Certainly there was no flaw in his reasoning that stormy night when he had betaken himself in company with the wind and the rain, high up into the solitudes of the "bald" of the mountain. A wild night, with none else abroad save perchance a stray marauder of the furry gentry. Only the mists dogged his steps, and only the lightnings searched out his path. The gigantic boulder that seemed immovable, grim, gaunt, forbidding, the agency of giant powder set astir easily enough; and although the charge, accurately calculated for the purpose, was not sufficient to fracture the great mass, its equilibrium on the steep slope was destroyed. A wild turbulent dance it had as it hurled down the slope from the spot where the ebbing seas of centuries agone had left it stranded. A thunderous crashing voice it lifted as it went, and the thunder of the clouds seemed to reply. In the pallid dawn of the rainy day, Taft had crept back through the wet clouds of the summits and the spent winds lingering in the dank woods, to behold it lying there in this alien stop, as immovable of aspect as of yore, with great trees uprooted by the tempest athwart the rocky ledges about its path, and every trace of the action of powder effaced by the persistent rain. It marked a new corner for the beginning of Kenniston's survey; on a line with the old, it is true, but full five furlongs distant. It was a north-westerly line to be run out thence; the greater divergence would occur in the Cove, which fact Taft had learned as Kenniston made a swift plat of his irregularly shaped land with his cane on the floor of Cap'n Lucy's cabin porch. A simple scheme enough, this,--that the one available site for the hotel should be thrown within the lines of Cap'n Lucy, who would not bargain, sell, or convey, and thus the ill-omened caravansary crowded out of the space it was expected to occupy; for as yet Bruin's intervention as incendiary was among the uncovenanted things, and since the unlucky threat to burn the building had originated among the moonshiners Taft feared discovery should he apply the torch himself. A simple scheme, well planned and carried out with full effect,--and how should its completion so ill please its projector?