Jack1 went down to the river and did not get back very soon. His mind was full of something besides the flood, and he did not linger long at the mill.
But he looked long and hard at all the pieces of land below the mill, down to Deacon Hawkins's line. He knew where that was, although the fence was gone.
"The freshet didn't wash away a foot of it," he said. "I'll tell father what Mr. Hammond said about selling it."
A pair of well-dressed men drove down from Main Street in a buggy and halted near him.
"Brady," said one of these men, "the engineer is right. We can't change the railroad line. We can say to the Crofield people that if they'll give us the right of way through the village we'll build them a new bridge. They'll do it. Right here's the spot for the station."
"Exactly," said the other man, "and the less we say about it the better. Keep mum."
"That's just what I'll do, too," said Jack to himself, as they drove away. "I don't know what they mean, but it'll come out some day."
Jack went home at once, and found the family at breakfast. After breakfast his father went to the shop, and Jack followed him to speak about the land purchase.
When Jack explained the miller2's offer, Mr. Ogden went with him to see Mr. Hammond. After a short interview, Mr. Ogden and Jack secured the land in settlement of the amount already promised Jack, and of an old debt owed by the miller to the blacksmith, and also in consideration of their consenting to a previous sale of the trees for cash to the Bannermans, who had made their offer that morning. Mr. Hammond seemed very glad to make the sale upon these terms, as he was in need of ready money.
When Jack returned to his father's shop, he remembered the men he had seen at the river, and he told his father what they had said.
"Station?—right of way?" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "That's the new railroad through Mertonville. They'll use up that land, and we won't get a cent. Well, it didn't cost anything. I'd about given up collecting that bill."
Later that day, Jack came in to dinner with a smile on his face. It was the old smile, too; a smile of good-humored self-confidence, which flickered3 over his lips from side to side, and twisted them, and shut his mouth tight. Just as he was about to speak, his father took a long, neatly4 folded paper out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table.
"Look at that, Jack," he said; "and show it to your mother."
"Warranty5 deed!" exclaimed Jack, reading the print on the outside. "Father! you didn't turn it over to me, did you? Mother, it's to John Ogden, Jr.!"
"Oh, John—" she began and stopped.
"Why, my dear," laughed the blacksmith, cheerfully, "it's his gravel6, not mine. I'll hold it for him, for a while, but it is Jack's whenever I chose to record that deed."
"I'm afraid I couldn't farm it there," said Jack; and then the smile on his face flickered fast. "But I knew Father wanted that land."
"It isn't worth much, but it's a beginning," said Mary. "I'd like to own something or other, or to go somewhere."
"Well, Molly," answered Jack, smiling, "you can go to Mertonville. Livermore says there's a team here, horses and open carriage. It came over on Friday. The driver has cleared out, and somebody must take them home, and he wants me to drive over. Can't I take Molly, Mother?"
"You'd have to walk back," said his father, "but that's nothing much. It's less than nine miles—"
"Father," said Jack, "you said, last night, I needn't come back to Crofield, right away. And Mertonville's nine miles nearer the city—"
"And a good many times nine miles yet to go," exclaimed the blacksmith; but then he added, smiling: "Go ahead, Jack. I do believe that if any boy can get there, you can."
"I'll do it somehow," said Jack, with a determined7 nod.
"Of course you will," said Mary.
Jack felt as if circumstances were changing pretty fast, so far as he was concerned; and so did Mary, for she had about given up all hope of seeing her friends in Mertonville.
"We'll get you ready, right away," said Aunt Melinda. "You can give Jack your traveling bag,—he won't mind the key's being lost,—and I'll let you take my trunk, and we'll fit you out so you can enjoy it."
"Jack," said his father, "tell Livermore you can go, and then I want to see you at the shop."
Jack was so glad he could hardly speak; for he felt it was the first step. But a part of his feeling was that he had never before loved Crofield and all the people in it, especially his own family, so much as at that minute.
He went over to the ruined hotel, where he found the landlord at work saving all sorts of things and seeming to feel reasonably cheerful over his misfortunes.
"Jack," he said, as soon as he was told that Jack was ready to go, "you and Molly will have company. Miss Glidden sent to know how she could best get over to Mertonville, and I said she could go with you. There's a visitor, too, who must go back with her.
"I'll take 'em," said Jack.
Upon going to the shop he found his father shoeing a horse. The blacksmith beckoned8 his son to the further end of the shop. He heard about Miss Glidden, and listened in silence to several hopeful things Jack had to say about what he meant to do sooner or later.
He listened in silence.
He listened in silence.
"Well," he said, at last, "I was right not to let you go before, and I've doubts about it now, but something must be done. I'm making less and less, and not much of it's cash, and it costs more to live, and they're all growing up. I don't want you to make me any promises. They are broken too easily. You needn't form good resolutions. They won't hold water. There's one thing I want you to do, though. Your mother and I have brought you up as straight as a string, and you know what's right and what's wrong."
"That's true," said Jack.
"Well, then, don't you promise nor form any resolutions, but if you're tempted9 to do wrong, or to be a fool in any kind of way, just don't do it that's all."
"I won't, Father," said Jack earnestly.
"There," said his father, "I feel better satisfied than I should feel if you'd promised a hundred things. It's a great deal better not to do anything that you know to be wrong or foolish."
"I think so," said Jack, "and I won't."
"Go home now and get ready," said his father; "and I'll see you off."
"This is very sudden, Jack,", said his mother, with much feeling, when he made his appearance.
"Why, Mother," said Jack, "Molly'll be back soon, and the city isn't so far away after all."
