The elder Hennion did not care about “the destinies of the nation.” He dredged the channel of that brown river, the Muscadine, drove the piles that held the docks of Port Argent, and dug the east section of the Interstate Canal. The war came, and someone appointed him to something connected with the transportation of commissary. He could not escape the habit of seeing that things did what they were supposed to do. Hennion's supplies were apt to reach the Army of the Cumberland regularly and on scheduled time, it would be hard to tell why. He built the Maple Street Bridge, and the Chickering Valley Railroad. A prairie town was named after him, which might become a stately city, and did not. Someone in the East, speaking technically, “wrecked” the Chickering Valley Railroad for private reasons, rendered the stock of it for the time as waste winter leaves. The elder Hennion died poor and philosophical. “Never mind, Dick. He [the wrecker], he'd have gone to hell anyhow. That's a cheerful thought. When old Harvey Ester-brook died, he told his boys he hoped they'd have as much fun spending his money as he did making it, but they didn't. They worried it away. They'd've disappointed him there, only he was dead. It's mighty good luck to be young, and I wish I had your luck. But I've had a good time.” Such was “Rick” Hennion's philosophy. Young Hennion had been his father's close companion those last seven years, and learned of him the mechanics of engineering and the ways of business, how men talked and what they meant by it. He stepped into the inheritance of a known name and a wide acquaintance. He knew everyone on Bank Street, merchants and lawyers, railroad men up and down the State, agents and promoters, men in grain and lumber, iron and oil, and moreover some thousand or more men who handled pick and shovel, saw and trowel. He recognised faces brown with earth-dust, black with coal, white with the dust of grain. Men of one class offered him contracts, somewhat small at first; men of another class seemed to look to him as naturally for jobs; his life stretched before him a sweep of fertile country. Among the friendliest hands held out to him were Marve Wood's.