who paid for and removed the bodies of dead animals.

Gordon Makimmon's lips formed, barely audibly,
a name; he whispered, "Valentine Simmons."

At last the storekeeper had utterly ruined him.
He raised the paper from where it had fallen and
read the article once more. It was a floridly and
violently written account of how a projected branch
of the Tennessee and Northern System through
Greenstream valley, long striven for by solid and
public-spirited citizens of the County, had been prevented
by the hidden avarice of a well-known local
figure, an ex-stage driver.

The latter, the account proceeded, with a fore-knowledge
of the projected transportation, had secured
for little or nothing an option on practically all
the desirable timber of the valley, and had held it at
such a high figure that the railroad had been forced
to abandon the scheme.

"What Greenstream thus loses through blind
gluttony cannot be enumerated by a justly incensed
pen. The loss to us, to our sons and daughters...
This secret and sinister schemer hid his purpose, it
now appears, in a cloak of seeming benevolence.
We recall a feeling of doubt, which we generously
and wrongfully suppressed at the time, concerning
the motives of such ill-considered..."

"Valentine Simmons," he repeated harshly. He

[[338]]

p337 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p338w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p339

v?