Philip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share in the bringing about of the calamity.

“You must not look at it so!” Mr. Bolton wrote him.  “You have neither helped nor hindered—­but you know you may help by and by.  It would have all happened just so, if we had never begun to dig that hole.  That is only a drop.  Work away.  I still have hope that something will occur to relieve me.  At any rate we must not give up the mine, so long as we have any show.”

Alas! the relief did not come.  New misfortunes came instead.  When the extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed there was no more hope that Mr. Bolton could extricate himself, and he had, as an honest man, no resource except to surrender all his property for the benefit of his creditors.

The Autumn came and found Philip working with diminished force but still with hope.  He had again and again been encouraged by good “indications,” but he had again and again been disappointed.  He could not go on much longer, and almost everybody except himself had thought it was useless to go on as long as he had been doing.

When the news came of Mr. Bolton’s failure, of course the work stopped.  The men were discharged, the tools were housed, the hopeful noise of pickman and driver ceased, and the mining camp had that desolate and mournful aspect which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise.

Philip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he were buried in them.  How distant Ruth was now from him, now, when she might need him most.  How changed was all the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for the exemplification of happiness and prosperity.

He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain.  He made a picture of himself living there a hermit in a shanty by the tunnel, digging away with solitary pick and wheelbarrow, day after day and year after year, until he grew gray and aged, and was known in all that region as the old man of the mountain.  Perhaps some day—­he felt it must be so some day—­he should strike coal.  But what if he did?  Who would be alive to care for it then?  What would he care for it then?  No, a man wants riches in his youth, when the world is fresh to him.  He wondered why Providence could not have reversed the usual process, and let the majority of men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor when they no longer needed it.

Harry went back to the city.  It was evident that his services were no longer needed.  Indeed, he had letters from his uncle, which he did not read to Philip, desiring him to go to San Francisco to look after some government contracts in the harbor there.

Philip had to look about him for something to do; he was like Adam; the world was all before him whereto choose.  He made, before he went elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to Philadelphia, painful but yet not without its sweetnesses.  The family had never shown him so much affection before; they all seemed to think his disappointment of more importance than their own misfortune.  And there was that in Ruth’s manner—­in what she gave him and what she withheld—­that would have made a hero of a very much less promising character than Philip Sterling.