“Oh, no,” said Philip, earnestly, “I respect your resolution.  But, Ruth, do you think you would be happier or do more good in following your profession than in having a home of your own?”

“What is to hinder having a home of my, own?”

“Nothing, perhaps, only you never would be in it—­you would be away day and night, if you had any practice; and what sort of a home would that make for your husband?”

“What sort of a home is it for the wife whose husband is always away riding about in his doctor’s gig?”

“Ah, you know that is not fair.  The woman makes the home.”

Philip and Ruth often had this sort of discussion, to which Philip was always trying to give a personal turn.  He was now about to go to Ilium for the season, and he did not like to go without some assurance from Ruth that she might perhaps love him some day; when he was worthy of it, and when he could offer her something better than a partnership in his poverty.

“I should work with a great deal better heart, Ruth,” he said the morning he was taking leave, “if I knew you cared for me a little.”

Ruth was looking down; the color came faintly to her cheeks, and she hesitated.  She needn’t be looking down, he thought, for she was ever so much shorter than tall Philip.

“It’s not much of a place, Ilium,” Philip went on, as if a little geographical remark would fit in here as well as anything else, “and I shall have plenty of time to think over the responsibility I have taken, and—­” his observation did not seem to be coming out any where.

But Ruth looked up, and there was a light in her eyes that quickened Phil’s pulse.  She took his hand, and said with serious sweetness: 

“Thee mustn’t lose heart, Philip.”  And then she added, in another mood, “Thee knows I graduate in the summer and shall have my diploma.  And if any thing happens—­mines explode sometimes—­thee can send for me.  Farewell.”

The opening of the Ilium coal mine was begun with energy, but without many omens of success.  Philip was running a tunnel into the breast of the mountain, in faith that the coal stratum ran there as it ought to.  How far he must go in he believed he knew, but no one could tell exactly.  Some of the miners said that they should probably go through the mountain, and that the hole could be used for a railway tunnel.  The mining camp was a busy place at any rate.  Quite a settlement of board and log shanties had gone up, with a blacksmith shop, a small machine shop, and a temporary store for supplying the wants of the workmen.  Philip and Harry pitched a commodious tent, and lived in the full enjoyment of the free life.

There is no difficulty in digging a bole in the ground, if you have money enough to pay for the digging, but those who try this sort of work are always surprised at the large amount of money necessary to make a small hole.  The earth is never willing to yield one product, hidden in her bosom, without an equivalent for it.  And when a person asks of her coal, she is quite apt to require gold in exchange.