municate with the Tennessee and Northern Company,
receive a fresh ratification of their intention.
Yet he could not do that without incurring the danger
of premature questioning, investigation. It was
patent that he would have to be prepared to make an
immediate distribution of the options when his intention
became known in Greenstream. He was
aware that when the coming of a railroad to the
County became common knowledge the excitement of
the valley would grow intense.

Again, it might be better first to organize the timber
of Greenstream, so that a harmonious local condition
would facilitate all negotiations, and avert the
danger, which Valentine Simmons had pointed out,
of individual blindness and competition. But, in
order to accomplish that, he would have to bring into
concord fifty or more wary, suspicious, and largely
ignorant adults. He would have to deal with swift
and secret avarice, with vain golden dreams born of
years of bitter poverty, privation, ceaseless and incredible
toil. The magnitude of the latter task
appalled him; fact and figure whirled in his confused
mind. He was standing, and he suddenly felt
dizzy, and sat down. The giddiness vanished, but
left him with twitching fingers, a clouded vision.
He might get them all together, explain, persuade.
...Goddy!, it was for their good. They needn't
be cross-grained. There it would be, the offer, for

[[327]]

p326 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p327w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p328

v?