d Mrs. Bubble scolding her.

"Say," said Bob, "if that old rip was my stepmother I'd poke her
head-first into that swamp back yonder."

Wallingford shook his head.

"She'd turn it black," he gravely objected.

"Why, it is black," protested Bob, opening his eyes in bewilderment.

In reply to this Wallingford merely chuckled. Bob, regarding him in
perplexity for a while, suddenly saw that this was a joke, and on the
way to the mill he snickered a score of times. Queer chap, this
Wallingford; rich, no doubt, and smart as a whip; and something
mysterious about him, too!

Wallingford found Jonas Bubble in flour-sifted garments in his office,
going over a dusty file of bills.

"Mr. Bubble," said he, "I have been down to your swamp and have
investigated its possibilities. I am now prepared, since I have
secured the right to purchase this land, to confide to you the
business search in which I have for some time been engaged, and which
now, I hope, is concluded. Do you know, Mr. Bubble, the valuable
deposit I think I have found in my swamp?"

"No!" ejaculated Bubble, stricken solemn by the confidential tone.
"What is it?"

Wallingford took a long breath, swelling out his already broad chest,
and, leaning over most impressively, tapped his compelling finger upon
Jonas Bubble's knee. Then said he, with almost tragic earnestness:

"_Black Mud!_"

Jonas Bubble drew back astounded, eying Wallingford with affrighted
incredulity. He had thought this young man sane.

"Black--" he gasped; "black--" and then hesitated.

"_Mud!_" finished Wallingford for him, more impressively than before.
"High and low, far and near, Mr. Bubble, I have searched for a deposit
of this sort. Wherever there was a swamp I have been, but never until
I came to Blakeville did I find what I believe to be the correct
quality of black mud."

"Black mud," repeated Jonas Bubble meaninglessly, but awed in spite of
himself.

"_Etruscan_ black mud," corrected Wallingford. "The same rare earth
out of which the world famous Etruscan pottery is manufactured in the
little village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy. The smallest objects of
this beautiful jet-black pottery retail in this country from ten
dollars upward. With your permission I am going to express some
samples of this deposit to the world-famous pottery designer, Signor
Vittoreo Matteo, formerly in charge of the Etruscan Pottery, but who
is now in Boston waiting with feverish impatience for me to