And over the bridge and out into Turner's Pike walked Steve Hunter, the embryo industrial magnate. Across the great stretches of fields that lay beside the road the wind ran furiously, tearing leaves off trees, carrying great volumes of dust before it. The hurrying black clouds in the sky were, he fancied, like clouds of smoke pouring out of the chimneys of factories owned by himself. In fancy also he saw his town become a city, bathed in the smoke of his enterprises. As he looked abroad over the fields swept by the storm of wind, he realized that the road along which he walked would in time become a city street. “Pretty soon I'll get an option on this land,” he said meditatively. An exalted mood took possession of him and when he got to Pickleville he did not go into the shop where Hugh and Allie Mulberry were at work, but turning, walked back toward town in the mud and the driving rain. It was a time when Steve wanted to be by himself, to feel himself the one great man of the community. He had intended to go into the old pickle factory and escape the rain, but when he got to the railroad tracks, had turned back because he realized suddenly that in the presence of the silent, intent inventor he had never been able to feel big. He wanted to feel big on that evening and so, unmindful of the rain and of his hat, that was caught up by the wind and blown away into a field, he went along the deserted road thinking great thoughts. At a place where there were no houses he stopped for a moment and lifted his tiny hands to the skies. “I'm a man. I tell you what, I'm a man. Whatever any one says, I tell you what, I'm a man,” he shouted into the void. CHAPTER VII Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice that have come out of the fields to live in houses that do not belong to them. They live within the dark walls of the houses where only a dim light penetrates, and so many have come that they grow thin and haggard with the constant toil of getting food and warmth. Behind the walls the mice scamper about in droves, and there is much squealing and chattering. Now and then a bold mouse stands upon his hind legs and addresses the others. He declares he will force his way through the walls and conquer the gods who have built the house. “I will kill them,” he declares. “The mice shall rule. You shall live in the light and the warmth. There shall be food for all and no one shall go hungry.”