Destiny

gundy of the oaks. It trailed a veil of rose-ash and mystery along the slopes of the White Mountains, and insid

own in the open woods, and foraging squirr

, yet left him as unlike them as all things else could conspire to make him. The long hair that hung untrimmed over his face seemed a black emphasis for the cameo delicacy of his features, lendi

ace and a mouth that seemed overcrowded with teeth, made faces at him and conveyed in eloquent gestures threats of future

e cover his retreat? Suddenly his necessity fathered a crafty subterfuge. The bucket of drinking water stood near his desk-and it was well-nigh empty. Becoming violently thirsty, he sought permission to carry it to the spring for refilling, and

rooped before their challenge and contempt. They drooped also as he met the questioning gaze of his elder brother, Ham, whose seat was just at the door. Ham had a disquieting capacity for reading Paul's thoughts, and an equally disquieting scorn of cowar

a probable renewal of his danger, but tomorrow is after a

ut of his seat he slipped unobserved. Through the door he flitted

song of the water and the rustle of the leaves where the breeze harped among the platinum shafts of the birches were pleading with this child-dreamer, and in his mind a conflict swept backward and forward. Paul did not at once see his brother, and the older boy stood over him in silence, watching the mental fight; watching until he knew that it w

red. Chagrined tears welled into his deep ey

that water singin', Ham!" His voice took on a rapt eagerness. "An' them leaves rustlin

om the commanding height of

he leaves rattlin'?" was the dry inquiry. "To hear you talk a feller'd thin

t you ever understand music, Ham? There's all the world of difference between

ternly. He was not one to b

to listen to the fishes singin' songs either. You sneaked out to run away because you're

onvincing denial. "I ain't-I ain't afraid of him, n

d up with business-like alacrity. "If you ain't scared of him we

t him like a trapped rabbit, but his brother caught him roug

ered and again tears came to his eyes. "But I d

eller. You've got to have one good fight to save a lot of others an' this is the day you're goin' to have it. After school you've got to smash Jimmy Marquess a wallop on his front teeth an' if you don't shake 'em plumb loose I'm goin' to take you back

ent slowly and falteringly forward with the unhappy con

to treat Jimmy like that without givin' him any warnin'." He set the bucket in the path and fumbled in his pocket for a s

a cool glint in his eyes before which the other q

ent. I don't like you and I don't care for your personal appearance. If you so much as squint at me after school today I intend to

pect

l Bu

felt that his autograph to such a missive was distinctly inappropriate, and invited sure calamity. Ham, however,

rror, Ham let the glance of militant tenderness flash once m

legs. It ain't only the Marquess kid you're fightin'. You've got to lick the yeller streak out of yourself before it ruins you." He pa

f Marquess, he allowed his freckled face for a moment to pucker in blank astonishment, then a smile of beatitude enveloped it. It

the tired eyes of the teacher were not upon him he gave elaborate pantomimes wherein he felt the swelling biceps of his right arm, and made as if to spit belligerently upon his doubled fist. Sometimes his left hand seemed struggling to res

rial. This lad walked with his head in the clouds and his thoughts in visions. His playmates were invisible to human eyes and he heard the crashing of vast symphonies whe

vealed as little of what went on back of his eyes as an Indian's, was the dreamer, too, though his dreams were cut to a different pattern. As he dealt in visions, so William the Conqueror may have dealt when a boy in his father's

re triumph awaited his coming. Paul was less impulsive. He collected his books with the most deliberate care, dusting them off with an unwonted solicitude. Then he spent an indefi

iffling, he was hustled toward the rotting threshold and catapulted upon his enemy so abruptly

arquess kid joyously gathered him in and began raining enthus

ly solid wall; on his right an equally impassable fence; on his left

mmy's blows hurt him so little astonished him, and under the spur of fear he fought with such abandon that to Ham's face came a slow grin of contentment and to that of the Marquess kid an expression

first victory. Instead, they wore again the far-away look of dreamy pensiveness. Already, his thoughts were back in their own world, a world peopled with fancies and panoplied with imaginings. Suddenly he halted, and threw back his head, in

ed; the bruises on his sensitive face were forgotten. His heart was drinking an elixir throu

looking in fancy beyond the misty hills, but not to the flight of geese. He saw cities with shaft-like structures biting the

ong as Richard Whittington heard when bare-footed in

hat was blazoned

n gables, carve

lored page, every

ntments, a city

ning wore to night in a sequence of hard chore upo

f-trees were broken and twisted. They were blighting symbols of this soul-breaking existence in a land of abandoned farms where Opportunity never came. Th

flamed secretly, like a smothered blaze which gnaws the vitals out of a ship whose hatches are battened down. He, too, had kept the hatches of silence battened. But through many wakeful nights the voice that speaks to those whom the gods have chosen cried to him with the certainty of a herald's bug

s sinking behind the ragged spears of the mountain-top, and its last fires wer

in fact a beleaguered garrison cut off from fresh supplies. This was the prison in which Ham Burton must serve his life sentence-unless he responded to that urgent call which he heard when the others slept. Tonight he must share with his father the raw chores of

harness here at home? His father would never leave, and upon his father the infirmities of age would some day come creeping. There was Paul-but, at the thought of Paul with his strong imagination and his weak muscles, Ham laughed. If he went away he must go without consent or parental blessing; he must slip away in the night with hi

nshed tears in her eyes, and she spoke in the appeal of depen

e fight of all these years. I told him that he needn't fret himself because we have you. You've always been so strong an' manly-e

and where it darkened into the evening sky, a single star shone in a feeble poi

nd see him,"

When his son entered, he raised it and shifted it so that the

first time in his life Ham saw the calloused

nd the father

often he don't get up no more. It's a hard fight for a boy to take up, this fight with rocks an

s face and answered steadily:

s milk-pail a few minutes later and in the c

told himself bitterl

e called in the cows to be milked. So many times had he taken down and put up that

thing. I ain't nothin' more than servant to a couple of cows." He stood and watched the two heifers trot through the opening to the water-trough by the pump. "By the time I'm thirty-five," he contin