Fisbee, he started now and then, and chuckled at some shrewd felicities of
management, or stared, puzzled, over an oddity, but came to a feeling of
vast relief; and, when the question of H. Fisbee's salary was settled and
the tenancy assured, he sank into a repose of mind. H. Fisbee might be an
eccentric fellow, but he knew his business, and, apparently, he knew
something of other business as well, for he wrote at length concerning the
Carlow oil fields, urging Harkless to take shares in Mr. Watts's company
while the stock was very low, two wells having been sunk without
satisfactory results. H. Fisbee explained with exceeding technicality his
reasons for believing that the third well would strike oil.
But with his ease of mind regarding the "Herald," Harkless found himself
possessed by apathy. He fretted no longer to get back to Plattville. With
the prospect of return it seemed an emptiness glared at him from hollow
sockets, and the thought of the dreary routine he must follow when he went
back gave him the same faint nausea he had felt the evening after the
circus. And, though it was partly the long sweat of anguish which had
benumbed him, his apathy was pierced, at times, by a bodily horror of the
scene of his struggle. At night he faced the grotesque masks of the Cross-
Roads men and the brutal odds again; over and over he felt the blows, and
clapped his hand to where the close fire of Bob Skillett's pistol burned
his body.
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