Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/205

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And while Henry's love flourished, his business flourished also, for somehow each contact with Billie was an incentive to diligence, although he had not even yet realized that it was because he was falling into love that he reached that sudden resolve to push his practice, and in these days of rapture he was quite incapable of suspecting that it was because his love had been approved that his business prospered so amazingly. He had no conception how closely love interests and business interests were united within the Boland breasts.

Oh, yes, there was much for Henry to do now, and so many, many thrills in the doing of it. And while he was busy in Edgewater, knot by knot the red tape was being tied in Washington. From desk to desk certain documents moved forward to that day when official seals and signatures would be attached and the landed inheritance of a handful of Indians would become the property of a corporation of which Henry Harrington was president.

But in Edgewater also, some knots were being tied—knots in that procedure by which Adam John's island was to become the island of the Edgewater & Eastern Railway. Each was made fast with meticulous care and a scrupulous regard for that great document which faithfully assures that no citizen shall be deprived of his property "without due process of law." Never were the processes more strictly observed, for the promoters of the Edgewater & Eastern, like John Boland, manifested a most exemplary regard for law.

And so the court condemned, the appraiser appraised; and the seven thousand dollars most generously found to be the value of the said Hurricane Island was tendered; but, lo, the Siwash owner spurned the