the door again.

CHAPTER TWO--THE WHIM THAT PROJECTED THE FAMOUS "POQUETTE CARRY
RAILROAD"

Weeks passed before Rodney Parker got any more light on the matter in
which he had blindly given his word.

He understood this silence better when the situation was set before him
at last. There are some projects that captains of industry dilate upon
with pride. But big men are cautious about letting the world know
their whims. And whims that lead to exasperating complications that
no business judgment has provided for, do not form pleasant topics for
conversation or publicity.

Many railroad projects have been launched, some of them unique, but
never before was enterprise conceived in just the spirit that gave the
Poquette Carry Railway to the transportation world. There have been
railroads that "began somewhere and ended in a sheep pasture." The
Poquette Carry Road, known to the legislature of its state as "The
Rainy-Day Railroad," is even more indifferently located, for it twists
for six miles, from water to water, through as tangled and lonely a
wilderness as ever owl hooted in.

Yet it has two of the country's railroad kings behind it and at its
inception some very wrathful lumber kings were ahead of it, and the
final and decisive battle that was fought was between the champions of
the respective sides--an old man and a young one.

The old man had all the opinionated conservatism of one who despises new
methods and modern progress as "hifalutin and new-fangled notions."
The young man, fresh from a school of technology and just completing an
apprenticeship under the engineers of a big railroad system, had not an
old-fashioned idea.

The old man came roaring from the deep woods, choleric, impatient of
opposition, and flaming with the rage of a tyrant who is bearded in his
own stronghold for the first time. The young man advanced from the city
to meet him with the coolness of one who has been taught to restrain his
emotions, and armed with determination to win the battle that would make
or break him, so far as his employers were concerned.

Jerrard was the avant-courier of this novel railroad. Jerrard had been
traffic-manager of the great P. K. & R. system for many years, and when
he grew bilious and "blue" and very disagreeable, the doctor told him
to go back into the woods so far that he would not think about tariff or
rebates or competition for two months.

Jerrard chose Kennegamon Lake. A New England gener