Jim effected his purpose, and returned before light the next morning, and on the following day he took Mr. Balfour and Thede down the river, and delivered them to the man whom he found waiting for them.  The programme was carried out in all its details, and two days afterward the two boys were sitting side by side in the railway-car that was hurrying them toward the great city.

CHAPTER XI.

WHICH RECORDS MR. BELCHER’S CONNECTION WITH A GREAT SPECULATION AND BRINGS TO A CLOSE HIS RESIDENCE IN SEVENOAKS.

Whither was he going?  He had a little fortune in his pockets—­more money than prudent men are in the habit of carrying with them—­and a scheme in his mind.  After the purchase of Palgrave’s Folly, and the inauguration of a scale of family expenditure far surpassing all his previous experience, Mr. Belcher began to feel poor, and to realize the necessity of extending his enterprise.  To do him justice, he felt that he had surpassed the proprieties of domestic life in taking so important a step as that of changing his residence without consulting Mrs. Belcher.  He did not wish to meet her at once; so it was easy for him, when he left New York, to take a wide diversion on his way home.

For several months the reports of the great oil discoveries of Pennsylvania had been floating through the press.  Stories of enormous fortunes acquired in a single week, and even in a single day, were rife; and they had excited his greed with a strange power.  He had witnessed, too, the effect of these stories upon the minds of the humble people of Sevenoaks.  They were uneasy in their poverty, and were in the habit of reading with avidity all the accounts that emanated from the new center of speculation.  The monsters of the sea had long been chased into the ice, and the whalers had returned with scantier fares year after year; but here was light for the world.  The solid ground itself was echoing with the cry:  “Here she blows!” and “There she blows!” and the long harpoons went down to its vitals, and were fairly lifted out by the pressure of the treasure that impatiently waited for deliverance.

Mr. Belcher had long desired to have a hand in this new business.  To see a great speculation pass by without yielding him any return was very painful to him.  During his brief stay in New York he had been approached by speculators from the new field of promise; and had been able by his quick wit and ready business instinct to ascertain just the way in which money was made and was to be made.  He dismissed them all, for he had the means in his hands of starting nearer the sources of profit than themselves, and to be not only one of the “bottom ring,” but to be the bottom man.  No moderate profit and no legitimate income would satisfy him.  He would gather the investments of the multitude into his own capacious pockets, or he would have nothing to do with the matter.  He would sweep the board, fairly or foully, or he would not play.