"Why, you poor old dotard, there's no oil in these specimens. You can smell
'em yourself if you want to," he said. But there was something in his
manner of the lady who doth protest too much.
"No, I can't," Uncle Henry was swift to deny. "My smeller's no good." He
sniffed comically--as if that proved his point.
"Let _him_ examine them, then," suggested Pell, holding the satchel out to
Gilbert, who stood on the other side of the table.
But Gilbert said nothing. It was Uncle Henry who again blurted out:
"That don't prove nothin'. Mebbe he hasn't found the oil yet. But it's
here! If it ain't, why should you be fightin' so hard to get this rotten
place? Tell me that, will you? Nobody else ever wanted it--except this
kindly neighbor of ours!" He glared at Hardy triumphantly.
Pell was silent. Gilbert came to himself.
"Oil!" he said. "Then this ranch, instead of being worth nothing, would be
worth hundreds of thousand of dollars--maybe millions!" He had taken the
bag from Pell's extended hand, and now turned in dismay and confusion to
the window, and put the bag on a chair. What a world it was, and how
terrible that every other man seemed to be a predatory animal, ready to
spring upon his neighbor and wrest anything he had away from him.
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