An automobile halted on the opposite side of the group. A big man sat
alone in the tonneau.

He began to scowl as he listened.

The young man continued to smile.

The big man was plainly a personality. He was cool and crisp in summer
flannels--as immaculate as the accoutrements of his car.

In face and physique the young man was plainly not of that herd near
which he stood.

His glance crossed that of the man in the car; he met the scowl with his
smile.

Like a kiln open to the hot glare from a brassy sky or an oven where the
July caloric blazed like a blast from the open mouth of a retort--such
that day seemed Moosac Square in the heart of the cotton-mill city. High
buildings closed in its treeless, ill-paved, dirty area. The air, made
blistering by the torch of the sun, beat back and forth between the
buildings in shimmering waves.

In the center of the square the blatant orator balanced himself on a
stone trough which was arid and dust-choked. He harangued the group of
unkempt men; sweating, blinking, apathetic men; slouchy men; men who
were ticketed in attire and demeanor with all the squalid marks of
idlers, vagrants, and the unemployed.

The man on the trough was of the ilk of the men who surrounded him. His