Part 19

“I know what he _thinks_ ails him,” the girl responded.

“And won't you tell me what--what he thinks ails him?”

“No, I couldn't do that,” answered our young lady, with a knowing smile. “If you are ever any wiser on the subject you will have to get your wisdom from him.”

She turned to the piano and began to arrange some scattered pieces of music, and he remained on the hearth, his back to the fire, his brow wrinkled in pleased perplexity.

“I 'll have to get my wisdom from him,” repeated Miller, pronouncing each word with separate distinctness, as if one of them might prove the key to the mystery.

“Yes, I should think two wise men could settle a little thing like that. If not, you may call in the third--you know there were three of you, according to the Bible.”

“Oh, so there were,” smiled Miller; “but it's hard to tell when we three shall meet again. The last time I saw the other two they were having their sandals half-soled for a tramp across the desert. I came this way to build a railroad, and I believe I'm going to do it. That's linking ancient and modern times together with a coupling-pin, isn't it?”

She came from the piano and stood by him, looking down into the fire. “Ah,” she said, seriously, “if you could _only_ do it!”

“Would you like it very much?”

“Very, very much; it means the world to us--to Alan, to father and mother, and--yes, to me. I hunger for independence.”

“Then it shall be done,” he said, fervently.

XXXII

S the elevator in the big building was taking Rayburn Miller up to the offices of the Southern Land and Timber Company, many reflections passed hurriedly through his mind.

“You are going to get the usual cold shoulder from Wilson,” he mused; “but he 'll put it up against something about as warm as he's touched in many a day. If you don't make him squirm, it will be only because you don't want to.”

Wilson was busy at his desk looking over bills of lading, receipts, and other papers, and now and then giving instructions to a typewriter in the corner of the room.

“Ahl how are you, Miller?” he said, indifferently, giving the caller his hand without rising. “Down to see the city again, eh?”

Rayburn leaned on the top of the desk, and knocked the ashes from his cigar with the tip of his little finger.

“Partly that and partly business,” he returned, carelessly.

“Two birds, eh?”

“That's about it. I concluded you were not coming up our way soon, and so I decided to drop in on you.”

“Yes, glad you did.” Wilson glanced at the papers on his desk and frowned. “Wish I had more time at my disposal. I'd run up to the club with you and show you my Kentucky thoroughbreds, but I realty am rushed, to-day particularly.”

“Oh, I haven't a bit of time to spare myself! I take the afternoon train home. The truth is, I came to see you for my clients, the Bishops.”

“Ah, I see.” Wilson's face clouded over by some mechanical arrangement known only to himself. “Well, I can' t realty report any progress in that matter,” he said. “All the company think Bishop's figures are away out of reason, and the truth is, right now, we are over head and ears in operations in other quarters, and--well, you see how it is?”

“Yes, I think I do.” Miller smoked a moment. “In fact, I told my clients last month that the matter was not absorbing your attention, and so they gave up counting on you.”

Wilson so far forgot his pose that he looked up in a startled sort of way and began to study Miller's smoke-wrapped profile.

“You say they are not--have not been counting on my company to--to buy their land?”

“Why, no,” said Miller, in accents well resembling those of slow and genuine surprise. “Why, you have not shown the slightest interest in the matter since the day you made the loan, and naturally they ceased to think you wanted the land. The only reason I called was that the note is payable to-day, and--”

“Oh yes, by Jove! that was careless of me. The interest is due. I knew it would be all right, and I had no idea you would bother to run down for that. Why, my boy, we could have drawn for it, you know.”

Miller smiled inwardly, as he looked calmly and fixedly through his smoke into the unsuspecting visage upturned to him.

“But the note itself is payable to-day,” he said, closely on the alert for a facial collapse; “and, while you or I might take up a paper for twenty-five thousand dollars through a bank, old-fashioned people like Mr. and Mrs. Bishop would feel safer to have it done by an agent. That's why I came.”

Miller, in silent satisfaction, saw the face of his antagonist fall to pieces like an artificial flower suddenly shattered.

“Pay the note?” gasped Wilson. “Why--”

Miller puffed at his cigar and gazed at his victim as if slightly surprised over the assumption that his clients had not, all along, intended to avail themselves of that condition in their contract.

