d be very much my pleasure
to help you in realizing your wishes."

"But how?" asked Katherine, who failed to see how her father's
property could be disposed of without consulting him, while he was
in life, and they, his children, were all under age save one.

Mr. Selincourt smiled. "Things can mostly be managed when one
wants them to be done. If you and the others believed it would be
for the good of the family to sell your father's property, we could
bring a doctor up here to certify to his unfitness for business.
Your sister would have to be made acting trustee for the rest of
you, and so the thing would be done."

Katherine shook her head in a dubious fashion, saying: "I will talk
to the others about it if you wish, but I do not think it will make
any difference; we must just go on as we are doing, and make the
best of things as they are. Of course I don't know much about
business, except what I have picked up anyhow, for my profession is
teaching; but we have done very well since the work has been dumped
into our hands, and our profits this year are in excess of any
preceding one's."

"That is very encouraging. But then you would succeed in anything
you undertook, because you put your whole heart into it, and that
is the secret of success," Mr. Selincourt said warmly. After a
momentary hesitation he went on: "Mind you, this is a business
offer that I am making you, and even though I might give you double
or treble what your land would fetch in the open market at the
present time, I should still look to get a fifty-per-cent return on
my invested capital, although I suppose it is very unbusinesslike
of me to tell you so."

"But how would you do it?" demanded Katherine.

"My dear young lady, I believe there is a fortune in every acre of
ground on either side of the river," said Mr. Selincourt excitedly.
"Mary is keen on geology, as you know, and I have studied minerals
pretty closely. We have found abundant traces of iron, of copper,
and of coal. Now, the last is more important than the other two,
for without it they would be practically useless, so far from
civilization; but with it they may be worked to immense advantage."

"Would not the working be rather costly at the first?" Katherine
asked, with a sensation as if her breath were being taken away.

"Doubtless! It has already been proved, over and over again, that
if you want to get a fortune from under the earth you must first
put a fortune in i