The next morning Wallingford requisitioned the services of Bob and the little sorrel team again, and drove out to Jonas Bubble’s swamp. Arrived there he climbed the fence, and, taking a sliver of fence rail with him, gravely prodded into the edge of the swamp in various places, hauling it up in each case dripping with viscid black mud, which he examined with the most minute care, dropping tiny drops upon the backs of clean cards and spreading them out smoothly with the tip of his finger, while he looked up into the sky inquiringly, not one gesture of his conduct lost upon the curious Bob.

When he climbed back into the buggy, Bob, finding it impossible longer to restrain his quivering curiosity, asked him:

“What’s it good for?”

“I can’t tell you just yet,” said Wallingford kindly, “but if it is what I think it is, Bob, I’ve [Pg 252]made a great discovery, one that I am sure will not only increase my wealth but add greatly to the riches of Blakeville. Do you know where I could find Jonas Bubble at this hour?”

“Down at the mill, sure.”

“Drive down there.”

As they drove past Jonas Bubble’s house they saw Miss Fannie on the back porch, in an old wrapper, peeling potatoes, and heard the sharp voice of the second Mrs. Bubble scolding her.

“Say,” said Bob, “if that old rip was my stepmother I’d poke her head-first into that swamp back yonder.”

Wallingford shook his head.

“She’d turn it black,” he gravely objected.

“Why, it is black,” protested Bob, opening his eyes in bewilderment.

In reply to this Wallingford merely chuckled. Bob, regarding him in perplexity for a while, suddenly saw that this was a joke, and on the way to the mill he snickered a score of times. Queer chap, this Wallingford; rich, no doubt, and smart as a whip; and something mysterious about him, too!

Wallingford found Jonas Bubble in flour-sifted garments in his office, going over a dusty file of bills.

[Pg 253]

“Mr. Bubble,” said he, “I have been down to your swamp and have investigated its possibilities. I am now prepared, since I have secured the right to purchase this land, to confide to you the business search in which I have for some time been engaged, and which now, I hope, is concluded. Do you know, Mr. Bubble, the valuable deposit I think I have found in my swamp?”

“No!” ejaculated Bubble, stricken solemn by the confidential tone. “What is it?”

Wallingford took a long breath, swelling out his already broad chest, and, leaning over most impressively, tapped his compelling finger upon Jonas Bubble’s knee. Then said he, with almost tragic earnestness:

“Black Mud!”

Jonas Bubble drew back astounded, eying Wallingford with affrighted incredulity. He had thought this young man sane.

“Black—” he gasped; “black—” and then hesitated.

“Mud!” finished Wallingford for him, more impressively than before. “High and low, far and near, Mr. Bubble, I have searched for a deposit of this sort. Wherever there was a swamp I have been, [Pg 254]but never until I came to Blakeville did I find what I believe to be the correct quality of black mud.”

“Black mud,” repeated Jonas Bubble meaninglessly, but awed in spite of himself.

“Etruscan black mud,” corrected Wallingford. “The same rare earth out of which the world famous Etruscan pottery is manufactured in the little village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy. The smallest objects of this beautiful jet-black pottery retail in this country from ten dollars upward. With your permission I am going to express some samples of this deposit to the world-famous pottery designer, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, formerly in charge of the Etruscan Pottery, but who is now in Boston waiting with feverish impatience for me to find a suitable deposit of this rare black mud. If I have at last found it, Mr. Bubble, I wish to congratulate you and Blakeville, as well as myself, upon the acquisition of an enterprise which will not only reflect vast credit on your charming and progressive little town, but will bring it a splendid accession of wealth.”

Mr. Bubble rose from his chair and shook hands with young Wallingford in great, though pompous, emotion.

“My son,” said he, “go right ahead. Take all [Pg 255]of it you want—that is,” he hastily corrected himself, “all you need for experimental purposes.” For, he reflected, there was no need to waste any of the rare and valuable Etruscan black mud. “I think I’ll go with you.”

“I’d be pleased to have you,” said Wallingford, as, indeed, he was.

On the way, Wallingford stopped at Hen Moozer’s General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office, where he bought a large tin pail with a tight cover, a small tin pail and a long-handled garden trowel which he bent at right angles; and seven people walked off of Hen Moozer’s porch into the middle of the street to see the town magnate and the resplendent stranger, driven by the elated Bob Ranger, whirl down Maple Street toward Jonas Bubble’s swamp.

Arrived there, who so active in direction as Jonas Bubble?

“Bob,” he ordered, protruding his girth at least three inches beyond its normal position, “hitch those horses and jump over in the field here with us. Mr. Wallingford, you will want this sample from somewhere near the center of the swamp. Bob, back yonder beyond that clump of bushes you will find [Pg 256]that old flatboat we had right after the big rainy season. Hunt around down there for a long pole and pole out some place near the middle. Take this shovel and dig down and get mud enough to fill these two buckets.”

Bob stood unimpressed. It was not an attractive task.

“And Bob,” added Wallingford mildly, “here’s a dollar, and I know where there’s another.”

“Sure,” said Bob with the greatest of alacrity, and he hurried back to where the old flatboat, water-soaked and nearly as black as the swamp upon which it rested, was half submerged beyond the clump of bushes. When, after infinite labor, he had pushed that clumsy craft afloat upon the bosom of the shallow swamp, Mr. Bubble was on the spot with infinite direction. He told Bob, shouting from the shore, just where to proceed and how, down to the handling of each trowelful of dripping mud, and even to the emptying of each small pailful into the large pail.

“I don’t know exactly how I’ll get this boxed for shipping,” hinted Wallingford, as Bob carried the pail laboriously back to the buggy.

“Right down at the mill,” invited Mr. Bubble with [Pg 257]great cordiality. “I’ll have my people look after it for you.”

“That’s very kind of you,” replied Wallingford. “I’ll give you the address,” and upon the back of one of his own cards he wrote: Sig. Vittoreo Matteo, 710 Marabon Building, Boston, Mass., U. S. A., care Horace G. Daw.

That night he wrote a careful letter of explanation to Horace G. Daw.

Two weeks to wait. Oh, well, Wallingford could amuse himself by working up a local reputation. It was while he was considering this, upon the following day, that a farmer with three teeth drove up in a dilapidated spring-wagon drawn by a pair of beautiful bay horses, and stopped in front of Jim Ranger’s livery and sales stable to talk hay. Wallingford, sitting in front of th............