r. Elkins and
Josie drove away.

"Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase.
"But for a moment I was awfully frightened!"

"It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish.
"I wonder how deep it was out there!"

"Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into
the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!"

"You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in
the top of a tree!"

"Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were
suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's
lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.

CHAPTER XII.

In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us.

If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous
way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which
shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile
to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.

"It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your
interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you
come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the
Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog
towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field
for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
_Herald_."

I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative
merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things
loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which
appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the
visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star
Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of
innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of
counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.

There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and
things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway
extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's
interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned
down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the
origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the
great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car
p