Every pay day he saw his funds melting away, and still there was only the faintest show of what the miners call "signs." The life suited Harry, whose buoyant hopefulness was never disturbed.
He made endless calculations, which nobody could understand, of the probable position of the vein.

He stood about among the workmen with the busiest air.

When he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer of the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his pipe with the Dutch landlord on the hotel porch, and astonishing the idlers there with the stories of his railroad operations in Missouri.

He talked with the landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and about buying some village lots, in the prospect of a rise, when the mine was opened.

He taught the Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for the summer time, and had a bill at the hotel, the growing length of which Mr.Dusenheimer contemplated with pleasant anticipations.