bay
was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em open before,
but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint has got hydraulic cement in
it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;' he named over a lot of
things. Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you want
to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going to crack nor fade any;
and it ain't a-going to scale. When you've got your arrangements for
burning it properly, you're going to have a paint that will stand like
the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' Then he went
into a lot of particulars, and I begun to think he was drawing a
long-bow, and meant to make his bill accordingly. So I kept pretty
cool; but the fellow's bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said I
might pay him after I got going; young chap, and pretty easy; but every
word he said was gospel. Well, I ain't a-going to brag up my paint; I
don't suppose you came here to hear me blow."

"Oh yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want. Tell all there is
to tell, and I can boil it down afterward. A man can't make a greater
mistake with a reporter than to hold back anything out of modesty. It
may be the very thing we want to know. What we want is the whole
truth; and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can
temper almost any statement."

Lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone, an