“You mean that the Bishops are ready to--” Wilson began again on another breath--“to pay us the twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“And the interest for six months,” quietly added Miller, reaching for a match on the desk. “I reckon you've got the note here. I don't want to miss my train.”

Wilson was a good business man, but his Puritanical training in New England had not fitted him for wily diplomacy; besides, he had not expected to meet a diplomat that day, and did not, even now, realize that he was in the hands of one. He still believed that Miller was only a half-educated country lawyer who had barely enough brains and experience to succeed as a legal servant for mountain clients. Hence, he now made little effort to conceal his embarrassment into which the sudden turn of affairs had plunged him. In awkward silence he squirmed in his big chair.

“Of course, they can take up their note to-day if they wish,” he said, with alarmed frankness. “I was not counting on it, though.” He rose to his feet. Miller's watchful eye detected a certain trembling of his lower lip. He thrust his hands into his pockets nervously; and in a tone of open irritation he said to the young man at the typewriter: “Brown, I wish you'd let up on that infernal clicking; sometimes I can stand it, and then again I can' t. You can do those letters in the next room.”

When the young man had gone out, carrying his machine, Wilson turned to Miller. “As I understand it, you, personally, have no interest in the Bishop property?”

“Oh, not a dollar!” smiled the lawyer. “I'm only acting for them.”

“Then”--Wilson drove his hands into his pockets again--“perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me if the Bishops are on trade with other parties. Are they?”

Miller smiled and shook his head. “As their lawyer, Mr. Wilson, I simply couldn't answer that question.”

The blow was well directed and it struck a vulnerable spot.

“I beg your pardon,” Wilson stammered. “I did not mean to suggest that you would betray confidence.” He reflected a moment, and then he said, in a flurried tone, “They have not actually sold out, have they?”

Miller was silent for a moment, then he answered: “I don't see any reason why I may not answer that question I don't think my clients would object to my saying that they have not yet accepted any offer.”

A look of relief suffused itself over Wilson's broad face.

“Then they are still open to accept their offer to me?”

Miller laughed as if highly amused at the complication of the matter.

“They are bound, you remember, only so long as you hold their note.”

“Then I tell you what to do,” proposed Wilson. “Go back and tell them not to bother about payment, for a few days, anyway, and that we will soon tell them positively whether we will pay their price or not. That's fair, isn't it?”

“It might seem so to a man personally interested in the deal,” admitted Miller, as the introduction to another of his blows from the shoulder; “but as lawyer for my clients I can only obey orders, like the boy who stood on the burning deck.”

Wilson's face fell. The remote clicking of the typewriter seemed to grate upon his high-wrought nerves, and he went and slammed the partly opened door, muttering something like an oath. On that slight journey, however, he caught an idea.

“Suppose you wire them my proposition and wait here for a reply,” he suggested.

Miller frowned. “That would do no good,” he said. “I'm sorry I can' t explain fully, but the truth is this: I happen to know that they wish, for reasons of their own, to take up the note you hold, and that nothing else will suit them.”

At this juncture Wilson lost his grip on all self-possession, and degenerated into the sullen anger of sharp and unexpected disappointment.

“I don't feel that we are being fairly treated,” he said. “We most naturally assumed that your clients wanted to--to extend our option on the property for at least another six months. We assumed that from the fact that we had no notification from them that they would be ready to pay the note to-day. That's where we feel injured, Mr. Miller.”

Rayburn threw his cigar into a cuspidor; his attitude of being a non-interested agent was simply a stroke of genius. Behind this plea he crouched, showing himself only to fire shots that played havoc with whatever they struck.

“I believe my clients _did_ feel, I may say, honor bound to you to sell for the price they offered; but--now I may be mistaken--but I'm sure they were under the impression, as I was, too, that you only wanted the property provided you could build a railroad from Dar-ley to it, and--”

“Well, that's true,” broke in Wilson. “That's quite true.”

“And,” finished Miller, still behind his inevitable fortification, “they tell me that you have certainly shown indifference to the project ever since the note was given. In fact, they asked me pointedly if I thought you meant business, and I was forced, conscientiously, to tell them that I thought you seemed to have other fish to fry.”

