oking,--he could not get into the habit of using the
front steps even in his day of triumph,--was a person of considerable
importance.

Money was plentiful, and the Exchange National Bank grew with the
country. The procession of covered wagons, that had straggled and
failed the year before, began to close ranks in the spring; and in
place of "Buck" and "Ball" and "Star," and "Bright" and "Tom" and
"Jerry," who used to groan under the yoke, horses were hitched to the
wagons, and stock followed after them, and thus Garrison County was
settled, and Sycamore Ridge grew from three to five thousand people in
three years. In the spring of '75 the _Banner_ began to publish a
daily edition, and Editor Brownwell went up and down the railroad on
his pass, attending conventions and making himself a familiar figure
in the state. Times were so prosperous that the people lost interest
in the crime of '73, and General Ward had to stay in his law-office,
but he joined the teetotalers and helped to organize the Good Templars
and the state temperance society. Colonel Culpepper in his prosperity
took to fancy vests, cut extremely low, and the Culpepper women became
the nucleus of organized polite society in the Ridge.

The money that John Barclay made in that first wheat transaction was
the foundation of his fortune. For that money gave him two important
things needed in making money--confidence in himself, and prestige.
He was twenty-five years old then, and he had demonstrated to his
community thoroughly that he had courage, that he was crafty, and that
he went to his end and got results, without stopping for overnice
scruples of honour. Sycamore Ridge and Garrison County, excepting a
few men like General Ward, who were known as cranks, regarded John as
the smartest man in the county--smarter even than Lige Bemis. And the
whole community, including some of the injured farmers themselves,
considered Hendricks a sissy for his scruples, and thought Barclay a
shrewd financier for claiming all that he could get. Barclay got hold
of eight thousand acres of wheat land, in adjacent tracts, and went
ahead with his business. In August he ploughed the ground for another
crop. Also he persuaded his mother to let him build a new home on the
site of the Barclay home by the Sycamore tree under the ridge, and
when it was done that winter Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay moved out of
their rooms at the Thayer House and lived with John's mother. The
house they