He looked out of the
car window at the little woman thin and worn standing alone on the
station platform and a great wave of anger passed through him. "I'll
show them," he muttered. The woman looked at him and forced a smile to
her lips. The train began to move into the west. Beaut looked at his
mother and at the deserted streets of Coal Creek and put his head down
upon his hands and in the crowded car before the gaping people wept
with joy that he had seen the last of youth. He looked back at Coal
Creek, full of hate. Like Nero he might have wished that all of the
people of the town had but one head so that he might have cut it off
with a sweep of a sword or knocked it into the gutter with one
swinging blow.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
It was late in the summer of 1893 when McGregor came to Chicago, an
ill time for boy or man in that city. The big exposition of the year
before had brought multiplied thousands of restless labourers into the
city and its leading citizens, who had clamoured for the exposition
and had loudly talked of the great growth that was to come, did not
know what to do with the growth now that it had come. The depression
that followed on the heels of the great show and the financial panic
that ran over the country in that year had set thousands of hungry men
to wait dumbly on park benches poring over want advertisements in the
daily papers and looking vacantly at the lake or had driven them to
tramp aimlessly through the streets, filled with forebodings.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62