Wilson glared at the lawyer as if he wanted to kick him for a stupid idiot who could not do two things at once--work for the interests of his clients and not wreck his plans also. It had been a long time since he had found himself in such a hot frying-pan.

“So you think the thing is off,” he said, desperately, probably recalling several purchases of land he had made in the section he had expected to develop. “You think it's off?”

“I hardly know what to say,” said Miller. “The old gentleman, Mr. Bishop, is a slow-going old-timer, but his son is rather up to date, full of energy and ambition. I think he's made up his mind to sell that property.”

Wilson went to his desk, hovered over it like a dark, human cloud, and then reluctantly turned to the big iron safe against the wall, obviously to get the note. His disappointment was too great for concealment. With his fat, pink hand on the silver-plated combination-bolt he turned to Miller again.

“Would you mind sitting down till I telephone one or two of the directors?”

“Not at all,” said Miller, “if you 'll get me a cigar and the _Constitution_. The Atlanta baseball team played Mobile yesterday, and I was wondering--”

“I don't keep track of such things,” said Wilson, coming back to his desk, with an impatient frown, to ring his call-bell for the office-boy.

“Oh yes, I believe football is your national sport,” said Miller, with a dry smile. “Well, it's only a difference between arms and legs--whole bones and casualties.”

Wilson ordered the cigar and paper when the boy appeared, and, leaving the lawyer suddenly, he went into the room containing the telephone, closing the door after him.

In a few minutes he reappeared, standing before Miller, who was chewing a cold cigar and attentively reading. He looked up at Wilson abstractedly.

“Bully for Atlanta!” he said. “The boys made ten runs before the Mobiles had scored--”

“Oh, come down to business!” said the New-Eng-lander, with a ready-made smile. “Honestly, I don't believe you drowsy Southerners ever will get over your habit of sleeping during business hours. It seems to be bred in the bone.”

Miller laughed misleadingly. “Try to down us at a horse-race and we 'll beat you in the middle of the night. Hang it all, man, you don't know human nature, that's all! How can you expect me, on my measly fees, to dance a breakdown over business I am transacting for other people?”

“Well, that may account for it,” admitted Wilson, who seemed bent on being more agreeable in the light of some fresh hopes he had absorbed from the telephone-wires. “See here, I've got a rock-bottom proposal to make to your people. Now listen, and drop that damned paper for a minute. By Jove! if I had to send a man from your State to attend to legal business I'd pick one not full of mental morphine.”

“Oh, you wouldn't?” Miller laid down the paper and assumed a posture indicative of attention roused from deep sleep. “Fire away. I'm listening.”

“I already had authority to act for the company, but I thought it best to telephone some of the directors.” Wilson sat down in his chair and leaned towards the lawyer. “Here's what we will do. The whole truth is, we are willing to plank down the required one hundred thousand for that property, provided we can lay our road there without incurring the expense of purchasing the right of way. Now if the citizens along the proposed line want their country developed bad enough to donate the right of way through their lands, we can trade.”

There was a pause. Then Miller broke it by striking a match on the sole of his boot. He looked crosseyed at the flame as he applied it to his cigar. “Don't you think your people could stand whatever value is appraised by law in case of refusals along the line?”

“No,” said Wilson. “The price for the land is too steep for that. Your clients have our ultimatum. What do you say? We can advertise a meeting of citizens at Springtown, which is about the centre of the territory involved, and if all agree to give the right of way it will be a trade. We can have the meeting set for to-day two weeks. How does that strike you?”

“I'd have to wire my clients.”

“When can you get an answer?”

Miller looked at his watch. “By five o' clock this afternoon. The message would have to go into the country.”

“Then send it off at once.”

A few minutes after five o' clock Miller sauntered into the office. Wilson sat at his desk and looked up eagerly.

“Well?” he asked, almost under his breath.

The lawyer leaned on the top of the desk. “They are willing to grant you the two weeks' time, provided you sign an agreement for your firm that you will purchase their property at the price named at the expiration of that time.”

“With the provision,” interpolated Wilson, “that a right of way is donated.”

