stood on the station platform and caught his first glimpse of the real Red Lake, saw the wide blue waters flecked with sunny whitecaps, the hundred pine-covered islands and the long miles of wooded shore, even then he had no thought of how different he was to find this place from any other he had ever seen. Both lake and town seemed to him to promise little.
For Rudolm, set in its narrow valley between the Minnesota hills, looked as though it had been dropped from some child’s box of toys, so small and square were the houses and so hit-or-miss was the order in which they stood along the one wide, crooked street. There were no trees growing beside the rough wooden sidewalks, the street was dusty and the sun, even although it was October, seemed to him to shine with a pitiless glare. He walked slowly along the platform, wondering why Dick Edmonds had not come to meet him, thinking that Rudolm seemed the dullest and most uninteresting town in America and trying to stifle the rising wish that he had never come.
