It was exciting work for all concerned in it.  As the tunnel advanced into the rock every day promised to be the golden day.  This very blast might disclose the treasure.

The work went on week after week, and at length during the night as well as the daytime.  Gangs relieved each other, and the tunnel was every hour, inch by inch and foot by foot, crawling into the mountain.  Philip was on the stretch of hope and excitement.  Every pay day he saw his funds melting away, and still there was only the faintest show of what the miners call “signs.”

The life suited Harry, whose buoyant hopefulness was never disturbed.  He made endless calculations, which nobody could understand, of the probable position of the vein.  He stood about among the workmen with the busiest air.  When he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer of the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his pipe with the Dutch landlord on the hotel porch, and astonishing the idlers there with the stories of his railroad operations in Missouri.  He talked with the landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and about buying some village lots, in the prospect of a rise, when the mine was opened.  He taught the Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for the summer time, and had a bill at the hotel, the growing length of which Mr. Dusenheimer contemplated with pleasant anticipations.  Mr. Brierly was a very useful and cheering person wherever he went.

Midsummer arrived:  Philip could report to Mr. Bolton only progress, and this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious.  Philip himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out before the coal was struck.

At this time Harry was summoned to New York, to attend the trial of Laura Hawkins.  It was possible that Philip would have to go also, her lawyer wrote, but they hoped for a postponement.  There was important evidence that they could not yet obtain, and he hoped the judge would not force them to a trial unprepared.  There were many reasons for a delay, reasons which of course are never mentioned, but which it would seem that a New York judge sometimes must understand, when he grants a postponement upon a motion that seems to the public altogether inadequate.

Harry went, but he soon came back.  The trial was put off.  Every week we can gain, said the learned counsel, Braham, improves our chances.  The popular rage never lasts long.

CHAPTER XLIX.

“We’ve struck it!”

This was the announcement at the tent door that woke Philip out of a sound sleep at dead of night, and shook all the sleepiness out of him in a trice.

“What!  Where is it?  When?  Coal?  Let me see it.  What quality is it?” were some of the rapid questions that Philip poured out as he hurriedly dressed.  “Harry, wake up, my boy, the coal train is coming.  Struck it, eh?  Let’s see?”