"Then you've got everything. Do you mean to tell me that a fellow like you can't earn enough to support himself? If you do, you're talking rot."
Harrington took this with his wide, guileless grin. He was not offended now, for he felt the friendly interest and sympathy under the other's words. His voice when he replied was gentler.
"I ain't sayin' I can't keep body an' soul together, foh maybe I can," he conceded. "But I'm sayin' that ain't life. I'm sayin' I ain't been fitted fo' wo'k. I 'ain't been educated. I've lived in a log-cabin down in the Virginia mountains all man life. I left thah six weeks ago, after mah mother died. She was the last of ouah family but me. I 'ain't never been to school. She taught me to read in the Bible, an' to write. I 'ain't nevah read anotheh book except the Bible and Mistah Shakespeah's poems, an' Mistah Pluta'ch's Lives of Great Men. I know them by hea't. I don't know whe' she got them o' whe' she came from. She was different from othah mountain women. I've been No'th six weeks, and I've tried ha'd to find a place whah I could fit in, but th' ain't none. Men must be trained fuh wo'k; I ain't trained. I cayn't go back, foh the's no one thah, an' I hate the mountains."
Maxwell's reply was brief and to the point.
"Think you could learn to run our elevator without killing us all?" he inquired. "Well, you've got to. You've been talking awful guff, you know. Now you're going to work, right here. We need a new man. The one we have has been drunk three days. You're going to run the elevator and get fifteen dollars a week to begin with. Here's your first week's salary in advance. I'll arrange about the job with the superintendent. I'll give you some books, and you can educate yourself. When you're above elevator work we'll give you something better. You'll probably have my job inside of a year," he ended, jocosely.
The hand of the mountaineer stretched out to him trembled as Maxwell grasped it.
"You ah the only white man I've found in the No'th," said the Southerner, breathlessly. "I'll make good, as they say up heah. But I don't know how I can thank you."
"Don't try," said Maxwell, brusquely. "Be here at eight in the morning. By nine there will be a few callers I may want you to throw down the shaft."
Thus began the connection between the Searchlight and Bart Harrington, subsequently its most popular employe. Before the week was over all the reporters and most of the editors had casually sought from Maxwell some details concerning his protege, but had received few. Harrington was a new man, and he came from the Virginia mountains, and was most obliging and altogether engaging. This was all the information acquired even by the indefatigable Miss Mollie Merk, whose success in extracting from individuals information it was their dearest desire to conceal had made her a star member of the Searchlight's staff. It was to Miss Merk, however, that Harrington announced his first important discovery. Leaning across her desk one evening after his successor had taken the "car," the new elevator man touched a subject much upon his mind.
"I got wet the othah day," he began, conversationally, "an' mah landlady let me go to the kitchen to dry mah clothes. I obse'ved as I sat by huh stove that the lid of the wash boilah kept liftin' up, all by itself, an' then I saw 'twas raised by the steam of the hot watah inside. I kep' thinkin' 'bout it, an' it seems to me thah's an idea thah, a soht of ene'gy, you know, that might be used in big ways. I mus' think it out."