l-house stood glaring solitarily
in the bright starlight, from out its setting of brown, hard-trodden
prairie. Within, the assembled farmers were packed tight and regular
in the seats and aisles, like kernels on an ear of corn. In the front
of the room a little space had been shelled bare for the speaker, and
the displaced human kernels thereto incident were scattered crouching
in the narrow hall and anteroom. From without, groups of men denied
admittance, thrust hairy faces in at the open windows. A row of dusty,
grease-covered lamps flanked by composition metal reflectors,
concentrated light upon the shelled spot, leaving the remainder of the
room in variant shadow. The low murmur of suppressed conversation,
accompanied by the unconscious shuffling of restless feet, sounded
through the place. Becoming constantly more noticeable, an unpleasant,
penetrating odor, of the unclean human animal filled the room.

Guy Landers sat on a crowded back seat, where, leaning one elbow on
his knee, he shaded his eyes with his hand. On his right a big, sweaty
farmer was smoking a stale pipe. The smell of the cheap, vile tobacco,
bad as it was, became a welcome substitute for the odor of the man
himself.

At his left were two boys of his own age, splendid, both of them, with
the overflowing vitality that makes all young animals splendid. They
were talking--of women. They spoke low, watching sheepishly whether
any one was listening, and snickering suppressedly together.

The young man's head dropped in his hands. It all depressed him like a
weight. From the depths of his soul he despised them for their
vulgarity, and hated himself for so doing, for he was of their life
and work akin. He shut his eyes, suffering blindly.

Consciousness returned at the sound of a strangely soft voice, and he
looked up a little bewildered. A swarm of night-bugs encircled each of
the greasy lamps, blindly beating out their lives against the hot
chimney; but save this and the soft voice there was no other sound.
The man at the right held his pipe in his hand; to the left the boys
had ceased whispering; one and all were listening to the speaker with
the stolid, expressionless gaze of interested animals.

Guy Landers could not have told why he had come that night. Perhaps it
was in response to that gregarious instinct which prompts us all at
times to mingle with a crowd; certainly he had not expected to be
interested. Thus it was with almost a feeling of