CHAPTER XIV.
HARRY'S GRAND SCHEME.
This wholesale appropriation of horses caused, of course, a great commotion in the vicinity of Akeville, and half the male population turned out the next day in search of George Mason and the five horses.
Even Harry was infected with the general excitement, and, mounted on old Selim, he rode away after dinner (there was no school that afternoon) to see if he could find any one who had heard anything.

There ought to be news, for the men had been away all the morning.
About two miles from the village, the road on which Harry was riding forked, and not knowing that the party which had started off in that direction had taken the road which ran to the northeast, as being the direction in which a man would probably go, if he wanted to get away safely with five stolen horses, Harry kept straight on.
The road was lonely and uninteresting.

On one side was a wood of "old-field pines"-- pines of recent growth and little value, that spring up on the old abandoned tobacco fields--and on the other a stretch of underbrush, with here and there a tree of tolerable size, but from which almost all the valuable timber had been cut.
Selim was inclined to take things leisurely, and Harry gradually allowed him to slacken his pace into a walk, and even occasionally to stop and lower his head to take a bite from some particularly tempting bunch of grass by the side of the road.
The fact was, Harry was thinking.

He had entirely forgotten the five horses and everything concerning them, and was deeply cogitating a plan which, in an exceedingly crude shape, had been in his mind ever since he had met old Miles on the road to the railroad.
What he wished to devise was some good plan to prevent the interruption, so often caused by the rising of Crooked Creek, of communication between the mica mine, belonging to the New York company, and the station at Hetertown.
If he could do this, he thought he could make some money by it; and it was, as we all know, very necessary for him, or at least for Aunt Matilda, that he should make money.
It was of no use to think of a bridge.

There were bridges already, and when the creek was "up" you could scarcely see them.
A bridge that would be high enough and long enough would be very costly, and it would be an undertaking with which Harry could not concern himself, no matter what it might cost.
A ferry was unadvisable, for the stream was too rapid and dangerous in time of freshets.
There was nothing that was really reliable and worthy of being seriously thought of but a telegraph line.