Destiny

. She had found somewhere a second fashion magazine and often when she was alone in the little room under the eaves she snippe

girl would never again be precisely the same Mary Burton who had started out that

ung shoulders. He had made no complaint, but an expression of settle

here only the pines were green, and came back at the day's end for his evening chores. The trip was a bit shortened now because the lake was ice-locked and he could cross between the flag-marked holes of the pickerel-fishers. He had been afraid to speak of those things which were burning

t first, she did not recognize him because the mountain tan had given way to a pallor of recent

harp wind, quite forgetful that she was barring his way. But the young man who had come out of the thickening twilight

you let me come in out of the cold I

en for some time thus silently staring ahead with a pipe long forgotten and dead of ash in his hand and an old newspaper-so old as to be no longer a newspaper-lying where it had dropped near h

reeting of the manor's lord, and the face he half-turned to inspect the stranger was devoid of welcome. I

as she stood aside and timidly smi

f his heavy mackinaw. For a moment, without rising or taking any notice b

me's Edwardes and I have a shack back in the hills. The snowstorm has

stentorian above the blows of axes in the timber. "Yes, I've heard of you. You're the millionaire hobo. When a man's got pl

uspicion as though the speaker expected to give offense-and did not care. Young Edwardes rec

is own question, "no man knows what portrait public opinion paints of him. At all events I'm a harmless hobo and qu

comprehensively, but quite without sy

n the summertime when the vacation boarders kicks on 'em. As for me, I don't take in

in his accustomed manner of self-communion. "After all, men are much alike everywhere, aren't they? The lepers must not walk the streets of Jeru

m the sepia-tinted monuments of Rome and the great tomb in the Place des Invalides were familiar spots! And the man was young himself-almost a boy. For an instant, Ham stood there while his eyes traveled around the room, contemptuously taking in the cheap lithographs and

ly seen the things that existed beyond the sky-line, and had walked through the veil of mystery which the boy himself so burned to penetrate. At all events it transpired. Ham had shown his little store of greedily conned books and had bared to the gaze of the other his naked and scorching torture of ambition. The lad knew something of the men who had made themse

," said the visitor gravely. "Sometimes it surprises hi

ant an' it's what I'm goin' to have. But I've got to ge

ugh, for the marvelous mismated eyes were fixed on his face and they held an almost passionate anxiety to be approved by the man who had prophesied her beauty. The thin child with her hair so inappropriately dressed in the style of her fashionable elders-or what she fondly believed to be their style-would have been a ludicr

served and with a courtier's smil

suppressed merriment dance at will in his pupils, "but don

er the stove and the father napped restlessly, the sleeping thing t

listening to the stranger's talk, Thomas Burton sudd

dwardes

y immediate section is deserted. A half-dozen families moved out this f

are leavin' all they own behind 'em expect to better themselves? Ain't a few rocky acres better'n none at all? T

hen his answer came, Ham straightened himself in his seat and sat rigid a

. "The open sea doesn't offer much prospect in a

orn glint that had given his Pilgrim forefath

he said quietly. "They're buried here an' they fought for this

ted Edwardes mildly. "Right here the acres are stony and unproductive. You can't

-an' aqueducts-an' so

er man. "The question is how

God, I don't mean to be run away from my home by a panicky notion of hard times. I

loathed; from which he was seeking escape and his soul clamored to rise in its vehement repudiation. Yet he felt that just now his heart was in too hot a conflagration to make speech safe. If he spoke at this moment he must speak in violent passion and bitter denunciation, and so with his hands tautly clu

n from window to stove and from stove back to window, th

got St. Vitus' dance? Sit down an' quit frett

essed feeling, Ham held hard to the curb of sil

table with her thin face resting in her hands and her eyes burning with thoughts of that great wonder-world which their visitor knew so well. His presence in the room seemed to the child to bring its marvels almost within touch. For the first time t

at started you to putting on a lot of new airs all

stairs in chagrin, a pitiful little would-be princess whose dream splendor had been shattered with a reprimand. His intuition told him that she already lay curle

s I went down to the city, and she told me how the children had been teasing her because she wasn't pretty, I

