He
had come into town over a poorly made clay road running through barren
hills, and, depressed and weary, had stood on the shores of a river,
swollen by the early fall rains, that flowed along the edges of the town.
Before him in the distance he had looked into the windows of a huge
factory, the black smoke from which added to the gloom of the scene that
lay before him. Through the windows of the factory, dimly seen, workers
ran here and there, appearing and disappearing, the glare of the furnace
fire lighting now one, now another of them, sharply. At his feet the
tumbling waters that rolled and pitched over a little dam fascinated him.
Looking closely at the racing waters his head, light from physical
weariness, reeled, and in fear of falling he had been compelled to grip
firmly the small tree against which he leaned. In the back yard of a house
across the stream from Sam and facing the factory four guinea hens sat on
a board fence, their weird, plaintive cries making a peculiarly fitting
accompaniment to the scene that lay before him, and in the yard itself two
bedraggled fowls fought each other. Again and again they sprang into the
fray, striking out with bills and spurs.
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