ions that bear hard on the individual--crush him maybe--BUT THE
WHEAT WILL BE CARRIED TO FEED THE PEOPLE as inevitably as it will grow.
If you want to fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one
person, you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men."

"But--but," faltered Presley, "you are the head, you control the road."

"You are a very young man. Control the road! Can I stop it? I can
go into bankruptcy if you like. But otherwise if I run my road, as a
business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not control it. It is
a force born out of certain conditions, and I--no man--can stop it or
control it. Can your Mr. Derrick stop the Wheat growing? He can burn his
crop, or he can give it away, or sell it for a cent a bushel--just as I
could go into bankruptcy--but otherwise his Wheat must grow. Can any one
stop the Wheat? Well, then no more can I stop the Road."

Presley regained the street stupefied, his brain in a whirl. This new
idea, this new conception dumfounded him. Somehow, he could not deny
it. It rang with the clear reverberation of truth. Was no one, then, to
blame for the horror at the irrigating ditch? Forces, conditions,
laws of supply and demand--were these then the enemies, after all? Not
enemies; there was no malevolence in Nature. Colossal indifference
only, a vast trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic
engine, a vast cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart
of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing
out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm, the agony of
destruction sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all
that prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs. He went to his club and
ate his supper alone, in gloomy agitation. He was sombre, brooding, lost
in a dark maze of gloomy reflections. However, just as he was rising
from the table an incident occurred that for the moment roused him and
sharply diverted his mind.

His table had been placed near a window and as he was sipping his
after-dinner coffee, he happened to glance across the street. His eye
was at once caught by the sight of a familiar figure. Was it Minna
Hooven? The figure turned the street corner and was lost to sight; but
it had been strangely like. On the moment, Presley had risen from the
table and, clapping on his hat, had hurried into the streets, where the
lamps were already beginning to shine.

But search though he w