In this picture Sam thought he saw a place for himself. He conceived of life in the city as a great game in which he believed he could play a sterling part. Had he not in Caxton brought something out of nothing, had he not systematised and monopolised the selling of papers, had he not introduced the vending of popcorn and peanuts from baskets to the Saturday night crowds? Already boys went out in his employ, already the totals in the bank book had crept to more than seven hundred dollars. He felt within him a glow of pride at the thought of what he had done and would do. “I will be richer than any man in town here,” he declared in his pride. “I will be richer than Ed Walker.” Saturday night was the great night in Caxton life. For it the clerks in the stores prepared, for it Sam sent forth his peanut and popcorn venders, for it Art Sherman rolled up his sleeves and put the glasses close by the beer tap under the bar, and for it the mechanics, the farmers, and the labourers dressed in their Sunday best and came forth to mingle with their fellows. On Main Street crowds packed the stores, the sidewalks, and drinking places, and men stood about in groups talking while young girls with their lovers walked up and down. In the hall over Geiger’s drug store a dance went on and the voice of the caller-off rose above the clatter of voices and the stamping of horses in the street. Now and then a fight broke out among the roisterers in Piety Hollow. Once a young farm hand was killed with a knife. In and out through the crowd Sam went, pressing his wares. “Remember the long quiet Sunday afternoon,” he said, pushing a paper into the hands of a slow-thinking farmer. “Recipes for cooking new dishes,” he urged to the farmer’s wife. “There is a page of new fashions in dress,” he told the young girl. Not until the last light was out in the last saloon in Piety Hollow, and the last roisterer had driven off into the darkness carrying a Saturday paper in his pocket, did Sam close the day’s business. And it was on a Saturday night that he decided to drop paper selling. “I will take you into business with me,” announced Freedom Smith, stopping him as he hurried by. “You are getting too old to sell papers and you know too much.” Sam, still intent upon the money to be made on that particular Saturday night, did not stop to discuss the matter with Freedom, but for a year he had been looking quietly about for something to go into and now he nodded his head as he hurried away. “It is the end of romance,” shouted Telfer, who stood beside Freedom Smith before Geiger’s drug store and who had heard the offer. “A boy, who has seen the secret workings of my mind, who has heard me spout Poe and Browning, will become a merchant, dealing in stinking hides. I am overcome by the thought.” The next day, sitting in the garden back of his house, Telfer talked to Sam of the matter at length.