"You mustn't expect the sun and the moon to stand still before me."

"Oh, well, I dare say I'm as foolish as other mothers." Mrs. Percival

laughed as though she must do that or cry. "But you were certainly born

to something, Dick. You've shown it ever since you organized your first

militia company and whipped the five-year-olds in the next street."

"And he's kept right on bossing his particular gang ever since. Richard

Dux," smiled Ellery.

The boy grinned up at them, and his mind traveled to those later days

when that leadership of his was so easily acknowledged as to be

axiomatic. He saw in panorama the stormy joys of college life with the

victories of the field. He beheld again the quieter hours when the young

men saw visions together and felt themselves called to put shoulder to

the car of righteousness, while they discussed with the sublime

self-sufficiency of inexperience the politics and sociology of the

world. The fellows all believed in him as one of those who are destined

to be prime pushers at the wheel. Perhaps he would be among those

conquerors who climb aboard and ride, forgetful of the plodding crowd

which toils at the drudgery of progress but does not taste its glory. So

many oblivions go to make one reputation.

Dick knew that power was in him. To others it showed in his unconscious

self-confidence of carriage, in his eyes that glowed, in the electric

something that compelled attraction.

But now college visions were fading into "the light of common day". The

boys had gone home to be men. Success began to look not like an aurora,

but like a solid structure built of bricks that must be carried in hods.

Hods are uninspiring objects.

Dick stared at the pile of unlit logs in the fireplace and felt the

rhythmic strokes of his mother's hand upon his well-thatched head as she

watched him in sympathetic silence; but he saw the eyes of his fellow

classmen and felt their good-by hand-clasps. Again the train thumped

with monotonous rolling as it brought him ever westward and homeward.

Farm after farm, village and town, city upon city, long level prairies

that cried out of fertility, the rush and roar and chaos of Chicago, and

then more cities and rivers and hills and lakes, and now the blessed

restfulness of home and twilight. He had seen it all many times

before--two thousand miles of space to be covered between New Haven and

St. Etienne. On this last journey it had taken on a new significance to

his eyes,--a significance which matched his dreams. It was instinct

with meaning of which he was a part.

This was his country, huge, half-formed, needing men. Its bigness was

not an accident of geography, but a pregnant fact in the consciousness

of a people as wide as itself. Thousands of redmen once covered it, and

it was then only a big place, not a great country. It must be a mighty

race who would master those miles of inert earth.




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