“Well, I've found a greater power than the push of steam or water or electricity. It can put them all out of business—it could stop every wheel in the world.”
He paused, and I looked into his eyes and guessed his meaning.
“It is love, and it has stopped me,” he went on—“stopped me on the brink of a precipice. I don't know what to do. I wish I were somebody—anybody but the low-bred, common, Pegleg McCarthy that I am.”
His voice began to tremble a bit, and he left his chair and walked up and down the room in silence.
“Don't throw mud on yourself,” I protested. “There are plenty of us who would like to be that same McCarthy.”
“I'm not so bad,” he went on. “The trouble is, I have the pride of a king in me and the blood of a hodman. But I may do something by-and-by. I've been reading about Lincoln. He was a man of humble birth and limited education. It gave me hope for myself.”
“What's the trouble?” I asked again.
“I have met the woman I love, and she is not Miss Manning,” he continued. “She is a lady—the sweetest, dearest lady in the land, and so far above me that we could never be man and wife. But I love her. God! she is more to me than all the rest of the world. I have nothing in me but the thought of her.”
He turned away and fussed with the papers on his desk.
“I care no more for business,” he continued, “and the honors I had hoped for are nothing to me now. All my plans are like the withered stems of a garden sticking out of the snow.”