For weeks and months the work goes on with unabated energy. Peveril, always willing to listen to advice and never ashamed to ask it from those more experienced than himself, is everywhere, seeing to everything and directing everything. Though he is thinner than when we first met him, and his face has taken on an anxious look, it wears at the same time an expression of greater manliness, self-confidence, and determination.
Major Arkell has not yet appeared on the scene in person, and only the young proprietor is known as the responsible head of all this bewildering activity.
It is bewildering to outsiders to see the long-abandoned "Darrell's Folly" suddenly transformed into one of the busiest mining-camps of the copper region, for as yet no one, except Connell and the Trefethens, knows the secret hopes of the proprietors. Even those who are driving the new side-cut far beneath the surface, straight as a die towards the prehistoric mine, though on a much lower level, know not what they are expected to find.
At length three months have passed since the night on which Peveril sold for ten thousand dollars an undivided half of his interest in the Copper Princess. Since that time he has not once left the scene of his labors, his hopes, and his fears. He has not even visited Red Jacket since the morning, that now seems so long ago, when he left it in charge of a gang of log-wreckers. Now the money put into this new venture is very nearly exhausted. It will hold out for one more pay-day, but that is all. And as yet only barren rock has come up from that yawning shaft that seems to gulp down money with an appetite at once inordinate and insatiable.
A huge pile of rock has accumulated about its mouth. If it were copper rock it would be worth a fortune; as it is, it is worse than worthless, for it contains only disappointed hopes. And yet a point directly beneath the ancient workings has been reached and passed. Is the quest a vain one, after all? Is Peveril's as great a folly as Darrell's ever was? It would seem so; and the young proprietor's heart is heavy within him.
He has just received the letter in which Mary Darrell declares the Copper Princess to be a worthless property. With it in his pocket he visits the mouth of the shaft, intending to descend. As he approaches it, a skip containing several men comes to the surface. When they emerge into daylight they are yelling in delirious excitement. One of them leaps out and runs towards him, shouting incoherently. It is Mike Connell.