As for Hugh McVey, he stayed in his home town and among his own people for
a year after the departure of the man and woman who had been father and
mother to him, and then he also departed. All through the year he worked
constantly to cure himself of the curse of indolence. When he awoke in the
morning he did not dare lie in bed for a moment for fear indolence would
overcome him and he would not be able to arise at all. Getting out of bed
at once he dressed and went to the station. During the day there was not
much work to be done and he walked for hours up and down the station
platform. When he sat down he at once took up a book and put his mind to
work. When the pages of the book became indistinct before his eyes and he
felt within him the inclination to drift off into dreams, he again arose
and walked up and down the platform. Having accepted the New England
woman's opinion of his own people and not wanting to associate with them,
his life became utterly lonely and his loneliness also drove him to labor.
Something happened to him. Although his body would not and never did become
active, his mind began suddenly to work with feverish eagerness. The vague
thoughts and feelings that had always been a part of him but that had been
indefinite, ill-defined things, like clouds floating far away in a hazy
sky, began to grow definite. In the evening after his work was done and he
had locked the station for the night, he did not go to the town hotel where
he had taken a room and where he ate his meals, but wandered about town and
along the road that ran south beside the great mysterious river.
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