row to run your engine on."

"Why?" demanded the young man, with some surprise. The postmaster's
sober face hid his jest. Parker surveyed wonderingly the grins curling
under the listeners' beards.

"Oh, Colonel Gid Ward is comin' across in the mornin' and it's reckoned
he'll burn up the ice."

A cackle of laughter came from the assemblage.

"There's plenty of room on Spinnaker for both of us, I think," Parker
replied, quietly.

"Better hitch your engine," suggested one of the group. "She's li'ble to
take to the woods and climb a tree when she hears old Gid. And you can
hear him a good way off, now I can tell you."

The postmaster knuckled his chin humorously.

"Wal, you'll hear him 'bout the same time you see him. Five years ago
he was arrested down to the village for drivin' through the streets
lickety-whelt without bells. Run over two or three people, first and
last. Gid said he'd give 'em bells enough, if that's what they wanted.
He began collecting bells all the way from a cow-bell down. At last
accounts he had about two hundred on his hoss and sleigh, and was still
addin'. Now he makes every hoss on the street run away. The men wish
they'd let him alone in the first place. He'll prob'ly want your
engine-bell when he sees it to-morrow."

Another cackle from the crowd.

Parker left without answering, and went to his dingy little room in the
tavern. He did not doubt that the timber-land owners, beaten in their
earlier and formal opposition, were inciting the irascible old colonel
to pit might against right. The young man went over his papers once
more, carefully and methodically posted himself as to his rights and
powers, and then slept with the calmness of one who knows his course and
is prepared to follow it.

The next morning all the male population of Sunkhaze settlement surveyed
with rapt interest the preliminaries of getting up steam under the
"Swamp Swogon," as one of the guides had humorously nicknamed the little
locomotive.

Suddenly a bystander leveled his mittened hand above his eyes and gazed
up the long trail across the lake. The road was "brushed out" by little
bushes set along at regular intervals.

Away off on the distant perspective a dot was advancing. It resolved
itself into horse and sleigh. Puffs of vapor from the steaming animal
indicated the urgent precipitancy of its speed.

"I reckon that'll be Colonel Gideon Ward!" called the man who had just
observed the team.

Parker, bus