“You had better not tell me, Faxon.”
“But I will tell you, for I don’t think the major or the principal will say anything if the whole thing is blown. You know where the quarries are, above Centreport, on that side.”
“Of course I do.”
“The Wimpleton boats, loaded with rocks, and the plugs taken out, lie at the bottom of the lake, in twenty feet of water, off the quarries. We are even with those fellows now for tearing up our track.”
“That’s too bad!” I exclaimed.
“Too bad! It wasn’t too bad to tear up our track—was it?” replied he, indignantly.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” I replied, sagely.
“But one evil sometimes corrects another—‘similia similibus curantur,’ as our little-pill doctor used to say. The loss of their boats will prevent the Wimps from coming over here again in the night to cut up our road.”
I was a boy, like the rest of them; but I did not exactly enjoy this “tit for tat” business. My mother had always taught me to exercise a Christian spirit, and this “paying back” was a diabolical spirit. I would not tell of these things, nor suffer my readers to gloat over them, if any are disposed to do so—were it not to show how these two great men, and all the little men who hung upon the skirts of their coats, were finally reconciled to each other; and how, out of war and vengeance, came “peace and good will to men.”
Before Miss Grace Toppleton’s birthday arrived the road was finished to Sandy Beach, and the grand picnic took place. The two platform cars had seats built upon them, and were attached to the dummy. I conveyed about a hundred a trip until the middle of the day, when all Middleport appeared to have been transported to the grove. The affair was very elaborate in all its details. Tents, pavilions, booths, and swings had been erected, and the Ucayga Cornet Band was on the ground.