A MAN IN A BOAT.
On a very pleasant afternoon that fall, a man came down Crooked Creek in
a small flat-bottomed boat. He rowed leisurely, as if he had been rowing
a long distance and felt a little tired. In one end of the boat was a
small trunk.
As this man, who had red hair, and a red face, and large red hands,
pulled slowly along the creek, turning his head every now and then to
see where he was going, he gradually approached the bridge that crossed
the creek near "One-eyed Lewston's" cabin. Just before he reached the
bridge, he noticed what seemed to him a curious shadow running in a thin
straight line across the water. Resting on his oars, and looking up to
see what there was above him to throw such a shadow, he perceived a
telegraph wire stretching over the creek, and losing itself to sight in
the woods on each side.
A telegraph wire was an ordinary sight to this man, but this particular
wire seemed to astonish him greatly.
"What on earth is this?" he asked out loud. But there was no one to
answer him, and so, after puzzling his mind for a few minutes, he rowed
on.
When that man reached the point in the creek to which he was bound, and,
with his trunk on his shoulder, walked up to the house where he used to
live, he was still more astonished; for a telegraph wire ran through one
corner of the back yard.
Cousin Maria now lived in this house, and George Mason was coming to pay
her a visit. His appearance was rather a surprise to her, but still she
welcomed him. She was a good soul.
Almost before he asked her how she was, he put the question to her:
"What telegraph line's that?"
So Cousin Maria wiped her hands on her long gingham apron (she had been
washing her best set of china), and she sat down and told him all about
it.
"You see, George," said she, "that there line was the boys' telegraph
line, afore they sold it to the mica people; and when the boys put it up
they expected to make a heap of money, which I reckon they didn't do, or
else they wouldn't have sold it. But these mica people wanted it, and
they lengthened it at both ends, and bought it of the boys--or rather
of Harry Loudon, for he was the smartest of the lot, and the real owner
of the thing--he and his sister Kate--as far as I could see. And when
they stretched the line over to Hetertown, they came to me and told me
how the line ran along the road most of the way, but that they could
save a lot of time and money (though I don't see how they could save
much of a lot of money when, accordin' to all accounts, the whole line
didn't cost much, bein' just fastened to pine-trees, trimmed off, and if
it had cost much, them boys couldn't have built it, for I reckon the
mica people didn't help 'em a great deal, after all) if I would let them
cut across my grounds with their wire, and I hadn't no objection,
anyway, for the line didn't do no harm up there in the air, and so I
said certainly they might, and they did, and there it is."
When George Mason heard all this, he walked out of the back-door and
over to the wood-pile, where he got an axe and cut down the pole that
was in Cousin Maria's back yard. And when the pole fell, it broke the
wire, just as Mr. Martin had got to the sixth word of a message he was
sending over to Hetertown.
Cousin Maria was outraged.
"George Mason!" said she, "you can stay here as long as you like, and
you can have part of whatever I've got in the house to eat, but I'll
never sit down to the table with you till you've mended that wire and
nailed it to another pole."
"All right," answered George Mason. "Then I'll eat alone."
When Mr. Martin and the mica-mine people and the Akeville people and
Harry and Kate and all the boys and everybody black and white heard what
had happened, there was great excitement. It was generally agreed that
something must be done with George Mason. He had no more right to cut
down that pole because he had once lived on the place, than he had to go
and cut down any of the neighbors' beanpoles.
So the sheriff and some deputy sheriffs, (Tony Kirk among them), and a
constable and a number of volunteer constables, went off after George
Mason, to bring him to justice.
It was more than a week before they found him, and it is probable that
they would not have captured him at all, had he not persisted in staying
in the neighborhood, so as to be on hand with his axe, in case the line
should be repaired.
"It's all along of my tellin' him that that line was got up by them
Loudon children," said Cousin Maria. "He hates Mr. Loudon worse than
pisen, because he was the man that found out all his tricks."
Mason was taken to the court-house and locked up in the jail. Almost all
the people of the county, and some people belonging to adjoining
counties, made up their minds to be at the court-house when his trial
should take place.
On the second night of his imprisonment, George Mason forced open a
window of his cell and went away. And what was more, he staid away. He
had no desire to be at the court-house when his trial took place.
No one felt more profound satisfaction when George Mason left the
country, and the telegraph line was once more in working order, than
Harry and Kate.
They had an idea that if George Mason, should persist in cutting the
telegraph line, the Mica Company would give it up, and that they might
be called upon to refund the money on which Aunt Matilda depended for
support. They had been told that they need not trouble themselves about
this, as the Mica Company had taken all risks; but still they were
delighted when they heard that George Mason had cleared out, and that
there was every reason to suppose that he would not come back.