thought it was all in appreciation of his
story, and blandly continued:

"I think when we broke up that night, the rest of them must have
wondered among themselves why they had been such fools as to invite
me. But I was only anxious for the time to come to go down into that
mine. It was a property which the company had bought when it was
nothing but a prospect, but which had then possessed every indication
of being a wonderful producer of very rich ore, and it was supposed
that with a little further development it would make a very fine
property. The company had immediately proceeded to develop the mine,
following the vein, as they supposed, for several hundred feet, but it
did not amount to anything worth speaking of. Occasionally they would
find croppings of very rich ore, but no true vein, and they had
finally determined to call in one or two experts, and after an
examination, decide whether it was worth the expenditure of any more
money, or whether it had better be abandoned.

"Well, aside from having received a fine education in this branch
of science, I had worked a good deal in some of old Nature's
laboratories, and was more familiar with these things than they
thought. I knew, from their talk, that they were not following the
course of the vein, though they thought they were, but of course, I
said nothing of that kind; I was playing green.

"The next day we went down into the mine, and I found just what I
expected to find; that they were simply following a false lead, and in
reality, going farther and farther from the vein every move they made.
There was the original vein to start with, and they had struck a false
lead close beside it, and were going down; digging down lower and
lower, while the true vein was right over their heads, and those
miners and that confounded expert that knew so much more than I did,
didn't any of them know enough just to look up there and see it. Why,
near the point where they had first started, I could see the ore
shining in places over my head, and there were croppings of it all
along.

"Well, to make a long story short, I advised them to stick to the
mine, and the expert advised them to abandon it. A little while
afterward, I asked them what they would take for the mine; of course
they thought that an additional proof of my greenness that I should
talk of buying it, but I hung on, not appearing very anxious about it
of course, for then they might suspect something. You won't b