He lay and looked at the fire, still breathing shortly. "I never was as certain of it before," he said. "I have thought I was certain, but--I never felt as I do now. And yet--I don't know what made me do it--I went into Haworth's this morning and asked for--for work." His wife dropped the needle she was holding. "For work!" she said. "Yes--yes," a little hastily. "I was there and saw Haworth at a window, and there have been delays so often that it struck me I might as well--not exactly depend on it----" He broke off and buried his face in his hands. "What am I saying?" he cried. "It sounds as if I did not believe in it." His wife drew her chair nearer to him. She was used to the task of consoling him; it had become a habit. She spoke in an even, unemotional voice. "When Hilary comes----" she began. "It will be all over then," he said, "one way or the other. He will be here when I come back." "Yes." "I may have good news for him," he said. "I don't see"--faltering afresh--"how it can be otherwise. Only I am so used to discouragement that--that I can't see the thing fairly. It has been--a long time, Kitty." "This man in London," she said, "can tell you the actual truth about it?" "He is the first mechanic and inventor in England," he answered, his eye sparkling feverishly. "He is a genius. If he says it is a success, it is one." The woman rose, and going to the fire bent down to stir it. She lingered over it for a moment or so before she came back. "When the lad comes," he was saying, as if to himself, "we shall have news for him." Thirty years before, he had reached America, a gentle, unpractical Lancashire man, with a frail physique and empty pockets. He had belonged in his own land to the better class of mechanics; he had a knack of invention which somehow had never as yet brought forth any decided results. He had done one or two things which had gained him the reputation among his employers of being "a clever fellow," but they had always been things which had finally slipped into stronger or shrewder hands, and left his own empty. But at last there had come to him what seemed a new and wonderful thought. He had labored with it in secret, he had lain awake through long nights brooding over it in the darkness. And then some one had said to him: "Why don't you try America? America's the place for a thinking, inventing chap like you. It's fellows like you who are appreciated in a new country. Capitalists are not so slow in America. Why don't you carry your traps out there?" It was more a suggestion of boisterous good-fellowship than anything else, but it awakened new fancies in Stephen Murdoch's mind. He had always cherished vaguely grand visions of the New World, and they were easily excited. "I only wonder I never thought of it," he said to himself. He landed on the strange shore with high hopes in his breast, and a little unperfected model in his shabby trunk.