looking up to him, trusting him, desiring guidance of him. He thrilled afresh at the perception. They had cast him out, then hailed him guiltless; and now they appealed to him as leader—to him who in his bitterness had said that he would never lead again.
It came to him with a new tingling of his veins that this was his real vindication; it came to him that he could lead these people; that he must; that for him a rare opportunity had come, bought with a very great price, and that he would be the Judas they had called him at the Chamber of Commerce meeting if he did not embrace the opportunity. He felt his soul harden with a sort of spiritual hardness that had never been there before. He remembered too what it was the Salisheuttes were waiting an opportunity to tell these squatters on their ancient domain, and at that memory his enthusiasm kindled.
"I'll tell you what we're going to do!" he trumpeted suddenly, stern in his acceptance of their challenge to leadership. "We're going to triumph over our adversity. We're going to build our homes again and make them better homes—build Edgewater again and make it a better Edgewater. We'll give it better principles. We'll build a town where the little man is equal to the big man before the law—where no man's private interest can ever be made the public interest.
"We'll remember what President Coolidge once said, that 'a thing is not right because it will pay; but that it will pay because it is right.' If we do that, we will have a community in which legal crimes like those against Soderman and Adam John, with their inevitable train of bloodshed, will be impossible—or the little one against me even."
