awakened by the noise of a horse galloping wildly up to the front gate,
and by hearing his name shouted out at the top of a boy's voice.

The boy was Tom Selden, and he shouted:

"Oh, Harry! Harry Loudon! Hello, there! The telegraph things have come!"

Harry gave one bound. He jerked on his clothes quicker than you could
say the multiplication table, and he rushed down stairs and into the
front yard.

It was actually so! The instruments and batteries and everything, all
packed up in boxes--Tom couldn't say how many boxes--had come by a
late train, and Mr. Lyons had sent word over to his house last night,
and he had been over there this morning by daybreak and had seen one of
the boxes, and it was directed, all right, to the Crooked Creek
Telegraph Company, and--

There was a good deal more intelligence, it appeared, but it wasn't easy
to make it out, for Harry was asking fifty questions, and Kate was
calling out from one of the windows, and Dick Ford and half-a-dozen
other negro boys were running up and shouting to each other that the
things had come. Mr. Loudon came out to see what all the excitement was
about, and he had to be told everything by Tom and Harry, both at once;
and Rob and Blinks were barking, and there was hubbub enough.

Harry shouted to one of the boys to saddle Selim, and when the horse was
brought around in an incredibly short time--four negroes having clapped
on his saddle and bridle--Harry ran into the house to get his hat; but
just as he had bounced out again, his mother appeared at the front door.