only by chance and unexpectedly; since Adams would have avoided any
deliberate meeting, so long as his legs had strength to carry him, even
if Lamb came to the house to see him. But people do meet unexpectedly;
and when Adams had to be down-town he kept away from the "wholesale
district." One day he did see Lamb, as the latter went by in his car,
impassive, going home to lunch; and Adams, in the crowd at a corner,
knew that the old man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street car,
on the way back to his sheds, an hour later, he was still subject to
little shivering seizures of horror. He worked unceasingly, seeming to
keep at it even in his sleep, for he always woke in the midst of a
planning and estimating that must have been going on in his mind before
consciousness of himself returned. Moreover, the work, thus urged, went
rapidly, in spite of the high wages he had to pay his labourers for
their short hours. "It eats money," he complained, and, in fact, by the
time his vats and boilers were in place it had eaten almost all he could
supply; but in addition to his equipment he now owned a stock of "raw
material," raw indeed; and when operations should be a little further
along he was confident his banker would be willing to "carry" him. Six
weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his glue-making.
The terrible smells came out of the sheds and went writhing like snakes
all through that quarter of the town. A smiling man, strolling and
breathing the air with satisfaction, would turn a corner and smile no
more, but hurry. However, coloured people had almost all the dwellings
of this old s