In the late afternoon of the spring day that was also the most eventful day of his life, Steve went quickly along the Wheeling Station platform to the door of the telegraph office. It was a public place, but before going in he stopped, again straightened his tie and brushed his clothes, and then knocked at the door. As there was no response he opened the door softly and looked in. Hugh was at his desk but did not look up. Steve went in and closed the door. By chance the moment of his entrance was also a big moment in the life of the man he had come to see. The mind of the young inventor, that had for so long been dreamy and uncertain, had suddenly become extraordinarily clear and free. One of the inspired moments that come to intense natures, working intensely, had come to him. The mechanical problem he was trying so hard to work out became clear. It was one of the moments that Hugh afterwards thought of as justifying his existence, and in later life he came to live for such moments. With a nod of his head to Steve he arose and hurried out to the building that was used by the Wheeling as a freight warehouse. The jeweler's son ran at his heels. On an elevated platform before the freight warehouse sat an odd looking agricultural implement, a machine for rooting potatoes out of the ground that had been received on the day before and was now awaiting delivery to some farmer. Hugh dropped to his knees beside the machine and examined it closely. Muttered exclamations broke from his lips. For the first time in his life he was not embarrassed in the presence of another person. The two men, the one almost grotesquely tall, the other short of stature and already inclined toward corpulency, stared at each other. “What is it you're inventing? I came to see you about that,” Steve said timidly.
Hugh did not answer the question directly. He stepped across the narrow platform to the freight warehouse and began to make a rude drawing on the side of the building. Then he tried to explain his plant-setting machine. He spoke of it as a thing already achieved. At the moment he thought of it in that way. “I had not thought of the use of a large wheel with the arms attached at regular intervals,” he said absent-mindedly. “I will have to find money now. That'll be the next step. It will be necessary to make a working model of the machine now. I must find out what changes I'll have to make in my calculations.”