"Now, Mrs. Somerton, can you again wonder, as you've wondered aloud to my wife and me, that I, whom you've kindly called a man of high quality, have been content to pass my adult years among these backwoods people? Do see their hearts and souls come into their faces! I know they are not always so, but we never heard of any one remaining all the while on the Mount of Transfiguration. It isn't the railway alone that they're thinking of, but of what it will mean to themselves and their hard-working wives, and to their children,--closer touch with the great world of which they've read and wondered, better prices for their yield, which means more creature comforts at home, better educational facilities for their children, and less temptation for the children to escape from the farm to the city. They know that all this must be the work of time, but they've never before seen the beginning of it, so now they're building air-castles as rapidly as a lot of magicians in dream-land. I can't blame them, for I'm doing it myself, old and cautious though I am. They can wait for the end, so can I; for all of us, out here, have had long training in the art of waiting. At present the beginning is joy enough, for I can't imagine how any one about us could look happier." The formal survey of the railway route began that afternoon, for the people would listen to no suggestions of delay. It was completed quickly, and that the company was not yet organized according to law did not prevent the immediate offer and acceptance of a large working force of men, boys, horses, etc., from the village itself. The young engineer was his own entire staff, and also temporary secretary and accountant of the enterprise; but as it was his first great job, he enjoyed the irregularity of everything. From that time forward, for several months, the village stores ceased to be lounging places. Any villager or farmer with time to spare made his way to the line of the new road, and feasted his eyes, apparently never to fulness, on the promise of what was to be. As the work progressed farther from the town, the farmers of the vicinity, with their families, would saunter toward the line on Sunday afternoons and linger for hours, talking of the good times that were coming, and some of them actually moved their houses as near to the track as possible, so that the inmates might be able to have the best possible view of the trains when they began to run. When the road-bed was made and the ties were placed, and the laying of the rails began, entire families picnicked for a day at a time beside the track, although the weather had become cold, merely to see a shabby locomotive push backward some platform cars loaded with rails, and to see the rails unloaded, and listen to the musical clamor of track-laying; for did not each detail of the work bring nearer to them the hope of Claybanks for a third of a century,--a completed railway?