ike to wager on!” exclaimed Gabriel. “Think of it, Dan! A railroad right up through yer gran’pap’s gap; right up through yer gran’pap’s road an’ crick; right up through—bust my bellus ef ’tain’t a comin’ right up through yer gran’pap’s graveyard!”

[28]

Dannie set his teeth tight and jammed his fists deeper into his trousers pockets as he saw an engineer’s assistant drive a stake on the graveyard eminence halfway between the fluted column and the roadside wall. He had learned to hold the burial plot in scarcely less reverence than did the old man himself; and to see it trespassed on in this fashion roused all his ire. But the trespass was so audacious that, looking on it as he did, he could neither move nor speak.

The engineers were evidently in some haste. They were setting their line of stakes along the narrow strip of land between the creek and the public road. Already the leveller and the rodman were in sight, following up the location, and the transitman had advanced along the road to a point opposite the potato field where the valley widened and the land began to slope more gently to the north and west. He leaped the fence lightly and came to within twenty feet of where Dannie and Gabriel were standing.

“Hello!” said Gabriel.

“Hello!” replied the stranger.

“Runnin’ a railroad?”

“Yes. Do you own the place?”

“No; but I work fer the man ’at does, an’[29] I’m thinkin’ it wouldn’t be right healthy fer ye ef he was in sight.”

The stranger laughed a little, showing a row of very white teeth.

“Don’t he want a railroad throug