“I thought your father had offered you five thousand dollars if you would stick it out through, the whole trip?” Keith said.

Ferdy shut one eye slowly and gazed at Gordon with the other.

“Sickness was barred.  I’ll tell the old man I’ve studied.  He’d never drop on to the game.  He is a soft old bird, anyway.”

“Do you mean you are going to lie to him?” asked Gordon.

“Oh, you are sappy!  All fellows lie to their governors,” declared Ferdy, easily.  “Why, I wouldn’t have any fun at all if I did not lie.  You stay with me a bit, my son, and I’ll teach you a few useful things.”

“Thank you.  I have no doubt you are a capable teacher,” sniffed Gordon; “but I think I won’t trouble you.”

That evening, as Keith was coming from his work, he took a cross-cut through the fields and orchard, and under an overshadowing tree he came on Ferdy and Euphronia.  They were so deeply engaged that Keith hastily withdrew and, making a detour, passed around the orchard to the house.

At supper Mrs. Tripper casually inquired of her daughter where she had been, a remark which might have escaped Keith’s observation had not Ferdy Wickersham answered it in some haste.

“She went after the cows,” he said, with a quick look at her, “and I went fishing, but I did not catch anything.”

“I thought, Phrony, I saw you in the orchard,” said her mother.

Wickersham looked at her quickly again.

“No, she wasn’t in the orchard,” he said, “for I was there.”

“No, I wasn’t in the orchard this evening,” said Euphronia.  “I went after the cows.”  She looked down in her plate.

Keith ate the rest of his supper in silence.  He could not tell on Ferdy; that would not be “square.”  He consulted his mentor, his chief, who simply laughed at him.

“Leave ’em alone,” he counselled.  “I guess she knew how to lie before he came.  Ferdy has some sense.  And we are going to leave for the mountains in a little while.  I am only waiting to bring the old squire around.”

Gordon shook his head.

“My father says you mistake his hospitality for yielding,” he said.  “You will never get him to consent to your plan.”

Rhodes laughed.

“Oh, won’t I!  I have had these old countrymen to deal with before.  Just give them time and show them the greenbacks.  He will come around.  Wait until I dangle the shekels before him.”

But Mr. Rhodes found that in that provincial field there were some things stronger than shekels.  And among these were prejudices.  The more the young engineer talked, the more obstinate appeared the old countryman.

“I raise cattle,” he said in final answer to all his eloquence.

“Raise cattle!  You can make more by raising coal in one year than you can by raising cattle all your life.  Why, you have the richest mineral country back here almost in the world,” said the young diplomat, persuasively.