Miss Conly had told the landlord’s wife that James could run land, and by the time they were up in the morning, the landlord told James that there was a gentleman in the bar-room inquiring for a surveyor, for the only person in that place who surveyed land was sick with a rheumatic fever, and asked him if he could go, to which James replied that he had no instruments with him, but the landlord urged him to go and see the man, for doubtless they could obtain the sick man’s chain and compass. James told the man if it was merely measuring land to ascertain the number of rods, feet or acres, he would go after he had met his engagement with Mrs. Chadwick, but if it was a matter of contested lines, he must get some person of more experience. The man replied there was no other person to be obtained without going a great distance, that there was no dispute about titles, but his work would be merely to divide a large body of land into lots, and lay out roads through it.
James lost no time in going to see the lady, who by the advice of her relatives, had concluded to accept his offer, and he paid her fifty dollars to hold the bargain till he could obtain the money at home. The next day he went on the survey, and was occupied five days, at two dollars and seventy-five cents a day, and paid but a trifle for the use of the instruments.
“Grandfather was right,” said James, as they rode away from the inn, “when he urged me to study surveying, and would make me, when Saturday afternoons came and I wanted to work in the shop, go with Walter Conly and measure and plot land, and learn the use of instruments. He said it would put many a dollar in my pocket, and it has already put in almost fourteen.”
CHAPTER XXI.
THE BRUSH CAMP.
Great was the uproar when Bertie and Peter found that James was going to sell the colt.
“Husband,” said Mrs. Whitman, “I do hope you are not going to let James part with that colt he has brought up, and thinks so much of. Give him the money to pay for his land,—he only lacks forty dollars,—and let him keep his colt.”
But Mr. Whitman was firm. “James,” he said, “was getting along well, let him struggle, it was better for him, too much help was worse than none; when he is sick or unfortunate ‘twill be time enough to give him. I had rather give him a chance to help himself,” and with that view he gave him twenty-seven dollars a month for the summer, and also half an acre to plant or sow, and Bertie and Peter the same.
James sent on his money and received a deed of the land, and through Mr. Creech, the landlord with whom he had put up, made arrangements with Prescott, his nearest neighbor, to fell the trees on an acre of land.
When the time drew near for James to start for the Monongahela, Bertie said to him,—
“What will you do for a horse now you have sold the colt? I mean to ask father to let you have Frank.”