“Well, it’s come,” he said.

“What has come?”

“The railroad.  That young man Rhodes said ‘twas comin’, and so it’s done.  He was something of a prophet.”  The old fellow chuckled softly and lit his pipe.  “That there friend of yours, Mr. Wickersham, is been down here ag’in.  Kind o’ hangs around.  What’s he up to?”

Keith laughed.

“Well, it’s pretty hard to tell what Wickersham is up to,—­at least, by what he says,—­especially when you don’t tell me what he is doing.”

The old man looked pleased.  Keith had let him believe that he did not know what he was talking of, and had expressed an opinion in which he agreed.

“That’s what I think.  Well, it’s about my land up here.”

Keith looked relived.

“Has he made you another offer for it?”

“No; he ain’t done that, and he won’t do it.  That’s what I tells him.  If he wants it, let him make me a good offer; but he won’t do that.  He kind o’ circles around like a pigeon before he lights, and talks about what I paid for it, and a hundred per cent. advance, and all that.  I give a sight for that land he don’t know nothin’ about—­years of hard work on the mountain-side, sweatin’ o’ days, and layin’ out in the cold at nights, lookin’ up at the stars and wonderin’ how I was to git along—­studin’ of folks jest as I studied cattle.  That’s what I paid for that land.  He wants me to set him a price, and I won’t do that—­he might give it.”  He looked shrewdly at Keith.  “Ain’t I right?”

“I think so.”

“He wants me to let him have control of it; but I ain’t a-goin’ to do that neither.”

“That’s certainly right,” said Keith, heartily.

“I tell him I’m a-goin’ to hold to that for Phrony.  Phrony says she wants me to sell it to him, too.  But women-folks don’t know about business.”

Keith wondered what effect this piece of information had on Wickersham, and also what further design the old squire had in mind.

“I think it’s about time to do something with that land.  If all he says is true,—­not about my land (he makes out as my land is situate too far away ever to be much account—­fact is, he don’t allow I’ve got any land; he says it’s all his anyway), but about other lands—­everybody else’s land but mine,—­it might be a good time to look around.  I know as my land is the best land up here.  I holds the key to the situation.  That’s what we used to call it durin’ the war.

“Well, there ain’t but three ways to git to them coal-lands back up yonder in the Gap:  one’s by way of heaven, and I ’lows there ain’t many land-speculators goin’ by that way; the other is through hell, a way they’ll know more about hereafter; and the third’s through my land.”

Keith laughed and waited.

“He seems to be hangin’ around Phrony pretty considerable?”

Keith caught the gleam in the old fellow’s deep eye, and looked away.