t be a chance for recording a homestead site;
there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot,
always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they
locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last
September."

"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel
Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his
fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his
nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus
them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then
t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real
difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now,
we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder
suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no
tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out
American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev'
told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of
France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it
refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."

Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder.
"You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any
of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the
safer 'twill be for all on us."

But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the
first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell
me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the
sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction--his very
words--in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs.
Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a
shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake
shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe
must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old
sheep pasture for the big quarry."

"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since
his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked
warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference,
which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins'
remarks, might find over-heated expression in t