Powell bit the end from his cigar and spat out the damp little pieces of tobacco viciously.
“No, I’ll tell you, Glenn,” he said, “he stayed at home and got his start, as he calls it, by skinning the poor. Widows were his big game and he gathered a little pile that has been growing ever since. To-day he owns Gordon County.”
“He seems to be a prominent man in the church,” ventured Marley.
“He’ll be a prominent man in hell,” said Powell, angrily. And then he added thoughtfully: “My one regret in going there myself is that I’ll have to see him every day.”
The most curious effect of Marley’s visit to Dudley, however, was one he did not observe himself. Having been defeated in his plan to secure a place in the bank, he felt at first, with a certain consolation, that he still had the law to fall back on, and he returned to his studies. But he made little headway; once having decided to give up the law, the decision remained, and his mind was constantly occupied with schemes for securing a foothold in some other occupation. He considered, one after another, every possibility in Macochee, and as fast as he thought of some opening, he went for it, but invariably to find it either no opening at all, or else, if it were an opening, one that closed at his approach. Gradually he gave up his studies altogether, and sat idle, his book before him; but one day Powell said to him:
“Say, Glenn, you’re not getting along very fast, are you?”
Marley started, and flushed with a sense of guilt.
“Well, no,” he admitted.
“What’s the matter, in love?”
Marley blushed, from another cause this time, though the guilt remained in his face. But Powell instantly was gentle.