aring. In the south-east corner
of the town they set aside a large square of land against the forest for
a school-house.

Thus Five Points was made as nearly in the centre of the great uncut
region as it could well be and still be on the narrow-gauge railroad
already passing through to make junction with larger roads. In short
order there was a regular town with a station halfway down the street
where the railroad cut through and near it a town hotel with a bar; a
post office, several stores, a candy shop and a dentist's office
fronting the round of earth in the centre; five churches set each on its
own street and as far from the centre of the town as possible; and a
six-room school-house with a flagpole. One mile, two miles, five and six
miles distant in the forest, saw-mills buzzed away, strangely noisy amid
their silent clumsy lumbermen and mill folk.

One after another, all those diverse persons necessary for carrying on
the work of a small community drifted in. They cut themselves loose from
other communities and hastened hither to help make this new one, each
moved by his own particular reason, each bringing to the making of a
Life the threads of his own deep desire. The threads interlaced with
other threads, twisted into strands, knotted with other strands and the
Life formed itself and hung trembling, thick and powerful, over the
town.

The mill owners and managers came first, bringing strong warp threads
for the Life. They had to have the town to take out their products and
bring in supplies. They wanted to make money as fast as possible. "Let
the town go to hell!" they said. They cared little how the Life went so
that it did go. Most of them lived alternately as heads of families at
home two hundred miles away and as bachelors at their mills and extract
works.

Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He
wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and
carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and
virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the
high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and
sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He
became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones
of the town.

Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in
town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a