All you'll have to do would be to take them over to Hetertown. You
wouldn't have to spend any money except for wire and for trimming off
the trees and putting up the wire."

"But that would be more than we could afford," said Tom Selden. "You
ought just to try to make the people about here subscribe to anything,
and you'd see what trouble it is to raise money out of them."

"Oh, I don't think you need let the want of money enough to buy a few
miles of wire prevent your putting up a really useful line," said Mr.
Martin; "our company would be willing to help you about that, I'm sure."

"If you'd help, that would make it altogether another thing," said
Harry; "but you'd have to help a good deal."

"Well, we would help a good deal," said Mr. Martin. "It would be to our
benefit, you know, to have a good line. That's what we want, and we're
willing to put some money in it. I suppose there'd be no difficulty in
getting permission to put up the line on the land between the creek and
Hetertown?"

"Oh, no!" said Harry. "A good part of the woods along the road belong to
father, and none of the people along there would object to us boys
putting up our line on their land."

"I thought they wouldn't," said Mr. Martin. "I'll talk to our people
about this, and see what they think of it."

As Harry and Tom rode home, Harry remarked, "Mr. Martin's a trump, isn't
he? I hope the rest of the mica-mine people will agree with him."