going to do together, you and me and the money?"

"Would you do what I wanted?" she asked at his shoulder.

"Would you?"

"Yes."

"We might try Richmond."

"Don't fool yourself," she returned hardily; "I know all about those trial
trips. Any man I go with has got to go far: I don't intend to be left at
some pokey little way station with everything gone and nothing
accomplished."

"But," he objected, "a man who went with you could never come back."

"Back to this wilderness," she scoffed; "any one should thank God for
being taken out of it."

"I've always lived here, my father too, and his before him; and back of
that we came from mountains. We're mountain blood; I don't know if we
could get used to anything else, live down yonder."

"I'd civilize you," she promised him.

"Perhaps--" he assented slowly.

Suddenly from beyond the ruin came the stir of a horse moving in harness,
the sound stopped and the voices of men grew audible. Instinctively Gordon
and Meta Beggs drew behind a standing fragment of wall. Gordon could see,
through the displaced, rotting boards, a buggy and two men standing at the
side of the road. One, he recognized, was Valentine Simmons; he easily
made out the small, alert figure. The other, with his back to the mill,
held outspread a sheet of paper. There was something familiar about the
carriage of the head, a glimpse of beard, a cigar from which were expelled
copious volumes of smoke. Gordon vainly racked his memory for a clue to
the latter, elusive personality. He heard Simmons say:

"... by the South Fork entrance ... through the valley."

The stranger partially turned, and Gordon instantly recalled where he had
seen him before--it was the man he had driven from Stenton with the
surprising foreknowledge of the County, who had been met by Pompey
Hollidew. He replied to Simmons, "Exactly ... timber sidings at the
principal depots."

They were, evidently, discussing a projected road. Gordon subconsciously
exclaimed, half aloud, "Railroad!" A swift illumination bathed in complete
comprehension the whole affair--the connection, of Simmons, old Pompey's
options and the stranger. This railroad, the coming of which would
increase enormously the timber values of Greenstream County, had been the
covert reason for Simmons' desire to purchase the options held by the
Hollidew estate; it had been, during Pompey Hollidew's life, the reason
for the acquisition of such extended timber interests.