"Who is he?" he asked the conductor; but the conductor, being busy with his fares, made no reply.
His was the first but not the last comment upon Amos that day. Entering the train at Lancaster he walked the length of the car to find a seat, and after him heads turned. Even persons who were familiar with Lancaster County's strange types looked startled; one or two impressionable women shivered.
"Do you suppose he's very wise or very stupid?" asked one woman of another.
"He's very handsome."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes, he's too handsome."
"I'll warrant he's the kind of a crank after whom women would travel in droves. Perhaps we'll have a new sect."
Amos heard no comments. He sat down and looked at the smooth farmlands, then at the river filled with floating ice, then upon the tall stacks and chimneys and into the heart of glowing furnaces. It was a bewildering world to which he was an alien. He was trained to be interested not in mechanical operations or in the achievements of science, but in the operations of the human soul. A famous saint had put into words, centuries before, Grandfather Milhausen's teaching. "Suppose that you had subtilty and learning enough to know all things, that you were acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars, and all the rest—what is there in that to be proud of? The glory of man is to be faithful to God."
Catching a glimpse of the dome of the Capitol soon after he had left the station, he walked up a narrow street to the rising ground. Now that he was here he would not confine himself to the library, but would look about—this, too, might be a part of Ellen's world! It was nine o'clock and the sun gave a small measure of warmth. Squirrels ran up and down the tree-trunks and pigeons wheeled above his head. Their friendliness with the passers-by pleased him.