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and old men wandered down along Turner's Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh. They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of the sensation he was cre- ating, they became embarrassed as he was always em- barrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich by the power of the man's mind. They thought of him as thinking always great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn't waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost un- believable wonders. In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skepti- cal farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell was to have a brick factory covering acres of ground, that there would be paved streets and electric lights. Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was the man who, if the machine