Your remote villages are conscious of their outstanding personalities, and, however much they may dislike them personally and quarrel with them in the family, they flaunt them in the faces of outsiders and boast of their eccentricities and take pride in their mannerisms. So Gibeon fancied it knew Abner Fownes from the meticulous crust in which his tailor incased him inward to his exact geometrical center; it was positive it comprehended his every thought and perceived the motive for his every action. For the most part its attitude was tolerant. Gibeon fancied it allowed Abner to function, and that it could put a stop to his functioning whenever it desired. The power of his money was appraised and appreciated; but it was more than a little inclined to laugh at his bumptious pretense of arbitrary power. George Bogardus, furniture dealer and undertaker, embalmed the public estimate in words and phrases. “Abner,” said Bogardus, “figgers himself out to be a hell of a feller, and it does him a sight of good and keeps his appetite hearty--and, so fur’s _I_ kin see, ’tain’t no detriment to nobody else.” Gibeon had its moments of irritation when Abner seemed to take too much for granted or when he drove with too tight a check rein, but these were ephemeral. On the whole, the town’s attitude was to let Abner do it, and then to call him a fool for his pains. He was a native of Gibeon. His father before him had moved to the town when it was only a four corners in the woods, and had acquired, little by little, timber and mills, which increased in size from year to year. Gibeon had grown with the mills and with the coming of the railroad. Old Man Fownes had been instrumental in elevating it to the dignity of county seat. He had vanished from the scene of his activities when Abner was a young man, leaving his son extraordinarily well off for that day. Abner, as a youth, had belonged to that short, stout class of men who are made fun of by the girls. He was never able to increase his stature, but his girth responded to excellent cookery. No man denied him the attribute of industry in those early days, and, as Gibeon judged, it was more by doggedness and stodgy determination that he was enabled to increase his inherited fortune than it was by the possession of keen mental faculties.