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The Fortune Hunter by Louis Joseph Vance
page 53 of 311 (17%)
to admit it. We ended vulgarly with a bet, Will wagering me the best
five-cent Clear Havana in the Bigelow House sample-room that nothing
worth mentioning would take place in Radville before sundown of the
following day.

I left him, returning to my room at Miss Carpenter's (Will and I are
old friends, but I refuse to eat the food he serves his guests), warmed
by the prospect of certain triumph if a little appalled by the prospect
of winning the stake; and sympathising a little with Will, who, for all
his egregious stubborness, has some excuse for upholding his
unreasonable and ridiculous views. He knows no better, having never had
the opportunity to find out for himself how utterly absurd are his
claims for the outside world. Whereas I have.

He's an adventurer at heart, Will Bigelow, a romantic soul crusted
heavily with character--like a volcano smouldering beneath its lava.
For many years he has managed the Bigelow House, with his thoughts
apart from it, his eyes ever seeking the horizon that recedes beyond
the soaring rim of our encircling cup of hills, his heart forever
yearning forth to the outer world; which he erroneously conceives to be
a theatre of events--as if outside of Radville only could there be
things worth seeing, considering, or doing, or matters of any sort that
move momentously! As long as I've known the man (and we played truant
together fifty years ago--hookey, we called it then) he's had his heart
set on going forth from Radville, "for to admire and for to see, for to
view this wide world o'er"; always he has presented himself to me as
one poised on the pinnacle of purpose, ready the next instant to dive
and strike out into the teeming unknown beyond the barrier hills. But
this promise he has never fulfilled. He still maintains that he will
surely go--next week--after the hayin's over--as soon as the ice is
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