Morrison had changed since Caleb Hunter's father topped with the white-columned house that hill above the river. In those days it had been little more than a sleepy, if conservatively prosperous and self-sufficient, community, without industry of any sort, or, it might be added, ambition or seeming need of one. The Basin where the river widened and ran currentless a mile or two from bank to bank, in Caleb's father's time for weeks and weeks on end often had showed no more signs of activity than a dawdling fisherman or two who angled now and then and smoked incessantly. And now even the low-lying foothills in which the elder Hunter had tried to see from homesick eyes a resemblance to the outguard of his own Cumberlands were no longer given over to pasturage. They had taken on an entirely different aspect. The northern streets of the town were still dotted with the homes of those families who had been content with just the shade and the silence and the sheen of the river, and an ample though inaugmented income. But the outside world, ignoring the lack of an invitation too long in the coming, had in the last year or so grown in to meet it more than half way. From the Hunter verandas a half-dozen red-roofed, brown-shingled bungalows, half camps and half castles, were visible across the land stretches where the cattle had grazed before. And just beyond Caleb Hunter's own high box hedge, Dexter Allison's enormous stucco and timber "summer lodge" sprawled amid a round dozen acres of green lawn and landscape gardening, its front to the river. To Dexter Allison's blame or credit--the nature of the verdict depending entirely upon whether it was rendered by the older or the newer generation--was laid the transformation of Morrison, the town proper. Caleb Hunter had known Allison at college, where the latter had been prominent both because of the brilliance of his wardrobe and the reputed size of his father's steadily accumulating resources. Since that time seven-figure fortunes such as the younger Allison had inherited, had become too general to be any longer spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place--and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb thought of those first conferences which had preceded the sale, and recalled Allison's accentuation of the natural beauties of the spot, Caleb allowed himself to smile.