Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/65

 I think, as bad as when he couldn't build his road.”

“But why did he care so much about the road?”

Hugh’s curiosity about that mysterious highway had grown greater and greater, yet even now it was not to be satisfied.

“He had something big in his mind,” Jethro said vaguely, “so big I never quite understood  it. He was a fellow who could always see farther than the rest of us, I think. John Edmonds used to say he did, although even he lost faith in the plan about the road at last, and that  nearly broke Oscar’s heart. Some people even said they had quarreled, but I don’t believe it. Oscar wasn’t the sort to bear a grudge.”

Jethro thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned at last to face Hugh squarely.

”That is what I am getting at,” he said. “Oscar Dansk can find John and Dick Edmonds if any man on earth can do it. But some one would have to go out through the woods to tell him,  otherwise it might be weeks before he hears what