not yet tell with absolute certainty what the vein was. The prospecting
was still going on. Philip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter
may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning anthracite. He
needed no artificial heat to warm his pen and kindle his ardor when he
sat down to write to Ruth. But it must be confessed that the words never
flowed so easily before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the
extravagance of his imagination. When Ruth read it, she doubted if the
fellow had not gone out of his senses. And it was not until she reached
the postscript that she discovered the cause of the exhilaration.
"P. S.--We have found coal."

The news couldn't have come to Mr. Bolton in better time. He had never
been so sorely pressed. A dozen schemes which he had in hand, any one
of which might turn up a fortune, all languished, and each needed just
a little more, money to save that which had been invested. He hadn't
a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the
wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no
marketable value above the incumbrance on it.

He had come home that day early, unusually dejected.

"I am afraid," he said to his wife, "that we shall have to give up our
house. I don't care for myself, but for thee and the children."

"That will be the least of misfortunes," said Mrs. Bolton, cheerfully,
"if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety, which is wearing thee
out, we can live any where. Thee knows we were never happier than when
we were in a much humbler home."

"The truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's has come on me
just when I couldn't stand another ounce. They have made another failure
of it. I might have known they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I
don't know which, have contrived to involve me for three times as much as
the first obligation. The security is in my hands, but it is good for
nothing to me. I have not the money to do anything with the contract."

Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise. She had long felt
that they were living on a volcano, that might go in to active operation
at any hour. Inheriting from her father an active brain and the courage
to undertake new things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which
blinds one to difficulties and possible failures. She had little
confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift her father
out of all his e