unsightly out-buildings with modern plumbing. The South building
would become the "Whittier School," the East, the "Longfellow,"
and the West, not to be neglected by culture's invasion, the
"Oliver Wendell Holmes." But these changes were still to be
effected. Many a school board meeting was first to be split into
stormy factions of conservatives fighting to hold the old, and of
anarchists threatening civilization with their clamors for
experimentation. Many a bond election was yet to rip the town in
two, with the retired farmers, whose children were grown and
through school, satisfied with things as they were and parents of
the new generation demanding gymnasiums, tennis courts,
victrolas, domestic science laboratories, a public health nurse
and individual lockers. Yes, and the faddists were to win despite
the other side's incontrovertible evidence that Fallon was headed
for bankruptcy and that the proposed bonds and outstanding ones
could never be met.

Martin drove, meditatively, around the school-house and was still
engrossed in the problem of "Who?" when he reached the Square.
The neat canvas drops of later years had not yet replaced the
wooden awnings which gave to the town such a decidedly western
appearance and which threw the sidewalks and sheltered windows
into deep pools of shadow. The old brick store-building which
housed The First State Bank was like a cool cavern. He brought
out the check quietly but with a full consciousness that with one
gesture he was shoving enough over that scratched and worn walnut
counter to buy out half the bank.

James Osborne, the youthful cashier, feigned complete paralysis.