committee quite understands that
you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who
has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most
directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those
of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your
county to the proposed grant?"

"Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is
the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If
there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for
the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have
gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant
would have been given without question. Your committee knows this
better than I."

"But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad
was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the
Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against
the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options
in unfair and unlawful ways."

The chairman paused an impressive moment.

"In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to
gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the
matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some
rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied
grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven,
but there was every appearance."

The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the
feet of the committee.

"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his
movements from the beginning."

The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact
that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had
understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the
French-Canadian farmers of the hills.

They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of
the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question
of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the
principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in
the hills for six months!

The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They
were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their
readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New
England, and what was more he