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More guffawing, the man wiped his eyes. "By gosh, brainiest man in Tennessee to-day. . . ." He drifted away from Abner in the hilarious crowd.

Abner himself was tremendously moved and elated over this piece of successful chicanery. Like all public heroes Railroad Jones was pervasive. His feats became everybody's feats. When he escaped payment for a shipment of stoves, everybody escaped paying for stoves.

"Why, gosh all hemlock!" reflected Abner excitedly, "anybody could uh thought of that! I could uh done that, myself!"

Like all great masterpieces, it presented a deceptive simplicity.

The poorhouse boy was drawn into the crowd by emotional suction and followed in its wake toward the magnate's office. He forgot all about the girl, who, perhaps, was waiting to hear the cause of the uproar. Or, since she was a hill girl, perhaps she was not waiting; perhaps she did not expect her chance acquaintance to come back to her any more. . . .