The Moneychangers | Page 6

all, there was a block of five thousand
shares in the Northern Mississippi Railroad.

"You know all about that, at any rate," said Lucy. "Have you sold your
own holdings yet?"
"No," said Montague. "Father wished me to keep the agreement as long
as the others did."
"I am free to sell mine, am I not?" asked Lucy.
"I should certainly advise you to sell it," said Montague. "But I am
afraid it will not be easy to find a purchaser."
The Northern Mississippi was a railroad with which Montague had
grown up, so to speak; there was never a time in his recollection when
the two families had not talked about it. It ran from Atkin to Opala, a
distance of about fifty miles, connecting at the latter point with one of
the main lines of the State. It was an enterprise which Judge Dupree
had planned, as a means of opening up a section of country in the future
of which he had faith.
It had been undertaken at a time when distrust of Wall Street was very
keen in that neighbourhood; and Judge Dupree had raised a couple of
million dollars among his own friends and neighbours, adding another
half-million of his own, with a gentlemen's agreement among all of
them that the road would not ask favours of Northern capitalists, and
that its stock should never be listed on the Exchanges. The first
president had been an uncle of Lucy's, and the present holder of the
office was an old friend of the family's.
But the sectional pride which had raised the capital could not furnish
the traffic. The towns which Judge Dupree had imagined did not
materialise, and the little railroad did not keep pace with the progress of
the time. For the last decade or so its properties had been depreciating
and its earnings falling off, and it had been several years since
Montague had drawn any dividends upon the fifty thousand dollars'
worth of stock for which his father had paid par value.
He was reminded, as he talked about all this with Lucy, of a project
which had been mooted some ten or twelve years ago, to extend the
line from Atkin so as to connect with the plant of the Mississippi Steel
Company, and give that concern a direct outlet toward the west. The
Mississippi Steel Company had one of the half dozen largest plate and
rail mills in the country, and the idea of directing even a small portion
of its enormous freight was one which had incessantly tantalised the
minds of the directors of the Northern Mississippi.

They had gone so far as to conduct a survey, and to make a careful
estimate of the cost of the proposed extension. Montague knew about
this, because it had chanced that he, together with Lucy's brother, who
was now in California, had spent part of his vacation on a hunting trip,
during which they had camped near the surveying party. The proposed
line had to find its way through the Talula swamps, and here was where
the uncertainty of the project came in. There were a dozen routes
proposed, and Montague remembered how he had sat by the campfire
one evening, and got into conversation with one of the younger men of
the party, and listened to his grumbling about the blundering of the
survey. It was his opinion that the head-surveyor was incompetent, that
he was obstinately rejecting the best routes in favour of others which
were almost impossible.
Montague had taken this gossip to his father, but he did not know
whether his father had ever looked into the matter. He only knew that
when the project for the proposed extension had been brought up at a
stockholders' meeting, the cost of the work was found so great that it
was impossible to raise the money. A proposal to go to the Mississippi
Steel Company was voted down, because Mississippi Steel was in the
hands of Wall Street men; and neither Judge Dupree nor General
Montague had realised at that time the hopelessness of the plight of the
little railroad.
All these matters were brought up in the conversation between Lucy
and Montague. There was no reason, he assured her, why they should
still hold on to their stock; if, by the proposed extension, or by any
other plan, new capitalists could make a success of the company, it
would be well to make some combination with them. or, better yet, to
sell out entirely. Montague promised that he would take the matter in
hand and see what he could do.
His first thought, as he went down town, was of Jim Hegan. "Come and
see me sometime," Hegan had said, and Montague had never accepted
the invitation. The Northern Mississippi