“No, I haven’t heard tell of his coming back at all, and I’m mighty sorry and disappointed some, too,” answered Mr. Crabtree with an anxious look coming into his kind eyes.  “I somehow felt sure he would scratch up oil or some kind of pay truck out there in the fields of the Briars.  I shipped a whole box of sand and gravel for him according to a telegram he sent me just last week and I had sorter got my hopes up for a find, specially as that young city fellow came out here and dug another bag full outen the same place not any time after that.  He had a map with him, and I thought he might be a friend of Mr. Mark’s and asked him, but he didn’t answer; never rested to light a pipe, even, so I never found out about him.  I reckon he was just fooling around and I hadn’t oughter hoped on such a light ration.”

“When was it that the man came and prospected?” asked the Senator with a quick gleam coming into his ugly little eyes and the smile veil took on another layer of density, while his hand trembled slightly as he lighted his cigar.

“Oh, about a week ago,” answered Mr. Crabtree.  “But I ain’t got no hopes now for Mr. Tucker and the folks from him.  We’ll all just have to find some way to help them out when the bad time comes.”

“The way will be provided, friend Crabtree,” answered the Senator in an oily tone of voice, but which held nevertheless a decided note of excitement.  “Do you know where I can find Mr. Alloway?  I think I will go have a business talk with him now.”  And in a few minutes the Senator was striding as rapidly as his ponderosity would allow up Providence Road, leaving the garrulous little storekeeper totally unconscious of the fuse he had lighted for the firing of the mine so long dreaded by his friends.

“Well now, Crabbie, don’t bust out and cry into them dried apples jest to swell the price, fer Mis’ Rucker will ketch you sure when she comes to buy ’em for to-morrow’s turnovers,” came in the long drawl of the poet as he dawdled into the door and flung the rusty mail-sack down on to the counter in front of Mr. Crabtree.  “They ain’t a thing in that sack ’cept Miss Rose Mary’s letter, and he must make a light kind of love from the heft of it.  I most let it drop offen the saddle as I jogged along, only I’m a sensitive kind of cupid and the buckle of the bag hit that place on my knee I got sleep-walking last week while I was thinking up that verse that ‘despair’ wouldn’t rhyme with ‘hair’ in for me.  Want me to waft this here missive over to the milk-house to her and kinder pledge his good digestion and such in a glass of her buttermilk?”

“No, I wisht you would stay here in the store for me while I take it over to her myself.  I’ve got some kind of business with her for a few minutes,” answered Mr. Crabtree as he searched out the solitary letter and started to the door with it.  “Sample that new keg of maple drip behind the door there.  The cracker box is open,” he added by way of compensation to the poet for the loss of the buttermilk.