Katherine shook her head in a dubious fashion, saying:  “I will talk to the others about it if you wish, but I do not think it will make any difference; we must just go on as we are doing, and make the best of things as they are.  Of course I don’t know much about business, except what I have picked up anyhow, for my profession is teaching; but we have done very well since the work has been dumped into our hands, and our profits this year are in excess of any preceding one’s.”

“That is very encouraging.  But then you would succeed in anything you undertook, because you put your whole heart into it, and that is the secret of success,” Mr. Selincourt said warmly.  After a momentary hesitation he went on:  “Mind you, this is a business offer that I am making you, and even though I might give you double or treble what your land would fetch in the open market at the present time, I should still look to get a fifty-per-cent return on my invested capital, although I suppose it is very unbusinesslike of me to tell you so.”

“But how would you do it?” demanded Katherine.

“My dear young lady, I believe there is a fortune in every acre of ground on either side of the river,” said Mr. Selincourt excitedly.  “Mary is keen on geology, as you know, and I have studied minerals pretty closely.  We have found abundant traces of iron, of copper, and of coal.  Now, the last is more important than the other two, for without it they would be practically useless, so far from civilization; but with it they may be worked to immense advantage.”

“Would not the working be rather costly at the first?” Katherine asked, with a sensation as if her breath were being taken away.

“Doubtless!  It has already been proved, over and over again, that if you want to get a fortune from under the earth you must first put a fortune in it,” he replied.

“But suppose, after you had put it in, you found yourself disappointed in your returns—­discovered, perhaps, that there was no fortune awaiting you in the ground after all?  What would you do then?—­for of course you could not get back what you had spent,” said Katherine, with an air of amusement, for to her the statement of there being a fortune in every acre of that barren ground sounded like fiction pure and simple.

“In that case I should probably have to take off my coat, roll up my sleeves, and go to work to earn a living for myself and Mary; but I am not afraid of having to do it just yet,” he answered, laughing.  Then as a customer entered the store he went off to talk to ’Duke Radford, who was sitting outside in the sun, and Katherine did not see him again that evening.