mills. All was bustle and all was prosperity. The three towns hummed with it. The enterprises of John Boland budded, blossomed and fruited with seasonal regularity.
Only one thing lagged. That new shingle mill had not been built. But, all at once it turned out to have been a very lucky thing that the Hurricane Island site was not acquired; for, one morning while Mr. Boland was in the East, the Blade head-lined great news. The Edgewater and Eastern Railway was at last to be built. Sixty miles in length, it would make the three towns branch terminals of a transcontinental line.
It would skirt the southern shores of Harper's Basin, leap Squaw River on a bridge and come trundling north to turn finally west along the south shore of South Inlet. But where the road turned west, just after it crossed Cub Creek, was to be another bridge—a bridge that would span the channel to Hurricane Island, for Hurricane Island was to be the freight terminus of the road. Upon it, in that sheltered entrance to the Basin, deep water docks would be established. There the commerce of the ocean would meet the commerce of the continent.
"So that's what becomes of Adam John's island!" reflected Henry laying down the paper; for a railroad is not like a shingle mill. Private ownership is never permitted to block a railroad's progress. Adam John's island would be condemned, appraised and taken—all by due process of law. But—taken!
"Tough on the old fellow," reflected the occupied Henry, and let the subject slide out of mind. Indeed the next time he thought of it was when Adam John stood before him, his wry face more twisted than usual,
