But there was no one to answer him, and so, after puzzling his mind for a few minutes, he rowed on.
When that man reached the point in the creek to which he was bound, and, with his trunk on his shoulder, walked up to the house where he used to live, he was still more astonished; for a telegraph wire ran through one corner of the back yard.
Cousin Maria now lived in this house, and George Mason was coming to pay her a visit.

His appearance was rather a surprise to her, but still she welcomed him.

She was a good soul.
Almost before he asked her how she was, he put the question to her: "What telegraph line's that ?" So Cousin Maria wiped her hands on her long gingham apron (she had been washing her best set of china), and she sat down and told him all about it.
"You see, George," said she, "that there line was the boys' telegraph line, afore they sold it to the mica people; and when the boys put it up they expected to make a heap of money, which I reckon they didn't do, or else they wouldn't have sold it.

But these mica people wanted it, and they lengthened it at both ends, and bought it of the boys--or rather of Harry Loudon, for he was the smartest of the lot, and the real owner of the thing--he and his sister Kate--as far as I could see.

And when they stretched the line over to Hetertown, they came to me and told me how the line ran along the road most of the way, but that they could save a lot of time and money (though I don't see how they could save much of a lot of money when, accordin' to all accounts, the whole line didn't cost much, bein' just fastened to pine-trees, trimmed off, and if it had cost much, them boys couldn't have built it, for I reckon the mica people didn't help 'em a great deal, after all) if I would let them cut across my grounds with their wire, and I hadn't no objection, anyway, for the line didn't do no harm up there in the air, and so I said certainly they might, and they did, and there it is." When George Mason heard all this, he walked out of the back-door and over to the wood-pile, where he got an axe and cut down the pole that was in Cousin Maria's back yard.