However deeply Mr. Tom Bristow might be in love, however infatuated he might be on one particular point, he in nowise neglected his ordinary business avocations, nor did he by any means spend the whole of his time in Duxley and its neighbourhood. He was frequently in London; nor was either Liverpool or Manchester unacquainted with his face, for Tom’s speculative proclivities expended themselves in many and various channels. The project to bring Duxley, by means of a branch railway from one of the great trunk lines, into closer connection with some of the chief centres of industry in that part of the country, was one which had always engaged his warmest sympathies. But the project, after having been safely incubated, and launched in glowing terms before the public, had been quietly allowed to collapse, its promoters having taken alarm at certain formidable engineering difficulties which had not presented themselves during the preliminary survey of the route. This put Tom Bristow on his mettle. He had been familiar from boyhood with the country for twenty miles round Duxley, and he felt sure that a much more favourable route than the one just abandoned might readily be found if properly looked for. Taking a practical surveyor with him, and the ordnance map of the district, Tom went carefully over the ground in person, trudging mile after mile on foot, in all sorts of weather, seeing his way after a time, little by little, to the elaboration of a project much bolder in idea and wider in scope than any which had ever entered the thoughts of the original projectors.