riting."

"Why don't you go and see him, then?"

Clifton looked at her a moment in silence.

"The matter ought to be settled in one way or another, at once," said
his sister. "You would feel quite differently about Jacob's troubles
and your own if you were not in suspense."

And so it came about that Clifton found his opportunity, and went.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

CHANGES.

A surprise awaited the people of Gershom--indeed a series of surprises.
But the greatest of all was this, David Fleming not only sold that part
of his farm which bordered on the Black Pool and lay beyond it, higher
up the river, but he sold it to the Holts. He sold it on such terms
that the longstanding debt to them was more than cancelled, and in so
doing did well for himself and for the Holts also.

When the winter had fairly set in, and there was snow enough for good
winter roads, the stones and timber which Jacob Holt had accumulated on
the Varney place last year were all removed higher up the river, and
preparations on a larger scale than ever Jacob had attempted, commenced
for the making of the new dam, at the point long ago decided upon as the
best on the river for such a purpose. And the building of the dam was
to be but the beginning of what was to be done.

Clifton Holt did not say much to any one, except his sister Elizabeth,
of all that was to be undertaken soon in Gershom. But the good people
took too much interest in him and his undertakings not to give much time
and talk to them. Clifton Holt's undertakings, they were always called,
though he was but the agent of Mr Langden, the complications in the old
business with which he had still to do making it wiser for him to occupy
that position for the present. But that he was to be at the head of all
that was to be done, as far as buildings were concerned, was easily
seen.

And Mark Varney was to be one of his right hands. It was Mark who had
the immediate oversight of the numerous workmen who were employed during
the winter collecting the materials required. It was he who, when the
spring opened, superintended the digging and levelling, the cutting and
carting that were being carried on, on a scale and with a rapidity that
surprised even Jacob Holt, who in imagination had seen something like it
done a hundred times over. It was in Mark's pastures, once again his
own, that the horses and oxen used in the work found rest when it was
needed, and it was he who had all