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 building in their confidence of the town's future since the county seat was made secure. A framework would rise one day, a family would be sheltered there the next.

They were laughing away their losses down there in town this evening, an excellent way to adjust them if people had the heart. It had something admirable about it; they must have heroic qualities which he had not seen beneath their commonplace. He had not given them credit for so much originality, or such a peculiar courage.

It had seemed more comfortable to him passing through town that evening than ever before. In the past he had gone about with a certain degree of constraint, self-consciousness, in spite of his sublime egotism. He always had been attended by the feeling that they were laughing at him, holding him to be a kind of exclusive fool. Had he been wrong? Or had they come down to this public confession that they were just about as big fools as anybody, and admitted him unreservedly to their fellowship by the act? It was inexplicable, but he had felt a friendliness surrounding him, following him, that evening that had made him feel at home for the first time in Damascus.

Strange, he reflected, as he rode slowly back to town, a cool wind from the mountain-range of clouds attending him like one of his new-found friends. Could it be that he had made his place there, that his chance was opening before him in the country west of Dodge?