ofits soon,
and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime
necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain
Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests
were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the
responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.

As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver's dementia spread and raged
virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his
habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus
of attention.

For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to
his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became
manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a
medieval village.

Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances,
announced in the _Herald_ one morning, surpassing in importance anything
in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage;
some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one
piece was a suburban farm; but the mass of it was along Main Street and
in the business district. The grantees were for the most part strange
names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales
were at prices hitherto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in
most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of
the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed
to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver
also. We of the "new crowd" had begun our mock-trading to "establish the
market." Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy
to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be
forgotten.

The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our
development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The
lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the
maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows
and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors
were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by
gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the
street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in
the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.

Then for the first time the influx of real buyers fr