“But I do tell you. Well, uncle was considerably puzzled. He had never struck anything like that before. All at once, glancing down, he saw his dog was advancing to the cliff. Presently, the creature seized a fragment that had been blasted to some distance, and began devouring it. Imagine my uncle’s astonishment to find that the cliff seemingly was edible. He investigated, and found that his blast had miraculously uncovered a deposit of unknown extent of the very finest kind of corned beef.”
“Didn’t he find a ketchup well or a mustard spring close by?” asked Merritt seriously.
“No; uncle was a very truthful man. If he had found anything like that, he’d have mentioned it. But he didn’t.”
“But the explanation,” urged the scientific-minded Paul, “how did he ever account for it?”
“Why, an inquiry showed that years before there had been an earthquake there, and a band of cattle had been swallowed up, and it so happened that they were immersed in a salt mine. Thus, a very fine stratum of corned beef was formed, which only awaited my uncle’s coming to be given to a grateful public.”
“You say that this all happened to your uncle?” asked Paul somewhat suspiciously.
“Really happened to him?” insisted Paul, who had detected a suspicious quiver on Tubby’s lips.
“Yes, indeed. It happened to him just before he fell out of bed.”
A shout of laughter went up then, echoing and ringing among the rafters. Paul good-naturedly joined in it, though the merriment was at his own expense, but his laughter was suddenly checked. There was a small window in one side of the place, and, peering through this aperture, Paul had just detected a face. It was a countenance that was familiar to him, and seemed to be taking the utmost interest in the details of his invention.
“What’s the matter, Paul?” asked Rob, checking his mirth, as he saw the younger lad’s eyes fixed upon the window-pane.
“I—I saw a face there, an instant ago,” stuttered Paul. “It was looking in on us, but it instantly vanished.”
“A face! Gee, whiz! who could it have been?” exclaimed Tubby.
“I don’t know,” rejoined Paul, “but I kind of thought I recognized it for the minute that I saw it.”
“Freeman Hunt, that fellow who used to——”
But the others had shot out of the barn at top speed.