"Why don't the cottagers organize?" asked Jarrod.
"They are organized. The annual meeting is to be held next Saturday night," was the reply. "But they never do anything at those meetings except bewail their condition of slavery and mildly denounce Wilder and Easton."
"What we lack," said a grizzled old fellow with piercing black eyes glinting underneath shaggy brows, "is a leader; an organizer. The whole system of imposition here is a fester that is gradually coming to a head. What we shall require presently is a clever surgeon with a sharp lancet."
As the speaker walked away Jarrod looked thoughtfully after him.
"Who is that man?" he enquired.
"Why, that's Colonel Kerry. Years ago he used to be one of the owners of Tamawaca; but they say he quarreled with the methods of his partners and sold out to them. That was before either Wilder or Easton bought in; but the Colonel has never mixed in public affairs since."
"I wonder he doesn't use the lancet himself," said Jarrod.
"Oh, he's capable enough, I assure you; but the Colonel isn't hunting trouble. He sticks to his cottage up on the hillside and minds his own business. But he's a shrewd observer, and no one knows the inside history of all the encroachments upon the rights of our residents during the last dozen or so years better than old man Kerry."
Jarrod strolled along the walks for an hour or two, noting carefully the conditions of neglect everywhere apparent. Nature had done wonders for Tamawaca; man had done little but mar nature, if we except the many handsome or cosy cottages that peeped enticingly from their leafy bowers or stood on the hills overlooking the two lakes.
Tamawaca occupies the point between the channel and Tamawaca Pool to the north, and Lake Michigan on the west, where a sloping height is thickly covered with a noble forest that creeps past the dwellings down to the water's edge. In the hills are romantic ravines, flower-strewn vales and vine-covered cliffs. To a lover of nature nothing could be more exquisitely beautiful.