As he walked about through the streets, avoiding the other young
men and women, he remembered Ernestine, the daughter of the Buffalo soap
maker, and thought a great deal about the magnificence of the big stone
house in which she lived with her father. His body ached for her, but that
was a matter he felt could be managed. How he could achieve a financial
position that would make it possible for him to ask for her hand was a more
difficult problem. Since he had come back from the business college to live
in his home town, he had secretly, and at the cost of two new five dollar
dresses, arranged a physical alliance with a girl named Louise Trucker
whose father was a farm laborer, and that left his mind free for other
things. He intended to become a manufacturer, the first one in Bidwell,
to make himself a leader in the new movement that was sweeping over the
country. He had thought out what he wanted to do and it only remained to
find something for him to manufacture to put his plans through. First of
all he had selected with great care certain men he intended to ask to go in
with him. There was John Clark the banker, his own father, E. H. Hunter the
town jeweler, Thomas Butterworth the rich farmer, and young Gordon Hart,
who had a job as assistant cashier in the bank. For a month he had been
dropping hints to these men of something mysterious and important about
to happen.
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