Explore "The Sowers" by Henry Seton Merriman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Colossal! " exclaimed Steinmetz, beneath his breath. With a little trick of the tongue he transferred his cigar from the right-hand to the left-hand corner of his mouth. "Colossal -- l! " he repeated.
For a moment Paul looked up from the papers spread out on the table before him -- looked with the preoccupied air of a man who is adding up something in his mind. Then he returned to his occupation. He had been at this work for four hours without a break. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning. Since dinner Karl Steinmetz had consumed no less than five cigars, while he had not spoken five words. These two men, locked in a small room in the middle of the castle of Osterno -- a room with no window, but which gained its light from the clear heaven by a shaft and a skylight on the roof -- locked in thus they had been engaged in the addition of an enormous mass of figures. Each sheet had been carefully annotated and added by Steinmetz, and as each was finished he handed it to his companion.