The mood lasted until Cargan reached the first straggling houses of the village street, so that he entered upon the rutty highway between dirt sidewalks with regret, as one whose holiday was ending. He scarcely noticed the loiterers who stared at him, or thought of his streaked face, his trousers split at the knee, his hat lost on the wild ride. But as he plodded onward the atmosphere of town had its effect. His eye began to take note of the size of the shops glittering under their false fronts, the new houses behind rows of stiff young trees, the number and make of automobiles. His subconsciousness grasped the financial level of Hamden, although his thoughts were still in the wide spaces of the plains. A boy ran out from the side-walk to sell him a paper. He stuck it in his side pocket, and suddenly began to feel like a man of this world again. 'Say, sonny,' he called; 'who sells land in this burg?--Dubell--John Dubell?--Thanks.' He went more and more slowly. A drug-store, blazing with marble and onyx in the afternoon sun, made Cargan's dry throat wrinkle with thirst. He pulled his horse toward that side of the street. There was a row of customers along the soda-water counter, and through the open windows came scraps of conversation: two boys were teasing each other about a girl; a group of men were talking auctions, options, prices, real estate. He drank their talk in greedily, with a pang of homesickness and a rush of returning common sense. Dismounting stiffly, he tied his horse, and stood for an instant on the cement pavement, feeling his dirt and tatters, wondering if they would throw him out for a bum. Then he slid inside the door, and ordered a chocolate soda. The clerk was reading the paper while he juggled the milk-shakes. Cargan, carefully concealing his torn trousers, climbed a stool, and began to look back upon the vagaries of the day with sullen wonder. He brushed furtively at the caked dust on his legs, remembering, irritably, the elegance of Waldron, whom he had saved. In the mirror of the soda fountain he saw himself, torn, dirty, shrinking, and the sight filled him with disgust and anger. He felt as ridiculous as when he had come out with a glass too much from the Stoneham bar, and tripped over the steps of the main entrance. 'Gimme a cigar,' he called to the boy at the magazine counter; bit off the end, lit it, and began to think business. The clerk, swirling a cataract of milk from glass to glass, revealed the inner sheet of the paper propped before him. Cargan read beneath his arm the full-page advertisement of a land sale--the land sale he had come through all this tomfoolery to reach. His eyes bulged as he saw that they were going to throw a thousand acres on the market. 'Good gosh,' he gulped inwardly, 'what a chance!' It was a sure thing for the man with the money.