wife had pressed him toward his present shift he had
sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield; and yet
when he did yield he had no plans to make, because he found them
already prepared and worked out in detail in his mind; as if he had long
contemplated the "step" he believed himself incapable of taking.

Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging his
little collection of bonds for a "small rental property," if he could
find "a good buy"; and he had spent many of his spare hours rambling
over the enormously spreading city and its purlieus, looking for the
ideal "buy." It remained unattainable, so far as he was concerned; but
he found other things.

Not twice a crow's mile from his own house there was a dismal and
slummish quarter, a decayed "industrial district" of earlier days. Most
of the industries were small; some of them died, perishing of bankruptcy
or fire; and a few had moved, leaving their shells. Of the relics, the
best was a brick building which had been the largest and most important
factory in the quarter: it had been injured by a long vacancy almost
as serious as a fire, in effect, and Adams had often guessed at the sum
needed to put it in repair.

When he passed it, he would look at it with an interest which he
supposed detached and idly speculative. "That'd be just the thing," he
thought. "If a fellow had money enough, and took a notion to set up some
new business on a big scale, this would be a pretty good place--to make
glue, for instance, if that wasn't out of the question, of course.
It would take a lot of money, though; a great deal too much for me to
expect to handle--even if I'd ever dream of doing such a thing."

Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, open lot of two acres
or so, and near the middle of the lot, a long brick shed stood in
a desolate abandonment, not happily decorated by old coatings of
theatrical and medicinal advertisements. But the brick shed had two
wooden ells, and, though both shed and ells were of a single story, here
was empty space enough for a modest enterprise--"space enough for almost
anything, to start with," Adams thought, as he walked through the low
buildings, one day, when he was prospecting in that section. "Yes, I
suppose I COULD swing this," he thought. "If the process belonged to
me, say, instead of being out of the question because it isn't my
property--or if I was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow, he