city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance
as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it
gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back
and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in
those of his workers who had families.

Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as
well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and
clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived
down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar
in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.

George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in
glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by
family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come
out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having
cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day
they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his
cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he
felt in his ability to manipulate.

Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied
his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled
lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on
every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge
on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see
the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was
doing at the town hotel.

Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress,
left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five
Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish.
He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a
well-established village.

Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field
for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own
fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.

Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed
his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the
school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and
her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be su