"Dan!" shouted Mr. Morgan, pushing up his sleeves, and looking about the room as if he wanted to find some missile to throw at the boy's head—"Dan, for two cents I'd—"
The ferryman suddenly paused, for he found he was talking to the empty air.
When he began pushing up his sleeves, Dan jumped for the door, and now all that Silas could see of him was one of his eyes, which looked at him through a crack about half an inch wide.
He noticed, however, that Dan held the hook in his hand, and that he was all ready to fasten the door on the outside in case his father showed a disposition to follow him.
CHAPTER IV. HOBSON'S HOUSE.
"And that ain't all I've got to tell you, neither," shouted Dan. "The road commissioners has come up here with some surveyors and a jury, and they're going to build a bridge across the river so's to bust up the ferrying business."
Silas would have been glad to thrash the boy for bringing him so unwelcome news as this, and the only reason he did not attempt it was because he knew he could not catch him.
He did not like the "ferrying business," for it was very confining, and, besides, there wasn't money enough in it to suit him; but still it enabled him to eke out his slender income, and the mere hint that the authorities were about to take away this source of revenue by building a bridge across the river at that point surprised and enraged him.