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THE admiring procession followed Mr. Jones through the July sunshine to his office. The fat man mounted his high porch and announced that the county court had voted the railroad bonds, and now he wanted labourers at Irontown to begin work on the following Monday morning. The pay, the financier announced, would be two and a quarter a day for a man, and four a day for a man and his span of mules; feed and stable furnished.

Apart from the consideration of these high wages, every man within the sound of Mr. Jones's buzzing voice already was predisposed to work for the magnate because of his victory over the Cincinnati Stove Company. That was a salutary turning of the tables on the city smart-alecks. It satisfied a vague animosity which every hillman felt toward the great world beyond the hills, with its opulence and social classes. Which, in brief, the hill people feel toward the American nation which has usurped the rôle of oppressor, tax gatherer, and maker of grinding laws; a rôle once occupied, centuries ago, by the British Government toward the forbears of these same hill folk. Now for Railroad Jones to beat the law with a legal contract was certainly a very turning on the enemy of his own cannon.

A number of men came up and enlisted as labourers in Railroad Jones's enterprise, and still others, who eventually would hire, put off their decision a few days or a few weeks to think the matter over.

When the hiring was finished, Abner saw Mr. Sandage beckoning to him, and a few minutes later the boy and the poor-farm keeper rejoined the railroad builder and set out