Jack felt as if he had only about enough head left to change his clothes and drive the team.
"It's just as Mother says," he thought; "I've been wishing and hoping for it, but it's come very suddenly."
His black traveling-bag was quickly ready. He had closed it and was walking to the door when his mother came in.
"Jack," she said, "you'll send me a postal10 card every day or two?"
"Of course I will," said he bravely.
"And I know you'll be back in a few weeks, at most," she went on; "but I feel as sad as if you were really going away from home. Why, you're almost a child! You can't really be going away!"
That was where the talk stopped for a while, except some last words that Jack could never forget. Then she dried her eyes, and he dried his, and they went down-stairs together. It was hard to say good-by to all the family, and he was glad his father was not there. He got away from them as soon as he could, and went over to the stables after his team. It was a bay team, with a fine harness, and the open carriage was almost new.
"Stylish11!" said Jack. "I'll take Molly on the front seat with me,—no, the trunk,—and Miss Glidden's trunk,—well, I'll get 'em all in somehow!"
When he drove up in front of the house his father was there to put the baggage in and to help Mary into the carriage and to shake hands with Jack.
The blacksmith's grimy face looked less gloomy for a moment.
"Jack," he said, "good-by. May be you'll really get to the city after all."
"I think I shall," said Jack, with an effort to speak calmly.
"Well," said the blacksmith, slowly, "I hope you will, somehow; but don't you forget that there's another city."
Jack knew what he meant. They shook hands, and in another moment the bays were trotting12 briskly on their way to Miss Glidden's. Her house was one of the finest in Crofield, with lawn and shrubbery. Mary Ogden had never been inside of it, but she had heard that it was beautifully furnished. There was Miss Glidden and her friend on the piazza13, and out at the sidewalk, by the gate, was a pile of baggage, at the sight of which Jack exclaimed:
"Trunks! They're young houses! How'll I get 'em all in? I can strap14 and rope one on the back of the carriage, but then—!"
Miss Glidden frowned at first, when the carriage pulled up, but she came out to the gate, smiling, and so did the other lady.
"Why, Mary Ogden, my dear," she said, "Mrs. Potter and I did not know you were going with us. It's quite a surprise."
"So it is to Jack and me," replied Mary quietly. "We were very glad to have you come, though, if we can find room for your trunks."
"I can manage 'em," said Jack. "Miss Glidden, you and Mrs. Potter get in, and Pat and I'll pack the trunks on somehow."
Pat was the man who had brought out the luggage, and he was waiting to help. He was needed. It was a very full carriage when he and Jack finished their work. There was room made for the passengers by putting Mary's small trunk down in front, so that Jack's feet sprawled15 over it from the nook where he sat.
"I can manage the team," Jack said to himself. "They won't run away with this load."
Mary sat behind him, the other two on the back seat, and all the rest of the carriage was trunks; not to speak of what Jack called a "young house," moored16 behind.
It all helped Jack to recover his usual composure, nevertheless, and he drove out of Crofield, on the Mertonville road, confidently.
"We shall discern traces of the devastation17 occasioned by the recent inundation18, as we progress," remarked Mrs. Potter.
Jack replied: "Oh, no! The creek19 takes a great swoop20, below Crofield, and the road's a short cut. There'll be some mud, though."
He was right and wrong. There was mud that forced the heavily laden21 carriage to travel slowly, here and there, but there was nothing seen of the Cocahutchie for several miles.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Jack suddenly. "It looks like a kind of lake. It doesn't come up over the road, though. I wonder what dam has given out now!"
There was the road, safe enough, but all the country to the right of it seemed to have been turned into water. On rolled the carriage, the horses now and then allowing signs of fear and distrust, and the two older passengers expressing ten times as much.
"Now, Molly," said Jack, at last, "there's a bridge across the creek, a little ahead of this. I'd forgotten about that. Hope it's there yet."
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Miss Glidden.
"Don't prognosticate disaster," said Mrs. Potter earnestly; and it occurred to Jack that he had heard more long words during that drive than any one boy could hope to remember.
"Hurrah22!" he shouted, a few minutes later. "Link's bridge is there! There's water on both sides of the road, though."
It was an old bridge, like that at Crofield, and it was narrow, and it trembled and shook while the snorting bays pranced23 and shied their frightened way across it. They went down the slope on the other side with a dash that would have been a bolt if Jack had not been ready for them. Jack was holding them with a hard pull upon the reins24, but he was also looking up the Cocahutchie.
"I see what's the matter," he said. "The logs got stuck in a narrow place, and made a dam of their own, and set the water back over the flat. The freshet hasn't reached Mertonville yet. Jingo!"
Bang, crack, crash!—came a sharp sound behind him.
"The bridge is down!" he shouted. "We were only just in time. Some of the logs have been carried down, and one of them knocked it endwise."
That was precisely25 the truth of the matter; and away went the bays, as if they meant to race with the freshet to see which would first arrive in Mertonville.
"I'm on my way to the city, any how," thought Jack, with deep satisfaction.
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1
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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2
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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5
warranty
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| n.担保书，证书，保单 | |
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6
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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7
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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8
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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9
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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10
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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11
stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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12
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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13
piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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14
strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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15
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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16
moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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17
devastation
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| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
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18
inundation
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| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
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19
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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swoop
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| n.俯冲，攫取；v.抓取，突然袭击 | |
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21
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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22
hurrah
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| int.好哇，万岁，乌拉 | |
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23
pranced
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| v.（马）腾跃( prance的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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25
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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