and was watching the building of houses.

"This place," he said to the head carpenter, "is going to be a little
heaven."

"More like a little other place," growled the head carpenter. "Here
they've dug out the centre of the island and carted it to the beach to
make hills for the houses to be built on. One good rain will fill their
little heaven with mosquitoes. Why don't the people around here drain
their country?"

That night the Mosquito Man telephoned to a drainage expert in New York
and demanded that he come out the next day.

"I don't like to work on Sunday," the expert objected.

"It is absolutely essential that you come at once," he was told. "Can
you take the first train?"

The first train and the expert arrived in Darien at 5:51. Before the day
was over a contract had been drawn up to the purport that the expert
would drain the salt marshes between Stamford and South Norwalk for
$4,000.

The Mosquito Man now began to talk mosquitoes to every one who would
listen and to many who did not want to listen. "That bug," the old
settlers called him at the time--for old settlers are very settled in
their ways. The young women at the Country Club, whenever they saw him
coming, made bets as to whether he would talk mosquitoes--and he always
did. Every property-owner in the township was asked for a subscription,