“Well, here it is,” said Alan. “I've made up my mind that a railroad can--and shall--be built from these two main lines to my father's lumber bonanza.” Miller whistled. A broad smile ingulfed the pucker of his lips, and then his face dropped into seriousness. A look almost of pity for his friend's credulity and inexperience came into his eyes. “I must say you don't want a little thing, my boy,” he said, indulgently. “Remember you are talking to a fellow that has rubbed up against the moneyed world considerable for a chap raised in the country. The trouble with you, Alan, is that you have got heredity to contend with; you are a chip off the old block in spite of your belonging to a later generation. You have inherited your father's big ideas. You are a sort of Colonel Sellers, who sees millions in everything you look at.” Alan' s face fell, but there remained in it a tenacious expression that won Miller's admiration even while he deplored it. There was, too, a ring of confidence in the young farmer's tone when he replied: “How much would a railroad through that country, eighteen miles in length, cost?” “Nothing but a survey by an expert could answer that, even approximately,” said the lawyer, leaning back in his creaking chair. “If you had the right of way, a charter from the State, and no big tunnels to make nor long bridges to build, you might, I should say, construct the road alone--without locomotives and rolling-stock generally--for a little matter of one hundred and fifty thousand. I don't know; I'm only guessing; but it wouldn't fall under that estimate.” “I didn't think it would,” replied Alan, growing more enthusiastic. “Now then, if there _was_ a railroad to my father's property, how much would his twenty thousand acres be worth?” Miller smiled again and began to figure on a scrap of paper with a pencil. “Oh, as for that,” he said, “it would really be worth--standing uncut, unsawn, including a world of tan-bark--at least twenty-five dollars an acre, say a clear half million for it all. Oh, I know it looks as plain as your nose on your face; things always do on paper. It looks big and it shines; so does a spider-web in the sunshine to a fly; but you don't want to be no fly, my boy; and you don't want any spider-webs--on the brain, anyway.” Alan stood up and walked to the door and back; finally he shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don't care what you say,” he declared, bringing his hand down firmly on Miller's desk. “It will pay, as sure as I'm alive. There's no getting around the facts. It will take a quarter of a million investment to market a half-million-dollar bunch of timber with the land thrown in and the traffic such a road would secure to help pay expenses. There are men in the world looking for such opportunities and I'm going to give somebody a chance.”