"If I shake any stick at them, it will be a stick of candy, for fear of scaring them away," said Annabel, with a laugh.
Brimstead said to Samson: "Say, I'll tell ye, you're back in a cove. You must get out into the current."
"And give the young folks a chance to play checkers together," said Samson.
"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead. "This country is mostly miles. They can be your worst enemy unless you get on the right side of 'em. Above all, don't let 'em get too thick between you an' your market. When you know about where it is, keep the miles behind ye. Great markets will be springin' up in the North. You'll see a big city growin' on the southern shore of Lake Michigan before long. I think there will be better markets to the north than there are to the south of us."
"By jingo!" Samson exclaimed. "Your brain is about as busy as a beehive on a bright summer day."
"Say, don't you mention that to a livin' soul," said Brimstead. "My brain began to chase the rainbow when I was a boy. It drove me out o' Vermont into the trail to the West and landed me in Flea Valley. Now I'm in a country where no man's dreams are goin' to be big enough to keep up with the facts. We're right under the end o' the rainbow and there's a pot o' gold for each of us."
"The railroad will be a help in our fight with the miles," said Samson.
"All right. You get the miles behind ye and let the land do the waiting. It won't hurt the land any, but you'd be spoilt if you had to wait twenty years."
The Peasleys arrived and the men and women spent a delightful hour traveling without weariness over the long trail to beloved scenes and the days of their youth. Every day's end thousands were going east on that trail, each to find his pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow of memory.
Before they went to bed that night Brimstead paid his debt to Samson, with interest, and very confidentially.