"
Hugh's train was due in Bidwell at ten, but did not arrive until half after
eleven. He walked from the station through the town toward the Butterworth
farm.
At the end of their first year of marriage a daughter had been born to
Clara, and some time before his trip to Pittsburgh she had told him she was
again pregnant. "She may be sitting up. I must get home," he thought, but
when he got to the bridge near the farmhouse, the bridge on which he had
stood beside Clara that first time they were together, he got out of the
road and went to sit on a fallen log at the edge of a grove of trees.
"How quiet and peaceful the night!" he thought and leaning forward held his
long, troubled face in his hands. He wondered why peace and quiet would
not come to him, why life would not let him alone. "After all, I've lived
a simple life and have done good work," he thought. "Some of the things
they've said about me are true enough. I've invented machines that save
useless labor, I've lightened men's labor."
Hugh tried to cling to that thought, but it would not stay in his mind. All
the thoughts that gave his mind peace and quiet flew away like birds seen
on a distant horizon at evening. It had been so ever since that night when
he was suddenly and unexpectedly attacked by the crazed harness maker in
the motor. Before that his mind had often been unsettled, but he knew what
he wanted.
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