the jagged cut in her hand where she had
fallen on the rocks.

Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand
and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down
by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her
handkerchief.

"Now," she said, "tell me."

"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by
delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had
found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push
us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I
wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe
Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around
French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.

"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money
around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him
outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the
land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well
have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of
the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option
that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have
trouble with that man yet.

"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had
fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had
started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over
on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the
people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding
iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the
maddest man you ever saw.

"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He
went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not
to sign anything.

"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the
railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and
conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to
Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So
I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get
me away from here yet."

"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually
started to build the railroad?"

"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.
But they w