Burton shortly, "that set her thoughts

d, and words leaped to his lips which, with a supreme effort, he bit back. This whole intolerable fallacy of outgr

as already back with his problem and his next words were a stubborn reite

ng something snapped, and, as a fuse spark reaches and ignites its charg

is father, and his words came with

I've fought myself to death, an' we're both li

aw stiffened. For an instant, amazement stood out large-writ in every feature. Ham had thoug

r fought for," said Tom Burton gravely. "Our homes an' our rightful claim to live by the

for a couple of cows and a few hundred rocks that you bump your knees on when you try to plow. As fo

triarchal order; an order which brooks no insubordination. Bu

t's somethin' that's kept me awake of nights an' I've got to say it. I've sat here an' listened, an' I ain't put in my

thing more like amusement in his eyes than had previously

o leave you here-an' you can

n you'd

I was going to. I staye

ch on you, if I had to," an

n me," retorted the son. "I wouldn't

sions at nothing, he had the surprising faculty of remaining calm when anger might be expect

our hearts to the breakin' point-for what? Just now you sent Mary away cryin' to bed because she wanted to be pretty. Why shouldn't she want to be? Isn't it part of a woman's mission? You call a thing vanity that's just havin' some life an' ambition in her heart. What's life got in st

pleasanter for us to move into a palace somewhere, an' have a dozen or

t," he declared with steady-eyed effrontery; "if only you give me the chance. All

t become heavy with decades of hard labor. He still stood slender and gracefully tapering from shoulders to waist and just now there was some

to get us all these thi

this place and educate me. Every year you stay here you're spending part of what you've l

ed farmer broke i

" he demanded. "But maybe just for the sake of makin' talk you'd

hets knew that God had picked 'em out because He told 'em so in visions. I haven't just heard voices in dreams I've had the voice in me and I know-know

e of this thing that's been informin' you how great a man you can

less he gave 'em permission. John Hayes Hammond, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Frick, were all poor boys. None of those men had a

shortly. Then with a very human inconsistency he added, "I don't often brag abou

ancestors of my mother's. I reckon neither of those men would feel very proud to see

ur chest, but I don't need counsel from any cub of a boy. I'm nigh onto fifty years old an' I've run my family all these years. I had enough brains to get on with before you was born an' if you've got all the sense you think you've got, you got it

his father's voice his spirit rose in rebellion. Tom Burton strode over and his attitude was threatening. "D

quietly, "because it would be a pity for us to quarrel-but I've got a few more things to say,

d an' ready-if I ever do-an' if I don't we wo

mother's chair came a sound that hinted at secret weeping, and at last Tom Burton straightened his h

an obedient child an' a natural one without foolishness. You've been under my roof three hours an' my house rises rebellious against me in my old age. And you bear

eed feel ashamed. As for the boy, it was not I who incited him. He has been suppressing thoughts until now that reached the point of eruption, that's all." He paused, then added very thoughtfully: "Even if

lick the world to a frazzle. All I've got to do is to gamble the little s

y not be, the genius he thinks himself, but he's got a brain that drives and torments him. He thinks! If you will treat him as a counsellor and argue with him without sternnes

"Argue with him? How can a man argue with a boy that thinks he's a genius and a miracle-worker? Besides, w

ominated other men. I have been reared close enough to the center of financial achievement to have seen something of that. Perhaps that boy of yours is born with the stamp of victory upon him-who knows? Given the chance, he may fulfill his own v

d. "What's the cause of all these voices an' protests where everything's been quiet an' peaceable up to now? Why ain't we never heard nothin' about all this before if it's such a big t

u will do well to hear what the boy wants

e, and, when next his voice broke the silence, it was in

e years of fight, came over and knelt at his knee. He took her hand and held it for a while in silence, and then he said a littl

aid softly, "it has

we brought that slip of vine from the mountain and

d his hand; and after

out there in the churchyard th

lost," she

ose 'em all." Tom Burton was making a

Tom," protes

e resolved to take full account, "I reckon you could have done

happy," s

ain't no other hand as beautiful, mother, but there's no use denying tha

will. Ham may talk,

t to hold them here? Is Ham raving, or is he right? Tha

u think that even if we had all the things money could give us-we'd be any hap

this thing. They're quittin' all round us, an' they're quittin' because they're beat. I've always thought this country could be redeem

n the bank to live somewhere for a few years an' give the children decent educa

he mother brokenly suggested: "Let's hear wha

tairs. As they passed Ham's door they paused, and the father

the eldest son thrashing restlessly about in h

nder its travail. Now and then the wind that drove the snow rose to a gusty whisper, and a stark limb scraped the eaves of the house with grating, lifeless fingers. But between the occasional stress-cries of the storm, there came the low, dirge-lik

nd poison them with reminders of confinement. His brain was hot with a fever of restiveness and beyond his cell-like room he saw the

eeping as a man sleeps after fighting a blizzard. Under the boy's own hot cheek was the roughnes

ties rose before his eyes, beckoning him, calling to him: brooding cities of gray turrets and foggy streets; strange cities lit with sunset fires on domes and minarets; laughing cities gay with festivals. All these things he was hungry to see; to see as a master of the world walking its varied ways, achieving its affairs. Through his waking dreams marched a parade of great figures, Han

s," he murmured to himself, "an' I