“That depends on how I’m treated. These people acted the gentleman with me. They run their railroad around my graveyard at an expense to them, in the way o’ buildin’, of at least a thousan’ dollars. If they’d a-run it straight through, they couldn’t ’a’ got my land at any price.”
“But—but, how do you know they didn’t run it straight through, Gran’pap?”
“Why, haven’t you an’ me seen the stakes as plain as day, a-runnin’ across the brook an’ a-curvin’ around agin to the mouth o’ the gap? I sold ’em fifty feet wide along the line o’ their stakes—nowhere else.”
“But suppose it was some other company that set those stakes around the graveyard. Suppose the D. V. & E. had run their line right across it, an’ their stakes had got pulled out some way, an’ what you sold ’em was really through the graveyard, an’ suppose—suppose—”
“Well, what on earth are you cunjurin’ up? What’s the use o’ supposin’ things that never happened and ain’t likely to happen? You act just as though you’d gone daft on the subject o’ this railroad. What’s the matter, Dan? What ails you, anyhow?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Gran’pap. I’ve worried so about this railroad runnin’ through your—potato field.”
“I guess we can raise as many potatoes.”
“An’ your meadow.”
“We can grow as much grass.”
“An’ your gap.”