"What have I ever done to Oldham?" he inquired. "Do you know?" "Oldham?" repeated Welton. "Baker's land agent." "Oh, yes. I never happened to run across him. Don't know him at all." Bob put down Oldham's manifest hatred to pettiness of disposition. Even from Merker, the philosophic storekeeper, Bob obtained scant comfort. "Men like you, with ability, youth, energy," said Merker, "producing nothing, just conserving, saving. Conditions should be such that the possibility of fire, of trespass, of all you fellows guard against, should be eliminated. Then you could supply steam, energy, accomplishment, instead of being merely the lubrication. It's an economic waste." Bob left the mill-yards half-depressed, half-amused. All his people had become alien. He opposed them in nothing, his work in no way interfered with their activities; yet, without his volition, and probably without their realization, he was already looked upon as one to be held at arms' length. It saddened Bob, as it does every right-thinking young man when he arrives at setting up his own standards of conduct and his own ways of life. He longed with a great longing, which at the same time he realized to be hopeless, to make these people feel as he felt. It gave him real pain to find that his way of life could never gain anything beyond disapproval or incomprehension. It took considerable fortitude to conclude that he now must build his own structure, unsupported. He was entering the loneliness of soul inseparable from complete manhood.