eville, and half the male population
turned out the next day in search of George Mason and the five horses.

Even Harry was infected with the general excitement, and, mounted on old
Selim, he rode away after dinner (there was no school that afternoon) to
see if he could find any one who had heard anything. There ought to be
news, for the men had been away all the morning.

About two miles from the village, the road on which Harry was riding
forked, and not knowing that the party which had started off in that
direction had taken the road which ran to the northeast, as being the
direction in which a man would probably go, if he wanted to get away
safely with five stolen horses, Harry kept straight on.

The road was lonely and uninteresting. On one side was a wood of
"old-field pines"--pines of recent growth and little value, that spring
up on the old abandoned tobacco fields--and on the other a stretch of
underbrush, with here and there a tree of tolerable size, but from which
almost all the valuable timber had been cut.

Selim was inclined to take things leisurely, and Harry gradually allowed
him to slacken his pace into a walk, and even occasionally to stop and
lower his head to take a bite from some particularly tempting bunch of
grass by the side of the road.

The fact was, Harry was thinking. He had entirely forgotten the five
horses and everything concerning them, and was deeply cogitating a plan
which, in an exceedingly crude shape, had been in his mind ever since he
had met old Miles on the road to the railroad.

What he wished to devise was some good plan to prevent the interruption,
so often caused by the rising of Crooked Creek, of communication between
the mica mine, belonging to the New York company, and the station at
Hetertown.

If he could do this, he thought he could make some money by it; and it
was, as we all know, very necessary for him, or at least for Aunt
Matilda, that he should make money.

It was of no use to think of a bridge. There were bridges already, and
when the creek was "up" you could scarcely see them.

A bridge that would be high enough and long enough would be very costly,
and it would be an undertaking with which Harry could not concern
himself, no matter what it might cost.

A ferry was unadvisable, for the stream was too rapid and dangerous in
time of freshets.

There was nothing that was really reliable and worthy of being seriously
thought of but a telegraph line. This