The latter was quite as angry as he looked to be, and the first words he uttered as the ferryman came up were:
"Now what I want to know is this: Are me and you obliged to stand here with our hands in our pockets, and see these rich men take the bread and butter out of the mouths of our families?"
"They are going to do worse by me than they are by you," answered Silas. "I can't start again if they break up my ferry, but you can."
"How, I'd like to know?" growled Hobson.
"Why, all the land around here belongs to old man Warren. Folks say that he's a mighty kind-hearted chap, though I never saw any signs of it in him, and you might buy or rent a piece of land, and build another and better hotel. You have the money to do it, for you have made many a dollar over your bar during the last two years."
"That's just what's the matter," cried Hobson, who became so angry when he thought of it that it was all he could do to restrain himself. "That's the reason old man Warren wants to shut me up—because he knows that I am making a little money. He won't sell or rent me a foot of land, for I tried him as soon as I found out that a new road was coming through here."
"That's worse than I thought for," said the ferryman, in a sympathizing tone which was more assumed than real.
Hobson's business interests were likely to suffer more severely than his own, and he was glad of it.
"It is bad enough, I tell you," said the proprietor of the Halfway House. "But you can say to your folks that it is going to be a dear piece of business for old man Warren. If I don't damage him for more thousands than he does me for hundreds, it will not be because I don't try."