"Don't git friendly with no strangers--dressed-up ones, especial. And never set down your valise. There's a white shirt and a collar and two pairs of sox, and what not, in there. Make quite an object for some sharper." He nodded solemnly. "If you git invited out to _his house_," she said, "it'll save you a dollar hotel bill, anyhow, and be a heap sight safer." "You're right, Mandy, as usual," he agreed. "G'by, Mandy. I calculate you won't have no trouble mindin' the store." "G'by, Scattergood," she said, dabbing at her eyes. "I'll be relieved to see you gittin' back." There seemed to be little sentiment in these, their words of parting, but in reality it was an exceedingly sentimental passage for them. Between Scattergood and his wife there was a deep, true, abiding affection. Folks who regarded it as a business partnership--and there were many of them--lacked the seeing eye. The stage rattled off down the valley--Scattergood's valley. He had invaded it some years before because valleys were his hobby and because _this_ valley offered him the opportunity he had been searching for. Scattergood knew what could be done with a valley, and he was busy doing it, but he was only at the beginning. As he bumped along he could see busy villages where only hamlets rested; he could see mills turning timber into finished products; he could see business and life and activity where there were only silence and rocks and trees. And where ran the rutted mountain road, over which his stage was carrying him uncomfortably, he could see the railroad that was to make his dream a reality. He could see a railroad stretching all the way from Coldriver village to the main line, and by virtue of this railroad Scattergood would rule the valley. He had arrived with forty-odd dollars in his pocket. His few years of labor there, assisted by a wise and business-like marriage, had increased that forty dollars to what some folks would call wealth. First, he owned a prosperous hardware store. This was his business. It netted him a couple of thousand dollars a year. The valley was his avocation. It had netted him well over a hundred thousand dollars, most of which was growing on the mountain sides in straight, clear spruce, in birch, beech, and maple. It had netted him certain strategic holdings of land along Coldriver itself, sites for future dams, for mills yet to be built--for railroad yards, depots, and terminals. Quietly, almost stealthily, he had gotten a hold on the valley. Now he was ready to grip it with both hands and to make it his own.... That is why he journeyed to the city.