and Simmons was with him. They are
a pair that will bear watching. I hope they won't play you for a
tenderfoot in this new deal. Last week I took a run up to the mountain
where Ethel Sherman and her mother are spending the summer. Ethel was,
as might be expected, deep in a flirtation with a young idiot in golf
clothes and hardly noticed me. Incidentally I heard that he was possible
heir to millions."

"What an inveterate scoffer Jack is," was Winn's mental comment on this
missive. "He sees no good motive in any one;" and then he re-read the
long and flowery letter from Weston received the same time and
congratulating him on his excellent work. Also notifying him they had as
usual anticipated his pay-roll and expressed sufficient currency to meet
it.

And of the two letters the one from Weston seemed to him just then to be
honest and business-like, and Jack's as but the sneering of a confirmed
cynic.

"They wouldn't be putting good money into this quarry if they did not
see a safe and sure return," he thought, and then he took Ethel
Sherman's letter that had been lying for weeks unanswered on his table
and tore it into shreds.

A few days later he received instructions to make a present of fifty
shares of stock to the minister of Rockhaven church, and to assure him
that the Company donated it for the good of the cause and to show their
cordial interest in the religious welfare of the island. And the Rev.
Jason Bush, who never in his life owned more than the humble roof that
sheltered him, and whose patient wife turned and dyed her raiment until
worthless, marvelled much. And more than that, twenty-four hours had not
passed ere every man, woman, and child on the island had been told it,
for such unexpected, such astounding liberality seemed nothing short of
a miracle.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GROWTH OF A BUBBLE

"Young Hardy's making his mark down on the island," observed J. Malcolm
Weston to his partner that morning when they had received notice of the
stock purchase made by Jess, "and if the fellow keeps on as he has
started the quarry won't stand us out a penny."

"I doubt if he does," responded Mr. Hill, who, be it said, fulfilled the
part of a balance wheel to Weston. "From what you have told me there
aren't many on the island who have any spare money."

"Oh, you can't always tell by the clothes such jays wear how much they
have hid away in old stockings," responded Weston. "Those mossbacks
never spend