Dan had just caught sight of a large party of men, who were coming along the road which led from the ferry to the Beach.
Believing that they were about to cross the river, and that there was another hard pull in prospect with no money (for him) behind it, Dan was about to take to his heels, when some words that came to his ears arrested his footsteps.
The new-comers were the road commissioner and his party. They did not look toward Dan at all, and neither did they take the least pains to conceal the object of their visit from him.
"This is the place for the new bridge," said the surveyor. "It will cost the town a good deal less money to fix up the old log road in good shape, than it will to cut out and grade a new highway."
"And when the bridge is up, we shall be well rid of two nuisances—Hobson's grog-shop and Morgan's ferry, neither of which ought to have been tolerated as long as they have been," remarked one of the twelve freeholders, who had been summoned by the commissioner to determine where the bridge and the new road should be located. "When the other bridge is demolished, and the lower road shut up, the travel will have to come this way."
When Dan heard this, he felt like throwing his hat into the air. He hated the tooting of that horn, which was kept hung up on the limb of a tree on the other side of the river, as he hated no other sound in the world; and he was glad to know that he would soon hear it for the last time.
He did not make any demonstrations of delight, however, but stole silently away to carry the news to his father.
Joe's good fortune, and his own bright dreams of becoming Mr. Hallet's game-warden, at fifteen dollars a month, and the best kind of food thrown in, were uppermost in his mind, and they were the first things he intended to speak about when his father admitted him into the cabin; but he was so long in coming to the point that Silas grew impatient, and did not give him an opportunity to mention his own affairs at all.
"No matter; they'll keep," thought the boy, as the ferryman put on his hat and went out to talk to Hobson. "Now I wish old Warren would hurry up and go about his business, so't I can find out what 'rangements he's made with that Joe of our'n."
Dan had not long to wait. Even while he was communing with himself in this way, Mr. Warren took his leave, first shaking Joe warmly by the hand, and Dan lost no time in stepping to his brother's side.