What should he do with that swamp? As he thought of it, his mind's eye could see only its blackness. It was, after all, only a ma.s.s of dense, sticky, black mud!

Still revolving this problem in mind, Wallingford went to his bedroom, where he had scarcely arrived when Bob Ranger followed him, his sleeves rolled up again and a pail of steaming water in each hand.

"The old man said you was to have a bath when you come in," stated Bob. "How hot do you want it?"

"I think I'll let it go till morning and have it cold," replied Wallingford, chuckling.

"All right," said Bob. "It's your funeral and not mine. I'll just pour this in now and it'll get cool by morning."

In the next room--wherein the bed had been hastily replaced by two chairs, an old horsehair lounge and a kitchen table covered with a red table-cloth--Wallingford found a huge tin bath-tub, shaped like an elongated coal scuttle, dingy white on the inside and dingy green on the outside, and battered full of dents.

"How'd you get along?" asked Bob, pausing to wipe the perspiration from his brow after he had emptied the two pails of water into the tub.

"All right," said Wallingford with a reminiscent smile.

"Old Mrs. Bubble drive you off the place?"

"No," replied Wallingford loftily. "I went in the house and talked a while."

"Go on!" exclaimed Bob, the glow of admiration almost shining through his skin. "Say, you're a peach, all right! How do you like Fannie?"

"She's a very nice girl," opined Wallingford.

"Yes," agreed Bob. "She's getting a little old, though. She was twenty her last birthday. She'll be an old maid pretty soon, but it's her own fault."

Then Bob went after more water, and Wallingford, seating himself at the table with paper and pencil, plunged into a succession of rambling figures concerning Jonas Bubble's black swamp; and he figured and puzzled far into the night, with the piquant face of Miss Fannie drifting here and there among the figures.

CHAPTER XIX

WHEREIN BLAKEVILLE HAS OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME A GREAT ART CENTER

The next morning Wallingford requisitioned the services of Bob and the little sorrel team again, and drove out to Jonas Bubble's swamp.

Arrived there he climbed the fence, and, taking a sliver of fence rail with him, gravely prodded into the edge of the swamp in various places, hauling it up in each case dripping with viscid black mud, which he examined with the most minute care, dropping tiny drops upon the backs of clean cards and spreading them out smoothly with the tip of his finger, while he looked up into the sky inquiringly, not one gesture of his conduct lost upon the curious Bob.

When he climbed back into the buggy, Bob, finding it impossible longer to restrain his quivering curiosity, asked him:

"What's it good for?"

"I can't tell you just yet," said Wallingford kindly, "but if it is what I think it is, Bob, I've made a great discovery, one that I am sure will not only increase my wealth but add greatly to the riches of Blakeville. Do you know where I could find Jonas Bubble at this hour?"

"Down at the mill, sure."

"Drive down there."

As they drove past Jonas Bubble's house they saw Miss Fannie on the back porch, in an old wrapper, peeling potatoes, and heard the sharp voice of the second Mrs. Bubble scolding her.

"Say," said Bob, "if that old rip was my stepmother I'd poke her head-first into that swamp back yonder."

Wallingford shook his head.

"She'd turn it black," he gravely objected.

"Why, it is black," protested Bob, opening his eyes in bewilderment.

In reply to this Wallingford merely chuckled. Bob, regarding him in perplexity for a while, suddenly saw that this was a joke, and on the way to the mill he snickered a score of times. Queer chap, this Wallingford; rich, no doubt, and smart as a whip; and something mysterious about him, too!

Wallingford found Jonas Bubble in flour-sifted garments in his office, going over a dusty file of bills.

"Mr. Bubble," said he, "I have been down to your swamp and have investigated its possibilities. I am now prepared, since I have secured the right to purchase this land, to confide to you the business search in which I have for some time been engaged, and which now, I hope, is concluded. Do you know, Mr. Bubble, the valuable deposit I think I have found in my swamp?"

"No!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bubble, stricken solemn by the confidential tone.

"What is it?"

Wallingford took a long breath, swelling out his already broad chest, and, leaning over most impressively, tapped his compelling finger upon Jonas Bubble's knee. Then said he, with almost tragic earnestness:

"_Black Mud!_"

Jonas Bubble drew back astounded, eying Wallingford with affrighted incredulity. He had thought this young man sane.

"Black--" he gasped; "black--" and then hesitated.

"_Mud!_" finished Wallingford for him, more impressively than before.

"High and low, far and near, Mr. Bubble, I have searched for a deposit of this sort. Wherever there was a swamp I have been, but never until I came to Blakeville did I find what I believe to be the correct quality of black mud."

"Black mud," repeated Jonas Bubble meaninglessly, but awed in spite of himself.

"_Etruscan_ black mud," corrected Wallingford. "The same rare earth out of which the world famous Etruscan pottery is manufactured in the little village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy. The smallest objects of this beautiful jet-black pottery retail in this country from ten dollars upward. With your permission I am going to express some samples of this deposit to the world-famous pottery designer, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, formerly in charge of the Etruscan Pottery, but who is now in Boston waiting with feverish impatience for me to find a suitable deposit of this rare black mud. If I have at last found it, Mr. Bubble, I wish to congratulate you and Blakeville, as well as myself, upon the acquisition of an enterprise which will not only reflect vast credit on your charming and progressive little town, but will bring it a splendid accession of wealth."

Mr. Bubble rose from his chair and shook hands with young Wallingford in great, though pompous, emotion.

"My son," said he, "go right ahead. Take all of it you want--that is," he hastily corrected himself, "all you need for experimental purposes." For, he reflected, there was no need to waste any of the rare and valuable Etruscan black mud. "I think I'll go with you."

"I'd be pleased to have you," said Wallingford, as, indeed, he was.

On the way, Wallingford stopped at Hen Moozer's General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office, where he bought a large tin pail with a tight cover, a small tin pail and a long-handled garden trowel which he bent at right angles; and seven people walked off of Hen Moozer's porch into the middle of the street to see the town magnate and the resplendent stranger, driven by the elated Bob Ranger, whirl down Maple Street toward Jonas Bubble's swamp.

Arrived there, who so active in direction as Jonas Bubble?

"Bob," he ordered, protruding his girth at least three inches beyond its normal position, "hitch those horses and jump over in the field here with us. Mr. Wallingford, you will want this sample from somewhere near the center of the swamp. Bob, back yonder beyond that clump of bushes you will find that old flatboat we had right after the big rainy season. Hunt around down there for a long pole and pole out some place near the middle. Take this shovel and dig down and get mud enough to fill these two buckets."

Bob stood unimpressed. It was not an attractive task.

"And Bob," added Wallingford mildly, "here's a dollar, and I know where there's another."