mber. There can't
be a tie vote with five members in the Board."

Kate suspected that something had happened that she was not to be told.
But she asked no questions.

After a few minutes of swinging and whittling, in which neither of them
said anything, Kate got out of her grape-vine swing and picked up her
hat from the ground, and Harry jumped up and whistled for Rob.

As they walked home together, Kate said:

"Harry, I think I'd better resign as Treasurer. Perhaps the officers
ought all to be boys."

"Look here, Kate," said Harry; and he stopped as he spoke, "I'm not
going to have anybody else as Treasurer. If you resign that office I'll
smash the company!"

Of course, after that there was nothing more to be said, and Kate
remained Treasurer of the Crooked Creek Telegraph Company.

Before very long, of course, she heard the particulars of George
Purvis's resignation. She did not say much about it, but she was very
glad that it was not Harry who had been whipped.

The next morning, quite early--the birds and the negroes had been up
some time, but everybody in Mr. Loudon's house was still sleeping
soundly--Harry, who had a small room at the front of the house, was
awakened by the noise of a horse galloping wildly up to the front gate,
and by hearing his name shouted out at the top of a boy's voice.

The boy was Tom Selden, and he shouted:

"Oh, Harry! Harry Loudon! Hello, there! The telegraph things have come!"

Harry gave one bound. He jerked on his clothes quicker than you could
say the multiplication table, and he rushed down stairs and into the
front yard.

It was actually so! The instruments and batteries and everything, all
packed up in boxes--Tom couldn't say how many boxes--had come by a
late train, and Mr. Lyons had sent word over to his house last night,
and he had been over there this morning by daybreak and had seen one of
the boxes, and it was directed, all right, to the Crooked Creek
Telegraph Company, and--

There was a good deal more intelligence, it appeared, but it wasn't easy
to make it out, for Harry was asking fifty questions, and Kate was
calling out from one of the windows, and Dick Ford and half-a-dozen
other negro boys were running up and shouting to each other that the
things had come. Mr. Loudon came out to see what all the excitement was
about, and he had to be told everything by Tom and Harry, both at once;
and Rob and Blinks were barking, and there was hubbub enough.

Harr