first name, and this time
his own name was good to his ears.

"Yes, June," he said soberly. "Not for some time, maybe--but I'm coming
back again, sure." She smiled then with both lips and eyes--radiantly.

"I'll be lookin' fer ye," she said simply.

VI

The old man went with him up the creek and, passing the milk house,
turned up a brush-bordered little branch in which the engineer saw signs
of coal. Up the creek the mountaineer led him some thirty yards above
the water level and stopped. An entry had been driven through the
rich earth and ten feet within was a shining bed of coal. There was no
parting except two inches of mother-of-coal--midway, which would make it
but easier to mine. Who had taught that old man to open coal in such a
way--to make such a facing? It looked as though the old fellow were in
some scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, he
saw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the coal,
star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel coal--it was
"bird's-eye" cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly he was the cautious
man of business, alert, cold, uncommunicative.

"That looks like a pretty good--" he drawled the last two words--"vein
of coal. I'd like to take a sample over to the Gap and analyze it." His
hammer, which he always carried--was in his saddle pockets, but he did
not have to go down to his horse. There were pieces on the ground that
would suit his purpose, left there, no doubt, by his predecessor.

"Now I reckon you know that I know why you came over hyeh."

Hale started to answer, but he saw it was no use.

"Yes--and I'm coming again--for the same reason."

"Shore--come agin and come often."

The little girl was standing on the porch as he rode past the milk
house. He waved his hand to her, but she did not move nor answer. What a
life for a child--for that keen-eyed, sweet-faced child! But that coal,
cannel, rich as oil, above water, five feet in thickness, easy to mine,
with a solid roof and perhaps self-drainage, if he could judge from the
dip of the vein: and a market everywhere--England, Spain, Italy, Brazil.
The coal, to be sure, might not be persistent--thirty yards within it
might change in quality to ordinary bituminous coal, but he could settle
that only with a steam drill. A steam drill! He would as well ask for
the wagon that he had long ago hitched to a star; and then there might
be a fault in the formation. Bu