But Farr named them to himself when he was on the street.
“Chance and Humility--I hope you are going to stick by me from now on,” he muttered. “Chance, you have led me into a queer position and into a strange state of mind. Humility, you are helping me to understand. Now, Chance, what have you to say to me?”
It was more of the fantastic whimsy with which Walker Farr played.
His eyes, searching the street after this challenge to Chance, beheld an ice-wagon rumbling past. It was a neat-looking cart, painted white, and bore the advertisement, “Crystal Pure Independent Ice Company.”
Another wagon, painted dirty yellow, followed. It was a Consolidated ice-cart; Farr knew those carts with their loads of river-ice.
The spectacle of something which promised rivalry to that yellow cart piqued his interest. His mood welcomed the first adventure which Chance presented. He had found Chance playing peculiar pranks with his affairs in the days just past.
He hurried in pursuit of the white cart and accosted the driver.
“Where can I find the manager of this company?”
“He's up at Coosett Lake this afternoon, sir.” The man was respectful. The stranger's garb and demeanor impressed him. “The trolley will take you pretty near it. Take a car in the square--a Halcyon Park car.”
Without canvassing the matter further Farr took the car.
He decided that it was a most comforting sensation, this abandoning his problems to Chance! It saved so much fuss and worry.
He found the little lake at the limits of the park area--a hollow among the hills.
Men were busy at the foot of the slope over whose crest he marched. He saw several rough buildings at the edge of the lake, plainly makeshift ice-houses. One was a new structure and the other two were old barns which had been “darned” here and there with new material, and their yawed sides were propped with joists. Men were loading ice upon carts; the translucent cubes flashed in the rays of the sun.
During the process of his little crusade he had become acquainted with the conditions in the city of Marion and he knew that the Consolidated folks controlled the ice-supply as well as the water. They held an iron grip by legislative charter on all the riparian rights along the river and allowed no one else to operate an ice-field. He had seen and sniffed the unwholesome slime which a melted cake of Consolidated ice deposited.