He paused before putting away the pick and shovel he had been using, and found occasion for yet another artistic sweep of his trowel, which made the new surface precisely flush with the surrounding floor. At this moment of supreme concentration the porch door upstairs slammed with the report of a minor piece of artillery, which, appropriately enough, caused Dr. Rankin to jump as if he had been shot.

The Doctor lifted a frowning face and an attentive ear. He heard two pairs of heavy feet clump across the resonant floor of the porch. He heard the house door opened and the visitors enter the hall, with which his cellar communicated by a short flight of steps. He heard whistling and then the voices of Buck and Bud crying, “Doc! Hi, Doc! They’re biting!”

Whether the Doctor was not inclined for fishing that day, or whether, like others of his large and heavy type, he experienced an especially sharp, unsociable reaction on being suddenly startled, or whether he was merely anxious to finish undisturbed the job in hand and proceed to more important duties, he did not respond immediately to the inviting outcry of his friends. Instead, he listened while it ran its natural course, dying down at last into a puzzled and fretful dialogue.

“I guess he’s out.”

“I’ll write a note—say we’re at the creek, to come on down.”

“We could tell Irene.”

“But she’s not here, either. You’d think she’d be around.”

“Ought to be, by the look of the place.”

“You said it, Bud. Just look at this table. You could write your name—”

“Sh-h-h! Look!”

Evidently the last speaker had noticed that the cellar door was ajar and that a light was shining below. Next moment the door was pushed wide open and Bud and Buck looked down.

“Why, Doc! There you are!”

“Didn’t you hear us yelling?”

The Doctor, not too pleased at what he had overheard, nevertheless smiled his rather wooden smile as his two friends made their way down the steps. “I thought I heard someone,” he said.

“We were bawling our heads off,” Buck said. “Thought nobody was home. Where’s Irene?”

“Visiting,” said the Doctor. “She’s gone visiting.”

“Hey, what goes on?” said Bud. “What are you doing? Burying one of your patients, or what?”

“Oh, there’s been water seeping up through the floor,” said the Doctor. “I figured it might be some spring opened up or something.”

“You don’t say!” said Bud, assuming instantly the high ethical standpoint of the realtor. “Gee, Doc, I sold you this property. Don’t say I fixed you up with a dump where there’s an underground spring.”

“There was water,” said the Doctor.

“Yes, but, Doc, you can look on that geological map the Kiwanis Club got up. There’s not a better section of subsoil in the town.”

“Looks like he sold you a pup,” said Buck, grinning.

“No,” said Bud. “Look. When the Doc came here he was green. You’ll admit he was green. The things he didn’t know!”

“He bought Ted Webber’s jalopy,” said Buck.

“He’d have bought the Jessop place if I’d let him,” said Bud. “But I wouldn’t give him a bum steer.”

“Not the poor, simple city slicker from Poughkeepsie,” said Buck.

“Some people would have taken him,” said Bud. “Maybe some people did. Not me. I recommended this property. He and Irene moved straight in as soon as they were married. I wouldn’t have put the Doc on to a dump where there’d be a spring under the foundations.”

“Oh, forget it,” said the Doctor, embarrassed by this conscientiousness. “I guess it was just the heavy rains.”

“By gosh!” Buck said, glancing at the besmeared point of the pickaxe. “You certainly went deep enough. Right down into the clay, huh?”

“That’s four feet down, the clay,” Bud said.

“Eighteen inches,” said the Doctor.

“Four feet,” said Bud.