"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.