had been one of the leaders of that
collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He
had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war
record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as
the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to
the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd
of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his
ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern,
ascetic set of his countenance.

As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into
their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That
well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had
been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to
the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had
taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could
neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it.

"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he
temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the
railroad?"

"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the
railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has
nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already
been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the
present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly
eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the
railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this
committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills.

"I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went
on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who
stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no
voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee
because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great,
final trial court of publicity before the whole State.

"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have
heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for
they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their
hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot
uproot them by the stroke of a pen.

"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of