II.
After his breakfast, Adam walked back to the factory. He was wondering, as he went along, why they should begin with him if they wanted to save expense. Eighteen dollars a month was a good deal to him, but what was it to the mill? Every turn of the water wheel, he thought, made more money than his day's wages. But possibly Mr. Prescott had found out that his son fancied Jane, and meant to drive them out of town. The very day that Mr. Prescott saw him first, Mr. Cowles, the manager, told him he wasn't needed any longer, that the under engineer would see to the fires. That was punishing him for another's fault—just the way with rich men; and for a while he almost hated Mr. Prescott.
Adam Craig had had a peculiar life, as he thought. He wanted education, money, and such other things, besides something to eat and wear; but they never came to him, and he drifted into a place at the machine shops, and got the stamp put on him, and then went his round year after year with less and less thought of stepping out of it. Yet he always believed he once had some uncommon stuff in him, and he claimed his own respect for having had it, even if he had lost it now; he had his own way of proving it too. His wife was the mirror by which he judged himself. She was a German woman, whom he found in the city hospital; or rather she found him, shot through the throat by the accidental discharge of a rifle. She was just from the fatherland, and could not speak a word of English; with his swollen head he could not speak at all; but she watched him through it, and by the signs of that language which is common to all nations, they managed to understand each other, and signalized the day of his recovery by marrying. This was the pride of Adam's whole life, and convinced him he was made capable of being somebody; he held his wife to be a superior woman, and her appreciation was a consolation that never left him. 'She knawed me,' he used to say, 'she saw into me better nor I did.' And though he would talk stoutly sometimes for democracy, he had an odd notion that marrying a Continental European gave him some sort of distinction; and all his troubled talks with himself ended in his saying: 'Ah, well, if I'd been born in Germany, I might been somebody.'
Adam watched for Mr. Cowles most of the forenoon, determined to ask about his dismissal; at last the manager strolled through the shops, and Adam made a desperate effort, and went to him. He turned short about, as the stoker spoke.
'Mr. Cowles, was ye told to send me away?'
'Told! Who should tell me?'
'But I thought—I thought Mr. Prescott might said summut—'
'Do you suppose he concerns himself about you? I'm master here, and I don't ask what I shall do.'
Adam took hope: 'Hev ye said sure I must go, Mr. Cowles? I've been here so long, an' noo I'm old. I've got gray at t'mill,' touching his head as he spoke.
'You've had your wages regular, haven't you?' said Cowles, roughly. 'I don't inquire how long you've been here. Would I keep an old lathe that was worn or that I had no use for, because I'd had it a good while? Stay round to-day, if you like, and then go.'