The man stopped short and looked his questioner in the eyes. But a cloud had come up and covered the face of the moon, and the shadow of it made the boy’s features indistinct. Yet these were strange questions for a lad of his size to be asking.
“I don’t think,” replied the man, as he started on, “I don’t think that a railroad company would have a right to locate its route through a graveyard, and if it did—well, if it was my graveyard, I believe I would pull up the stakes set in it and throw them into the brook.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you! That’s just what—what a fellow did once that I knew.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, he—he—” But in the midst of his stammering a new thought came to him. “You ran your line through a graveyard, didn’t you?”
“Do you mean Abner Pickett’s graveyard?”
“Yes.”
“No; I went around it. I followed my tangent to the south side of the brook opposite the graveyard,—there’s a bit of shelving beach there which gave room for the location,—and then I put in a reverse curve and came down on this side again, just at the entrance to the gap. Here, I’ll show you how I did it. Come on!”
The rest of the party, walking more rapidly, were far ahead. The engineer quickened his pace, and Dannie hurried along by his side. The subject had become one of absorbing interest to both of them.