And life in Harvey shaped itself into a vast greedy dream. A hard, metallic timbre came into the soft, high voice of Dr. James Nesbit, but did not warn men of the metallic plate that was galvanizing the Doctor's soul; nor did it disturb the Doctor. Amos Adams saw the tinplate covering, heard the sounding brass, and Mary his wife saw and heard too; but they were only two fools and the Doctor who loved them laughed at them and turned to the healing of the sick and the subjugation of his county. So men sent him to the state Senate. Curiously Mrs. Nesbit--she whom George Brotherton always called the General--she did not shake the spell of the trolls from her heart. They were building wings and ells and lean-tos on the house that she called her home, and she came to love the witchery of the time and place and did not see its folly. Yet there walked between these two entranced ones, another who should have awakened. For she was young, fresh from the gods of life. Her eyes, unflinching, glorious eyes, should have seen through the dream of that day. But they were only a girl's eyes and were happy, so they could not see beyond the spell that fell around them. And alas, even when the prince arrived, his kiss was poisoned too. When young Thomas Van Dorn came to the Nesbit house on a voyage of exploration and discovery--came in a handsome suit of gray, with hat and handkerchief to match, and a flowing crepe tie, black to harmonize with his flowing mustache and his wing of fine jet black hair above his ivory tinted face, Laura Nesbit considered him reflectively, and catalogued him. "Tom," explained the daughter to her father rather coldly one morning, after the young man had been reading Swinburne in his deep, mellow pipe-organ of a voice to the family until bedtime the night before, "Tom Van Dorn, father, is the kind of a man who needs the influence of some strong woman!" Mrs. Nesbit glanced at her husband furtively and caught his grin as he piped gayly: "Who also must carry the night key!" The three laughed but the daughter went on with the cataloguing: "He is a young man of strong predilections, of definite purpose and more than ordinary intellectual capacity." "And so far as I have counted, Laura," her father interrupted again, "I haven't found an honest hair in his handsome head; though I haven't completed the count yet!" The father smiled amiably as he made the final qualification. The girl caught the mother's look of approval shimmering across the table and laughed her gay, bell-like chime. "O, you've made a bad guess, mother." Again she laughed gayly: "It's not for me to open a school for the Direction of Miscalculated Purposes. Still," this she said seriously, "a strong woman is what he needs." "Not omitting the latch-key," gibed her father, and the talk drifted into another current.