the incident that had disturbed his employer, he broke forth into words.
He was defiant and expressed his defiance. "Well, then, let 'em go to
Philadelphia, let 'em go any damn place they please," he growled, and
then, as though his own words had re-established his self-respect, he
straightened his shoulders and glared at the puzzled and alarmed boy. "I
know my trade and do not have to bow down to any man," he declared. He
expressed the old tradesman's faith in his craft and the rights it gave the
craftsman. "Learn your trade. Don't listen to talk," he said earnestly.
"The man who knows his trade is a man. He can tell every one to go to the
devil."




CHAPTER IV


Hugh McVey was twenty-three years old when he went to live in Bidwell. The
position of telegraph operator at the Wheeling station a mile north of town
became vacant and, through an accidental encounter with a former resident
of a neighboring town, he got the place.

The Missourian had been at work during the winter in a sawmill in the
country near a northern Indiana town. During the evenings he wandered on
country roads and in the town streets, but he did not talk to any one. As
had happened to him in other places, he had the reputation of being queer.
His clothes were worn threadbare and, although he had money in his pockets,
he did not buy new ones. In the evening when he went through the town
streets and saw the smartly dressed clerks standing before the stores, he
looked at his own shabby person and was ashamed to enter. In his boyhood