The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he could still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of the corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a sudden glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay over the town. The bells of the churches began to call people to the Wednesday evening prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun to build workmen's houses in a field beyond Hugh's shop and these were occupied by Italian laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some day be a tenement district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch belonging to Ezra French who had said God would not permit men to change the field of their labors. An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore a bright red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly colored shirt. Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to see foreigners about. He did not understand them and when he saw them going about the streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man's duty, he thought, to look as much as possible like all his fellow men, to lose himself in the crowds, and these fellows did not look like other men. They loved color, and as they talked they made rapid gestures with their hands. The Italian in the road was with a woman of his own race, and in the growing darkness put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh's heart began to beat rapidly and he forgot his American prejudices. He wished he were a workman and that Clara were a workman's daughter. Then, he thought, he might find courage to go to her. His imagination, quickened by the flame of desire and running in new channels, made it possible for him, at the moment to see himself in the young Italian's place, walking in the road with Clara. She was clad in a calico dress and her soft brown eyes looked at him full of love and understanding. The three workingmen had completed the job for which they had come back to work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came toward the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed himself by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were his thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.