"Maybe some of you fellows haven't felt right toward me sometimes," he said. "I hate to tell it now, but justice is justice. The truth is, it was a friend of yours who advised me not to let any supplies come your way, time of the grasshopper raid. I listened to him then and didn't know no better'n to be run by him till I see his scheme to kill Wykerton an' build a town for hisself. He'll deny it now, declare he never done it, and he'll not do a thing for your town down here. See if he does. But it's Gawd's truth, he held me back so's he could run you his way. It's your turn to listen to me now and believe me, too." And well they listened, especially the men who still owed John Jacobs for the loan of 1874. "You can have a boom right here that'll make you all rich men inside of a year. Why not turn capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen--like some Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they won't improve so's to help others?" "You're right there," a farmer sitting beside Asher Aydelot called out. "We all know how Careyville got her start. It's kept some of us poor doing it. I'll invest in Town Company stock right now." Asher Aydelot turned toward the speaker in surprise. "Jacobs helped you out as well as the rest of us in the drouth and grasshopper time of seventy-four," he said. "What's your grievance against him now?" "Yes, and hung onto me like a leech of a Jew ever since," the man muttered. "Because you never paid either interest or principal. And Jacobs has carried you along and waited your time," Asher asserted frankly. But the farmer plunged into the discussion again, not realizing that his grudge against Careyville was the outgrowth of his own shortcomings. "Take this site right here in the middle of your neighborhood where you've already got your church and your schoolhouse, and your graveyard," Champers declared. "Aydelot here gave part of it and Pryor Gaines the rest. Gaines don't farm it any more himself, it's most too big a job for a man of brains like him. And that quarter across the river that used to be all sand, you own that now, Aydelot, don't you? What did you think of doin' with it now?" "I think I'll set it in alfalfa this fall," Asher replied. "Yes, yes, now these two make the very site we want. You are lucky, for you are ready right now to start things. How much stock do you want, Aydelot, and how will you sell?" As Asher listened he seemed to see the whole scheme of the town builder bare itself before him, and he wondered at the credulity of his neighbors.