exceptionally fine." Stoddard had got out
the letter now and was glancing over it. "They're sending down an
expert, and you and I will go up with him as soon as he gets here. There
are likely to be other valuable minerals as by-products in a nickel
mine. And we want to build an ideal mining village, as well as model
cotton mills. Oh, we've got the work cut out for us and laid right to
hand! If we don't do our little share toward solving some problems, it
will be strange."

"Cur'us how things turns out in this world," the old man ruminated.
"Ever sence I was a little chap settin' on my granddaddy's knees by the
hearth--big hickory fire a-roarin' up the chimbly, wind a-goin' 'whooh!'
overhead, an' me with my eyes like saucers a-listenin' to his tales of
the silver mine that the Injuns had--ever sence that time I've hunted
that thar mine." He laughed chucklingly, deep in his throat. "Thar
wasn't a wild-catter that could have a hideout safe from me. They just
had to trust me. I crawled into every hole. I came mighty near seein'
the end of every cave--but one. And that cave was the one whar my Mammy
kept her milk and butter--the springhouse whar they put you in prison.
Somehow, I never did think about goin' to the end of that. Looked like
it was too near home to have a silver mine in it; and thar the stuff lay
and waited for the day when I should take a notion to find a pretty rock
for Deanie, and crawl back in thar and keep a crawlin', till I just fell
over it, all croppin' out in the biggest kind of vein."

Gray had heard Uncle Pros tell the story many times, but it had a
perennial charm.

"Then I lost six months--plumb lost 'em, you know. And time I come to
myself, Johnnie an' me was a-huntin' for you. And there we found you
shut in that thar same cave; and I was so tuck up with that matter that
I never once thought, till I got you home, to wonder did Buckheath and
the rest of 'em know that they'd penned you in the silver mine. I ain't
never asked you, but you'd have knowed if they had."

"I should have known anything that Rudd Dawson or Groner or Venters
knew," Gray said, "but I'm not sure about Buckheath or Himes. However,
Himes is dead, and Buckheath--I don't suppose anybody in Cottonville
will ever see him again."

Pros's face changed instantly. He leaned abruptly forward and laid a
hand on the other's knee.

"That's exactly what I came down here to speak with you about, Gray," he
said. "They've fetched Shade B