“Yes, with that provision,” Miller nodded.

“Then sit down here and write out your paper.”

Miller complied as nonchalantly as if he were drawing up a bill of sale for a worn-out horse.

“There you are,” he said, pushing the paper to Wilson when he had finished.

Wilson read it critically. “It certainly is binding,” he said. “You people may sleep during business hours, but you have your eyes open when you draw up papers. However, I don't care; I want the Bishops to feel secure. They must get to work to secure the right of way. It will be no easy job, I 'll let you know. I've struck shrewd, obstinate people in my life, but those up there beat the world. Noah couldn't have driven them in the ark, even after the Flood set in.”

“You know something about them, then?” said Miller, laughing to himself over the implied confession.

Wilson flushed, and then admitted that he had been up that way several times looking the situation over.

“How about the charter?” asked Miller, indifferently.

“That's fixed. I have already seen to that.”

“Then it all depends on the right of way,” remarked the lawyer as he drew a check from his pocket and handed it to Wilson. “Now get me that note,” he said.

Wilson brought it from the safe.

“Turning this over cuts my option down to two weeks,” he said. “But we 'll know at the meeting what can be done.”

“Yes, we 'll know then what they can do with _you_,” said Miller, significantly, as he put the cancelled note in his pocket and rose to go.

XXXIII

HEN Miller's train reached Darley and he alighted in the car-shed, he was met by a blinding snow-storm. He could see the dim lantern of the hotel porter as he came towards him through the slanting feathery sheet and the yet dimmer lights of the hotel.

“Heer! Marse Miller!” shouted the darky; “look out fer dat plank er you 'll fall in er ditch. Marse Alan Bishop is at de hotel, an' he say tell you ter stop dar--dat you couldn't git home in dis sto'm no how.”

“Oh, he's in town,” said Miller. “Well, I was thinking of spending the night at the hotel, anyway.”

In the office of the hotel, almost the only occupant of the room besides the clerk, sat Abner Daniel, at the red-hot coal stove.

“Why,” exclaimed Miller, in surprise, “I didn't know you were in town.”

“The fact is, we're all heer,” smiled the old man, standing up and stretching himself. He looked as if he had been napping. “We fetched the women in to do some tradin', an' this storm blowed up. We could 'a' made it home all right,” he laughed out impulsively, “but the last one of 'em wanted a excuse to stay over. They are et up with curiosity to know how yore trip come out. They are all up in Betsy an' Alf's room. Go up?”

“Yes, I reckon I'd better relieve their minds.”

Abner offered to pilot him to the room in question, and when it was reached the old man opened the door without knocking. “Heer's the man you've been hankerin' to see all day,” he announced, jovially. “I fetched 'im straight up.”

They all rose from their seats around the big grate-fire and shook hands with the lawyer.

“He looks like he has news of some kind,” said Adele, who was studying his face attentively. “Now, sir, sit down and tell us are we to be rich or poor, bankrupt or robber.”

“Don't put the most likely word last,” said Abner, dryly.

“Well,” began Miller, as he sat down in the semicircle. “As it now stands, we've got a chance to gain our point. I have a signed agreement--and a good one--that your price will be paid if we can get the citizens through whose property the road passes to donate a right of way. That's the only thing that now stands between you and a cash sale.”

“They 'll do it, I think,” declared Alan, elatedly.

“I dunno about that,” said Abner. “It's owin' to whose land is to be donated. Thar's some skunks over in them mountains that wouldn't let the gates o' heaven swing over the'r property except to let themselves through.”

No one laughed at this remark save Abner himself. Mrs. Bishop was staring straight into the fire. Her husband leaned forward and twirled his stiff fingers slowly in front of him.

“Huh! So it depends on _that_,” he said. “Well, it _does_ look like mighty nigh anybody ud ruther see a railroad run out thar than not, but I'm no judge.”

“Well, it is to be tested two weeks from now,” Miller said. And then he went into a detailed and amusing account of how he had brought Wilson to terms.

