When the harness maker saw Hugh walking in the path, he crept into a fence corner, and crouching down, watched the man as Hugh had watched the French boys at work in the cabbage fields. Strange thoughts came into his head. He thought the extraordinarily tall figure before him in some way terrible. He became childishly angry and for a moment thought that if he had a stone in his hand he would throw it at the man, the workings of whose brain had so upset his own life. Then as the figure of Hugh went away along the path another mood came. “I have worked all my life for twelve hundred dollars, for money that will buy one machine that this man thinks nothing about,” he muttered aloud. “Perhaps I'll get more money than I invested: Steve Hunter says maybe I will. If machines kill the harness-making trade what's the difference? I'll be all right. The thing to do is to get in with the new times, to wake up, that's the ticket. With me it's like with every one else: nothing venture nothing gain.” Joe crawled out of the fence corner and went stealthily along the road behind Hugh. A fervor seized him and he thought he would like to creep close and touch with his finger the hem of Hugh's coat. Afraid to try anything so bold his mind took a new turn. He ran in the darkness along the road toward town and, when he had crossed the bridge and come to the New York Central tracks, turned west and went along the tracks until he came to the new factory. In the darkness the half completed walls stuck up into the sky, and all about were piles of building materials. The night had been dark and cloudy, but now the moon began to push its way through the clouds. Joe crawled over a pile of bricks and through a window into the building. He felt his way along the walls until he came to a mass of iron covered by a rubber blanket. He was sure it must be the lathe his money had bought, the machine that was to do the work of a hundred men and that was to make him comfortably rich in his old age. No one had spoken of any other machine having been brought in on the factory floor. Joe knelt on the floor and put his hands about the heavy iron legs of the machine. “What a strong thing it is! It will not break easily,” he thought. He had an impulse to do something he knew would be foolish, to kiss the iron legs of the machine or to say a prayer as he knelt before it. Instead he got to his feet and crawling out again through the window, went home. He felt renewed and full of new courage because of the experiences of the night, but when he got to his own house and stood at the door outside, he heard his neighbor, David Chapman, a wheelwright who worked in Charlie Collins' wagon shop, praying in his bedroom before an open window. Joe listened for a moment and, for some reason he couldn't understand, his new-found faith was destroyed by what he heard. David Chapman, a devout Methodist, was praying for Hugh McVey and for the success of his invention. Joe knew