ct thoroughly comprehended by the returned native.

"It isn't a case of not daring on account of any bodily danger,"
explained Corliss.

"No," Richard smiled reminiscently. "I don't believe that would
have much weight with you if it were. You certainly showed no
symptoms of that sort in your extreme youth. I remember you had
the name of being about the most daring and foolhardy boy in
town."

"I grew up to be cautious enough in business, though," said the
other, shaking his head gravely. "I haven't been able to afford
not being careful." He adjusted the map--a prefatory gesture.
"Now, I'll make this whole affair perfectly clear to you. It's a
simple matter, as are most big things. I'll begin by telling you
of Moliterno--he's been my most intimate friend in that part of
the continent for a great many years; since I went there as a boy,
in fact."

He sketched a portrait of his friend, Prince Moliterno, bachelor
chief of a historic house, the soul of honour, "land-poor"; owning
leagues and leagues of land, hills and mountains, broken towers
and ruins, in central Basilicata, a province described as wild
country and rough, off the rails and not easy to reach. Moliterno
and the narrator had gone there to shoot; Corliss had seen
"surface oil" upon the streams and pools; he recalled the
discovery of oil near his own boyhood home in America; had talked
of it to Moliterno, and both men had become more and more
interested, then excited. They decided to sink a well.

Corliss described picturesquely the difficulties of this
enterprise, the hardships and disappointments; how they dragged
the big tools over the mountains by mule power; how they had kept
it all secret; how he and Moliterno had done everything with the
help of peasant labourers and one experienced man, who had "seen
service in the Persian oil-fields."

He gave the business reality, colouring it with details relevant
and irrelevant, anecdotes and wayside incidents: he was fluent,
elaborate, explicit throughout. They sank five wells, he said, "at
the angles of this irregular pentagon you see here on the map,
outlined in blue. These red circles are the wells." Four of the
wells "came in tremendous," but they had managed to get them
sealed after wasting--he was "sorry to think how many thousand
barrels of oil." The fifth well was so enormous that they had not
been able to seal it at the time of the speaker's departure for
America.

"But I had a cablegram this mo