mother's position had given life a bitter taste in his mouth, and Telfer
sweetened it. He entered with zeal into Sam's thoughts and dreams, and
tried valiantly to arouse in the quiet, industrious, money-making boy some
of his own love of life and beauty. At night, as the two walked down
country roads, the man would stop and, waving his arms about, quote Poe or
Browning or, in another mood, would compel Sam's attention to the rare
smell of a hayfield or to a moonlit stretch of meadow.

Before people gathered on the streets he teased the boy, calling him a
little money grubber and saying, "He is like a little mole that works
underground. As the mole goes for a worm so this boy goes for a five-cent
piece. I have watched him. A travelling man goes out of town leaving a
stray dime or nickel here and within an hour it is in this boy's pocket. I
have talked to banker Walker of him. He trembles lest his vaults become
too small to hold the wealth of this young Croesus. The day will come when
he will buy the town and put it into his vest pocket."

For all his public teasing of the boy Telfer had the genius to adopt a
different attitude when they were alone together. Then he talked to him
openly and freely as he talked to Valmore and Freedom Smith and to other
cronies of his on the streets of Caxton. Walking along the road he would
point with his cane to the town and say, "You and that mother of yours
have more of the real stuff in you than the rest of the boys and mothers
of the town put together."

In all Caxton Telfer was the only man who knew books and who took them
seriously. Sam sometimes found his attitude toward them puzzling and would
stand with open mouth listening as Telfer swore or laughed at a book as he
did at Valmore or Freedom Smith. He had a fine portrait of Browning which
he kept hung in the stable and before this he would stand, his legs spread