Mr. Rhodes rose angrily.

“Well, you have for nothing an opinion that is worth more than that of every rascally politician that has sold you his opinion and himself, and you will find it out.”

Mr. Wickersham did find it out.  However much was published about it, the road was not built for years.  The legislative charters, gotten through by Mr. J. Quincy Plume and his confreres, which were to turn that region into a modern Golconda, were swept away with the legislatures that created them, and new charters had to be obtained.

Squire Rawson, however, went on buying cattle and, report said, mineral rights, and Gordon Keith still followed doggedly the track along which Mr. Rhodes had passed, sure that sometime he should find him a great man, building bridges and cutting tunnels, commanding others and sending them to right or left with a swift wave of his arm as of old.  Where before Gordon studied as a task, he now worked for ambition, and that key unlocked unknown treasures.

Mr. Rhodes fell in with Norman just after his interview with Mr. Wickersham.  He was still feeling sore over Mr. Wickersham’s treatment of his report.  He had worked hard over it.  He attributed it in part to Ferdy’s complaint of him.  He now gave Norman an account of his trip, and casually mentioned his meeting Gordon Keith.

“He’s a good boy,” he said, “a nice kid.  He licked Ferdy-a very pretty little piece of work.  Ferdy had both the weight and the reach on him.”

“Licked Ferdy!  It’s an old grudge, I guess?” said Norman.

“No.  They started in pretty good friends.  It was about you.”

“About me?” Norman’s face took on new interest.

“Yes; Ferdy said something, and Keith took it up.  He seems pretty fond of you.  I think he had it in for Ferdy, for Ferdy had been bedevilling him about the place.  You know old Wickersham owns it.  Ferdy’s strong point is not taste.  So I think Gordon was feeling a bit sore, and when Ferdy lit into you, Keith slapped him.”

Norman was all alert now.

“Well?  Which licked?”

“Oh, that was all.  Keith won at the end of the first round.  He’d have been fighting now if he had not licked him.”

The rest of the talk was of General Keith and of the hardship of his position.

“They are as poor as death,” said Rhodes.  He told of his surroundings.

When Norman got home, he went to his mother.  Her eye lighted up as it rested on the alert, vigorous figure and fresh, manly, eager face.  She knew he had something on his mind.

“Mother, I have a plan,” he said.  “You remember Gordon Keith, the boy whose boat I sank over in England—­’Keith the rebel’?”

Mrs. Wentworth remembered well.  She remembered an older fight than that, between a Keith and a Wentworth.