John Sargent laughed that curious, inflexible laugh of his.  “Lord, I know all about that,” said he.  “I had some once.  First one thing and then another came up to hinder the working of the mine and the payments of dividends.  First there wasn’t any water, an unprecedented dry season in those parts, oldest inhabitants for evidence.  Then there was too much water, no way to mine except they employed professional divers, everything under water.  Then the transportation was to pay; then, when that was remedied, the ore didn’t come out in shape to transport in the rough and had to be worked up on the premises, and new mills had to be built and new machinery put in, and a few little Irish dividends were collected for that.  Then when they got the mills up and the machinery in, they struck another kind of ore that ought to be transported; then there came a landslide and carried half the road into a canon.  So it went on, one thing and another.  If ever that darned mine had got into working order, right kind of ore, water enough and not too much, roads and machinery all right, and everything swimming, the Day of Judgment would have come.”

“Did you ever get anything out of it?” inquired Andrew.

“Anything out of it?” repeated the other.  “Yes, I got enough worldly wisdom never to buy any more mining stock, after I had paid assessments on it for two years and the whole thing went to pieces.”

“It may come up yet,” said Andrew.

“There’s nothing to come up,” said John Sargent.  He had been away from Rowe a year, but had just returned, and was again boarding with Atkins, and all the family lived on his board money.  Andrew and Nahum Beals were smoking pipes.  Andrew gently, like a philosopher, who smokes that he may dream; Nahum with furious jets and frequent removals of his pipe for scowling speeches.  John Sargent did not smoke at all.  He had left off cigars first, then even his pipe.  He gave the money which he saved thereby to Mrs. Atkins as a bonus on his board money.

The lamp burned dimly in the blue fog of tobacco smoke, and the windows where the curtains were not drawn were blanks of silvery moonlight.  Ellen sat on the doorstep outside and heard the talk.  She did not understand it, nor take much interest in it.  Their minds were fixed upon the way of living, and hers upon life itself.  She could bring her simplicity to bear upon the world-old question of riches and poverty and labor, but this temporal adjunct of stocks and markets was as yet beyond her.  Her mother had gone to her aunt Eva’s and she sat alone out in the wide mystery of the summer night, watching the lovely shift of radiance and shadows, as she might have watched the play of a kaleidoscope, seeing the beauty of the new combinations, and seeing without comprehending the unit which governed them all.  The night was full of cries of insistent life and growth, of birds and insects, of calls of children, and now and then the far-away roar of railroad trains.  It was nearly midsummer.  The year was almost at its height, but had not passed it.  Growth and bloom was still in the ascendant, and had not yet attained that maturity of perfection beyond which is the slope of death.