Tom boasted of his new position in the town and Clara turned and looked sharply at him and then looked quickly away. He was annoyed by the action and a flush of anger came to his cheeks. A side of his character his daughter had never seen before came to the surface. When he was a simple farmer he had been too shrewd to attempt to play the aristocrat with his farm hands, but often, as he went about the barns and as he drove along country roads and saw men at work in his fields, he had felt like a prince in the presence of his vassals. Now he talked like a prince. It was that that had startled Clara. There was about him an indefinable air of princely prosperity. When she turned to look at him she noticed for the first time how much his person had also changed. Like Steve Hunter he was beginning to grow fat. The lean hardness of his cheeks had gone, his jaws seemed heavier, even his hands had changed their color. He wore a diamond ring on the left hand and it glistened in the sunlight. “Things have changed,” he declared, still pointing at the town. “Do you want to know who changed it? Well, I had more to do with it than any one else. Steve thinks he did it all, but he didn't. I'm the man who has done the most. He put through the plant-setting machine company, but that was a failure. When you come right down to it, things would have gone to pieces again if I hadn't gone to John Clark and talked and bluffed him into giving us money when we wanted it. I had most to do with finding the big market for our corn-cutters, too. Steve lied to me and said he had 'em all sold for a year. He didn't have any sold at all.” Tom struck the horse with the whip and drove rapidly along the road. Even when the climb became difficult he would not let the horse walk, but kept cracking the whip over his back. “I'm a different man than I was when you went away,” he declared. “You might as well know it, I'm the big man in this town. It comes pretty near being my town when you come right down to it. I'm going to take care of every one in Bidwell and give every one a chance to make money, but it's my town now pretty near and you might as well know it.”