Mark and I scooted along, keeping mostly to back streets until we were where nobody was likely to see us; then we turned toward the river and went down to Mr. Barnes’s house. His place sat on top of a bluff, but down on the river level he owned quite a strip of flat ground that he used for a garden when the flood didn’t come and clean it out. We sort of nosed around, and pretty soon we run across Wiggamore and Jason Barnes sitting on a bench out on the edge of the bluff. There was a clump of lilac-bushes just back of them, and we got back of the clump. We could hear good.
“The dam,” says Wiggamore, “will go across right there,” and he pointed down at our dam. “Our engineers figure to make it about eighty feet high. The water won’t come over the top, but will be released as we want it through a tunnel under the dam. So, from here back will be a lake. Fine thing for the town.”
“Fine,” says Jason. “I dunno’s I got any especial use for a lake, but I kin see how folks might. Have boats on it, and sich. As for me, I wouldn’t git in no boat. Not any kind of a boat. I’m one of these dry-land fellers, I am. As long, I says to myself, as you stay on dry land and it don’t rain too hard, you hain’t ever goin’ to git drownded.”
“You’re right,” said Mr. Wiggamore. “But what I wanted to see you about was this: We want to buy that dam site down there. It belongs to a man named Bugg.”
“Silas Doolittle Bugg,” says Jason.
“But he doesn’t seem to have much to do with it. As nearly as I can make out, he has turned it over to a boy by the name of Tidd.”
“Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd,” says Jason.
“A fat boy,” says Wiggamore, “and an impertinent one. I talked with him a few minutes, and it was all I could do to keep my hands off him.”
“Better let him alone. Better let him alone,” says Jason. “Folks mostly don’t interfere with him.”
“He said he wouldn’t sell the dam for less than fifteen thousand dollars—and that included the mill.”