nd it could not have been business sense,
for Captain Morton for all his dreams was a child with a dollar, and Dr.
Nesbit never was out of debt a day in his life; without his salary from
tax-payers John Kollander would have been a charge on the county. In the
matter of industry Daniel Sands was a marvel, but Jamie McPherson
toiling all day used to come home and start up his well drill and its
clatter could be heard far into the night, and often he started it hours
before dawn. Nor could aspirations and visions have furnished the line
of cleavage; for no one could have hopes so high for Harvey as Jamie,
who sank his drill far into the earth, put his whole life, every penny
of his earnings and all his strength into the dream that some day he
would bring coal or oil or gas to Harvey and make it a great city. Yet
when he found the precious vein, thick and rich and easy to mine, Daniel
Sands and Joseph Calvin took his claim from him by chicanery as easily
as they would have robbed a blind man of a penny, and Jamie went to work
in the mines for Daniel Sands grumbling but faithful. Williams and
Dooley and Hogan and Herdicker bent at their daily tasks in those first
years, each feeling that the next day or the next month or at most the
next year his everlasting fortune would be made. And Dick Bowman, cohort
of Dr. Nesbit, many a time and oft would wash up, put on a clean suit,
and go out and round up the voters in the Valley for the Doctor's cause
and scorn his task with a hissing; for Dick read Karl Marx and dreamed
of the day of the revolution. Yet he dwelled with the sons of Essua, who
as they toiled murmured about their stolen birthright. When a decade had
passed in Harvey the social crystal was firm; the hill and the valley
were cast into the solid rock of things as they are. No one could say
why; it was a mystery. It is still a mystery. As society forms and
reforms, its cleavages follow unknown lines.

It was on a day in June--late in the morning, after Grant and Nathan
Perry--son of the stuttering Kyle of that name, had come from a cool
hour in the quiet pool down on the Wahoo and little Grant, waiting like
a hungry pup for his lunch, that was tempting him in the basket under
the typerack, was counting the moments and vaguely speculating as to
what minutes were--when he looked up from the floor and saw what seemed
to him a visitor from another world.[2]

The creature was talking to Amos Adams sitting at the desk; and Amo