“You don't say!” Bartell's face beamed, his eye kindled and flashed.
“That's jest what!”
“I hadn't the least idea he was fer me,” said Bartell, drawing a deep breath. “In fact, I 'lowed he would be agin anybody but a town man.”
“Alan never talks much,” said Pole, in a tone of conviction; “he acts when the time comes fer it. But, la me, Mr. Bartell, this is agoin' to break him all to pieces. He's in love with old Barclay's gal, an' she is with him. Ef he puts this road through to-day he 'll git his daddy out o' debt an' Barclay will withdraw his opposition. I don't know how you feel, but I'd hate like smoke to bu'st a man all to flinders that thought as much o' me as Alan does o' you.”
“I never knowed he was fer me,” was Bartell's next tottering step in the right direction.
“Well, vote fer the right o' way, an' you kin ride to an' from Atlanta durin' session all rail. Me'n Alan will pull fer you like a yoke o' steers—me with the moonshiners, an' my mountain clan, that ain't dead yet, an' him with his gang. What you say? Put up or shet up.”
“I 'll do what I kin,” said Bartell, a new light on his face, as he turned to the others. “Gentlemen,” he began, “listen to me a minute. I see a good many of you was affected by Ab Daniel's speech an' sort o' want the road, anyway, so if—”
“I don't exactly like them specks,” broke in a fat, middle-aged man at a window. “By gum! I believe old Ab had us down about right. Ef we kin git sort o' opened up along with the rest o' creation, I say le's git in the game. Huh!”—the man finished, with a laughing shrug—“I don't like them fly-specks one bit.”
“Me nuther,” said a man beside him.
“Nur me!” came from some one else.