ation doesn't make the man, you know."

"It does a good deal towards it. The stuffing goes a long way with the
goose, as poor ma used to say. Do you ever think what ma would have been
if she'd had an eddication? An eddication and breeches would have made a
general of her. It must take a powerful lot of patience to stand being
born a female."

He took a wad of tobacco from his pocket, eyed it timidly, and after
glancing at the tiled hearth, put it back again.

"You know what I would do if I were a rich man, Benjy?" he said; "I'd
buy a railroad."

"You'd have to be a very rich man, indeed, to do that."

"It's a little dead-beat road, the West Virginia and Wyanoke. I
overheard two gentlemen talking about it yesterday in Pocahontas, and
one of 'em had been down to look at those worked-out coal fields at
Wyanoke. 'If I wa'nt in as many schemes as I could float, I'd buy up a
control of that road,' said the one who had been there, 'you mark my
words, there's better coal in those fields than has ever come out of
'em.' They called him Huntley, and he said he'd been down with an
expert."

"Huntley?" I caught at the name, for he was one of the shrewdest
promoters in the South. "If he thinks that, why didn't he get control of
the road himself?"

"The other wanted him to. He said the time would come when they tapped
the coal fields that the Great South Midland and Atlantic would want the
little road as a feeder."

"So he believed the Wyanoke coal fields weren't worked out, eh?"

"He said they wa'nt even developed. You see it was all a secret, and
they didn't pay any attention to me, because I was just a common miner."

"And couldn't buy a railroad. Well, President, if it comes to anything,
you shall have your share. Meanwhile, I'll run out to Wyanoke and look
around."

With the idea still in my mind, I went into the General's office next
day, and told him that I had decided to accept the presidency of the
Union Bank.

"Well, I'm sorry to lose you, Ben. Perhaps you'll come back to the road
in another capacity when I am dead. It will be a bigger road then. We're
buying up the Tennessee and Carolina, you know."

"It's a great road you've made, General, and I like to serve it. By the
way, I'm going to West Virginia in a day or two to have a look at the
West Virginia and Wyanoke. What do you know of the coal fields at
Wyanoke?"

"No 'count ones. I wouldn't meddle with that little road if I were you.
It will go bankrupt