The next moment he was gone, a stalwart, splendid figure, striding like an athlete through the luminous haze. Is it strange that up from Dannie’s heart came again the old desire, and out from his lips the spoken longing:-- “Oh, if I only had a father--like him!” But there was no time now to indulge in dreams or disappointments. He felt that he must get at once into the house and to bed. He went up the side path, and around to the woodshed, where he left the hatchet. Max, the dog, came whining and crouching at his feet, begging for notice and caresses. Dannie paid little heed to him, but hurried on. As he turned the corner of the house by the kitchen porch, he came face to face with his grandfather. “Why, Dannie!” exclaimed the old man, “what routed you out so early this morning?” For a moment Dannie was at a loss for an answer. “Oh!” he stammered at last, “I--I just thought I’d come out and look around.” “That’s just what I thought I’d do, too,” was the response. “I kind o’ want to see where those stakes are set. I want to know how much o’ my land, an’ what part of it, I’m expected to present to the railroad company. Would you like to come along, Dan?” “Yes, Gran’pap, I would.” They passed out at the gate and down the road, and Dannie led the way to the potato field. Near the big rock they found a stake. It was one set by the engineers who made the last survey, but it was within five feet of the place occupied by the one Dannie had pulled out the night before. The old man gazed at it bitterly. “Takes the best part o’ the lot,” he said. “Spoils the meadow,” he continued, as he looked down the line, “cuts my farm in two, prevents me from gettin’ to water, destroys the public road, a damage and a curse.” They followed down the line of stakes as he talked. The survey took almost exactly the same route as had the one made by the D. V. & E. engineers the afternoon before. The crossing at the public road was not five feet from the first location, for Dannie saw the place in the bank where he had pulled out the stake. “Ruins the road,” muttered the old man, “ruins the brook, ruins the gap, ruins the farm, despoils the tomb!” He was working himself into a passion again. Dannie foresaw that in ten minutes more he would be at a white heat. “Why don’t you pull the stakes out, Gran’pap, an’ throw ’em into the brook?” Dannie never knew what strange impulse forced him to ask that question. The old man turned on him instantly. “Don’t speak of it; it’s against the law.” “But you said last night that no better deed could be done.” “I was in a temper last night an’ said things I shouldn’t. No Pickett was ever yet arrested for violatin’ the law. You and I don’t want to be the first ones.” “It might be done in the night-time, Gran’pap, an’ no one be the wiser.” Some fate was surely leading Dannie to his own undoing. “No, that’d be cowardly, an’ no Pickett was ever yet a coward.”