Joe walked past them to the station door
and then returned along the platform and got again into Turner's Pike. He
stumbled along the path beside the road and presently saw Hugh McVey coming
toward him. It was one of the evenings when Hugh, overcome with loneliness,
and puzzled that his new position in the town's life did not bring him any
closer to people, had gone to town to walk through Main Street, half hoping
some one would break through his embarrassment and enter into conversation
with him.
When the harness maker saw Hugh walking in the path, he crept into a fence
corner, and crouching down, watched the man as Hugh had watched the French
boys at work in the cabbage fields. Strange thoughts came into his head. He
thought the extraordinarily tall figure before him in some way terrible. He
became childishly angry and for a moment thought that if he had a stone in
his hand he would throw it at the man, the workings of whose brain had so
upset his own life. Then as the figure of Hugh went away along the path
another mood came. "I have worked all my life for twelve hundred dollars,
for money that will buy one machine that this man thinks nothing about," he
muttered aloud. "Perhaps I'll get more money than I invested: Steve Hunter
says maybe I will. If machines kill the harness-making trade what's the
difference? I'll be all right. The thing to do is to get in with the new
times, to wake up, that's the ticket.
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