“Well, she first read me a lecture about bad, empty, shallow men, whose very souls were damned by their past careers, interfering with the pure impulses of younger men, and I 'll swear I felt like crawling in a hole and pulling the hole in after me. Well, I got through that, in a fashion, because she didn't want me to see her real heart, and that helped me. Then she took up the railroad scheme. You know I had heard that she advised her father in all his business matters, but, geewhilikins! I never dreamt she could give me points, but she did--she simply did. She looked me straight in the eye and stared at me like a national bank examiner as she asked me to explain why that particular road could not be built, and why it would not be a bonanza for the owners of the timber-land. I thought she was an easy fish at first, and I gave her plenty of line, but she kept peppering me with unanswerable questions till I lay down on the bank as weak as a rag. The first bliff she gave me was in wanting to know if there were not many branch roads that did not own their rolling stock. She said she knew one in the iron belt in Alabama that didn't own a car or an engine, and wouldn't have them as a free gift. She said if such a road were built as you plan these two main lines would simply fall over each other to send out cars to be loaded for shipment at competitive rates. By George! it was a corker. I found out the next day that she was right, and that doing away with the rolling stock, shops, and so forth, would cut down the cost of your road more than half.” “That's a fact,” exclaimed Alan, “and I had not thought of it.” “She's a stronger woman than I ever imagined,” said Miller. “By George! if she were not on your string, I'd make a dead set for her. A wife like that would make a man complete. She's in love with you--or thinks she is--but she hasn't that will o' the wisp glamour. She's business from her toes to her fingertips. By George! I believe she makes a business of her love affair; she seems to think she 'll settle it by a sum in algebra. But to get back to the railroad, for I've got lots to tell you. What do you reckon I found that day? You couldn't guess in a thousand years. It was a preliminary survey of a railroad once planned from Darley right through your father's purchase to Morganton, North Carolina. It was made just before the war, by old Colonel Wade, who, in his day, was one of the most noted surveyors in the State. This end of the line was all I cared about, and that was almost as level as a floor along the river and down the valley into the north end of town. It's a bonanza, my boy. Why that big bottle of timber-land has never been busted is a wonder to me. If as many Yankees had been nosing about here as there have been in other Southern sections it would have been snatched up long ago.” “I'm awfully glad to hear you say all this,” said Alan, “for it is the only way out of our difficulty, and something has to be done.”