and had brought down for him.
They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were
not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and
their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which
he was quick to notice.

During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his
waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle
that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and
once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click
into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his
horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge
and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the
nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full
news of the last four weeks.

It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings
has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the
vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never
for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course
upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad
must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying
along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must
be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The
incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only
as they contributed to the general result.

Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There
were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate
committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an
obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by
procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for
the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything
they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no
animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as
impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.
Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely
incidental.

Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as
an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been
Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been
used for its purpose.