em for the present. It will probably
balk them for the length of our lives--but this country can progress
without waiting for that."

"So ye thinks thet even without no railroad this God-forsaken land kin
still prosper somehow?" inquired the host skeptically, and the visitor
answered promptly:

"I do. I am so convinced of it that I'm here to buy property--to invest
all I have and all my mother and sisters have. I think that by
introducing modern methods of intensive farming, I can make it pay a
fair return in my own time--and when I die I'll leave property that
will ultimately enrich the younger generations. I _don't_ think it can
make me rich in my lifetime--but _some_ day it's a certainty of
millions."

"Why don't ye buy yoreself property whar ther railroad will come in
yore own day, then? Wouldn't thet pay ye better?"

The suggestion was the first contribution to the conversation that had
come from Kinnard Towers, and it was proffered in a voice almost urbane
of tone.

Henderson turned toward him.

"That's a straight question and I'll answer it straight. To buy as much
property as I want along a possible railway line would cost too much
money. I'm gambling, not on the present but on the future. I come here
because I know the railroad is _not_ coming and for that reason prices
will be moderate."

As he made this explanation the newcomer was watching the face of his
questioner almost eagerly. What he read there might spell the success
or failure of his plans. Any enterprise across which Kinnard Towers
stamped the word "prohibited" was an enterprise doomed to great
vicissitude in a land where his word was often above the law.

But the blond and florid man granted him the satisfaction of no reply.
He gazed pensively at the logs crackling on the hearth and his features
were as inscrutably blank as those of the Sphinx.

After a moment Towers did speak, but it was to his host and on another
topic.

"Lone," he said, "thet firewood of yourn's right green an' sappy,
hain't it? Hit pops like ther fo'th of July."

Brother Fulkerson spoke reflectively: "We needs two more things then
we've got in these hills--an' one thing less then we've got. We wants
roads an' schools--and the end of makin' white licker."

Henderson saw Blossom slip from the bed and flit shadow-like through
the door, and a few moments later he missed, too, the eagerly attentive
presence of the boy. Blossom had escaped from the reek of tobacco smo