A little calculation showed that it would be quite feasible,
with perhaps a week or so of hired help toward the last, to finish
the dike before hard weather should set in.
Everybody now at the yellow cottage on the hill was cheerful in the
hope of speedy success. To their ears the clamor of the ebbing and
flowing tides was a jubilant music. Their loved "crick" was becoming
their friend-in-need. Its unctuous red flats acquired a new beauty
in their eyes, and the mighty, sweeping tides they came to regard
as the embodiment of their good genius.
With the rapidly growing dike all went swimmingly for a time. But the
neighbors were now completely undeceived. Though nettled at their former
dullness, they could not but applaud the ingenuity of the scheme;
and they rather approved the reticence which the boys had observed
in the matter.
Among the villagers, however, there was one who did not like the
turn affairs were taking. Mr. Hand perceived that he might yet be
defeated in his effort to gain possession of the Carters' farm.
He was an astute old man, if he _didn't_ at first understand the
warping dikes.
His first step was to threaten Will with proceedings to stop the work.
He owned the marsh on the opposite side of the creek, and he claimed
that the building of the new dike would so alter the channel that his
property would be endangered. Will presently proved to him, beyond
cavil, that the slight deflection of the currents would only throw
the scouring force of the stream against a point of rocky upland,
some hundreds of yards below his marsh, where it could not possibly
do any harm.
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