“Well, that beats the Dutch!” laughed Abner. “I'd ruther 'a' been thar 'an to a circus. You worked 'im to a queen's taste--as fine as split silk. You 'n' Pole Baker'd make a good team--you to look after the bon-tons an' him to rake in the scum o' mankind. I don't know but Pole could dress up an' look after both ends, once in a while, ef you wanted to take a rest.”

“I'm always sorry when I heer of it bein' necessary to resort to trickery,” ventured Mrs. Bishop, in her mild way. “It don't look exactly right to me.”

“I don't like it, nuther,” said Bishop. “Ef the land's wuth the money, an'--”

“The trouble with Alf,” broke in Abner, “is that with all his Bible readin' he never seems to git any practical benefit out'n it. Now, when I'm in doubt about whether a thing's right or wrong, I generally find some Scriptural sanction fer the side I want to win. Some'rs in the Bible thar was a big, rich king that sent a pore feller off to git 'im kilt in battle so he could add his woman to his collection. Now, no harm ever come to the king that I know of, an', fer my part, I don't think what you did to yank Wilson into line was nigh as bad, beca'se you was work-in' fer friends. Then Wilson was loaded fer bear his-se'f. War's over, I reckon, but when Wilson's sort comes down heer expectin' to ride rough-shod over us agin, I feel like givin' a war-whoop an' rammin' home a Minié ball.”

“I sha 'n't worry about the morality of the thing,” said Miller. “Wilson was dead set on crushing you to powder. I saw that. Besides, if he takes the property and builds the road, he 'll make a lot of money out of it.”

After this the conversation languished, and, thinking that the old people might wish to retire, Miller bade them good-night and went to his own room.

A snow of sufficient thickness for sleighing in that locality was a rare occurrence, and the next morning an odd scene presented itself in front of the hotel. The young men of the near-by stores had hastily improvised sleds by taking the wheels from buggies and fastening the axles to rough wooden runners, and were making engagements to take the young ladies of the town sleighing.

“Have you ever ridden in a sleigh?” Miller asked Adele, as they stood at a window in the parlor witnessing these preparations.

“Never in my life,” she said.

“Well, you shall,” he said. “I 'll set a carpenter at work on my buggy, and be after you in an hour. Get your wraps. My pair of horses will make one of those sleds fairly spin.”

About eleven o' clock that morning Alan saw them returning from their ride, and, much to his surprise, he noted that Dolly Barclay was with them. As they drew up at the entrance of the hotel, Alan doffed his hat and stepped forward to assist the ladies out of the sled.

“Miss Dolly won't stop,” said Miller. “Get in and drive her around. She's hardly had a taste of it; we only picked her up as we passed her house.”

Alan's heart bounded and then it sank. Miller was smiling at him knowingly. “Go ahead,” he said, pushing him gently towards the sled. “It's all right.”

Hardly knowing if he were acting wisely, Alan took the reins and sat down by Dolly.

Adele stepped up behind to say good-bye to Dolly, and they kissed each other. It was barely audible, and yet it reached the ears of the restive horses and they bounded away like the wind.

“A peculiar way to start horses,” Alan laughed.

“A pleasant way,” she said. “Your sister is a dear, dear girl.”

Then he told her his fears in regard to what her father would think of his driving with her.

“He's out of town to-day,” she answered, with a frank upward glance, “and mother wouldn't care.”

“Then I'm going to enjoy it fully,” he said. “I've been dying to see you, Dolly.”

“And do you suppose I haven't wanted to see you? When Mr. Miller proposed this just now it fairly took my breath away. I was afraid you might happen not to be around the hotel. Oh, there is so much I want to say--and so little time.”

“When I'm with you I can' t talk,” he said. “It seems, in some way, to take up time like the ticking of a clock. I simply want to close my eyes, and--be with you, Dolly--_YOU_.”

“I know, but we must be practical, and think of the future. Mr. Miller tells me there is a chance for your big scheme to succeed. Oh, if it only would!”

“Yes, a pretty good chance,” he told her; “but even then your father--”

“He'd not hold out against you then,” said Dolly, just for an impulsive moment clasping his arm as they shot through a snow-drift and turned a corner of the street leading into the country.

“Then it must succeed,” he said, looking at her tenderly. “It _must_, Dolly.”

“I shall pray for it--that and nothing else.”