CHAPTER IV.
JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH
I.
It was some time before Jimmie understood the nature of the new machinery he was helping to set up. It was nobody’s business to explain, for he was only a pair of hands and a strong back; he was not supposed to be a brain—while as for a soul or a conscience, nobody was supposed to be that. Russian agents had come to Leesville with seventeen millions of the money which the Paris bankers had put up; and so overnight whole blocks of homes were swept out of existence, and a huge new steel structure was rising, and on the spot where for four years Jimmie had made certain motions of the hands, they were preparing to manufacture new machinery for the quantity production of shell-casings.
When Jimmie had definitely learned what was in process, he w
