"It means, Uncle Joe, that while I was still nailing up that sign two men came along in a big gray touring car and stopped, and one of them wanted to know what we'd take for the pit. I told him we sold our eggs by the dozen and not by what a hen might lay in a year. He laughed and said his name was Brady and that he had a contract for building some bridges for the new railroad that's coming in three miles down the creek and needed sand and gravel. The gentleman with him, who I judged from what they said was the engineer for the railroad, seemed to be very much pleased with the kind of sand and gravel we had, and I heard him tell Mr. Brady he'd approve it for the work. After looking the pit over, Mr. Brady asked what was meant by 'Cash or Labor,' so I told him we had some work we wanted done and would be willing to have him give us an estimate on the cost. He asked me what it was and I told him it was a ditch, a dam and a road. So he went up and looked the ditch over, then we went down to the beech trees and I explained to him about the new dam we were going to put in there to generate electric light for the farm. Then we rode up to the west slope in his big touring car and he examined the bank there. I showed him my figures for the ditch, and he made a memorandum of them; then he said if we would let him have the exclusive use of the sand pit for one year, taking out as much sand as he needed, and also let him have the heavy timbers from the old mill, as he needed them for some shoring he had to do, he would be willing to tear down the old mill, dig our ditch, build us a new dam and a new road, using his caterpillar steam shovel for the work." "What did you say, Bob?" eagerly asked his uncle. "I told him we couldn't think of it," replied Bob with a grin. "What! You didn't take him up? What could you have been thinking of, Bob?" "Well, you see, Uncle Joe, we'll need a lot of sand and gravel ourselves for making concrete fence posts and things like that, and then we may want to build a concrete road from the main road up to the barn, and, of course, we need a new dairy house and big silo." "Yes, I know, Bob; the old place is pretty well run down," said his uncle. "Mr. White said something to-day about looking ahead and making permanent improvements, but we can't think of doing that now." "I'm not so sure about that, Uncle Joe," replied Bob. "It seems we've got the only sand and gravel pit within fifteen miles with sand and gravel that the railroad engineer will accept for his work. I overheard him say that to Mr. Brady." "Well, what did you finally do about the sand, Bob?" inquired his uncle eagerly.