"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

he had in some way become connected in his new work with such a one. The
realization overcame him completely. Forgetting entirely his duties as a
telegrapher, he closed the office and went for a walk across the meadows
and in the little patches of woodlands that still remained standing in the
open plain north of Pickleville. He did not return until late at night, and
when he did, had not solved the puzzle as to what had happened. All he got
out of it was the fact that the machine he had been trying to make was of
great and mysterious importance to the civilization into which he had come
to live and of which he wanted so keenly to be a part. There seemed to him
something almost sacred in that fact. A new determination to complete and
perfect his plant-setting machine had taken possession of him.

* * * * *

The meeting to organize a promotion company that would in turn launch the
first industrial enterprise in the town of Bidwell was held in the back
room of the Bidwell bank one afternoon in June. The berry season had just
come to an end and the streets were full of people. A circus had come to
town and at one o'clock there was a parade. Before the stores horses
belonging to visiting country people stood hitched in two long rows. The
meeting in the bank was not held until four o'clock, when the banking
business was at an end for the day. It had been a hot, stuffy afternoon
and a storm threatened. For some reason the whole town had an inkling of
the fact that a meeting was to be held on that day, and in spite of the
excitement caused by the coming of the circus, it was in everybody's mind.
From the very beginning of his upward journey in life, Steve Hunter had
the faculty of throwing an air of mystery and importance about everything
he did. Every one saw the workings of the machinery by which the myth
concerning himself was created, but was nevertheless impressed. Even the
men of Bidwell who retained the ability to laugh at Steve could not laugh
at the things he did.

For two months before the day on which the meeting was held, the town had
been on edge. Every one knew that Hugh McVey had suddenly given up his
place in the telegraph office and that he was engaged in some enterprise
with Steve Hunter. "Well, I see he has thrown off the mask, that fellow,"
said Alban Foster, superintendent of the Bidwell schools, in speaking of
the matter to the Reverend Harvey Oxford, the minister of the Baptist
Church.

Steve saw to it that although every one was curious the curiosity was
unsatisfied. Even his father was left in the dark. The two men had a sharp
quarrel about the matter, but as Steve had three thousand dollars of his
own, left him by his mother, and was well past his twenty-first year, there
was nothing his father could do.

At Pickleville the windows and doors at the back of the deserted factory
were bricked up, and over the windows and the door at the front, where a
floor had been laid, iron bars specially made by Lew Twining the Bidwell
blacksmith had been put. The bars over the door locked the place at night