Destiny

eft behind him a household to all outward seeming as quiet as it had ever been. But all that morning and afternoon while Ham was away at school, Tom Burton sat deeply engrossed in calculations

m-and he was utterly certain it could not-he must not flinch from the task of riding down the first opposition he met-even though it be the

of the chosen of the gods, and now the voices of Destiny were calling him to the undertaking of his mission. Tonight the question must be thrashed out, yet when he arrived at the house he went quietly about the round of monotonous chores a

to abandon this place where you was born; where your mother and me started housekeepin'; where we've lived for twenty years.

one confronted with a question for which he has no answer, but with th

an education, then I'll decide what I'm go

er all your talk and bragging, you haven't got no definite plan. All you argue

it into words for you than I can tell you why the moon swings the tides, but it's just as dead sure as that an' I can feel it here." He clapped his hands over his heart and went on with quiet certainty: "I don't know no name to call it by e

but all you've got is moonshine. I've been settin' here figurin' all day so that, if you could

me about details. All I know is that I've got a destiny to be as great as any man can be an' that success is goin' to be my slave. I don'

that we ain't got much and that we've saved what we have got by goin' without all our lives? When that's gone, we won

will ever make? He couldn't heft a second-growth log of timber. But out there in the world where a man's rated higher than a mule maybe Paul's got it in him to be great. Some day Mary's goin' to be

e his resolution to hear his son to the end-"do you

n' here an' slowly starvin' our hearts an' brains an' souls because Money's got us bluffed. I'm g

ou tell me that I can't understand the voice you hear," said Tom Burton slowly. "Don't you know that all the lunatic asylums

rd before yesterday about bein' different from any other boy? I'm sayin' it now because there isn't any use in lyin'. I know just as well as if I'd already done it, that I can look down on other successful men as far as a mountain-top looks down on a little hill. I've done my work here on this farm, an' I haven't ever shirked. Now I want my chance-an' I don't want my family to go to seed. I want the blood of the Standishes and the Hamiltons to c

arded face bore the seamed uncertainty of his deeply vexed spirit. Perhaps in that moment there came to him some sense of conversion to the prophet-like assurance of his son. Perhaps he felt the dread of transplanting and a vague wonder wh

the boy says. Does it sound like reason to y

hat the son's face was tightly drawn with a feverish burning of the eyes. Suddenly she felt like an arbiter called to judge between them. Her boy with his C?s

ain. "If he feels it so strong, maybe it must mean something. It's mighty hard to say. But, Tom, I know

inward suffering. "It's a right hard question as I see it. This place means home to me, but I'm about played out. If we stay it's Ham that's got to wear the harness, an' I know just how heavy the harness is. It wou

out-" broke in Ham's voice, but his fa

for the present," he remind

er lap. He saw that her lips were intolerantly compressed and that her needle came an

w had been tempered by neither maternity

val. "I've always held that it's a sinful thing to be dissatisfied with what God wills. He p

pect God to move us bodily. But if we do go away from here you can have the comfort of figuring that if He

s well speak up, too. It looks like the day has come for children to lay down the law to t

cing up and meeting Ham's gaze, she felt a courage beyond her own, and stammered: "I'd like

ed in the Garden of Eden," he said shortly. "And I reckon what Eve s

, and the father at last broke it wi

idn't do much better in the long run. Julius C?sar was pretty great an' pretty ambitious. He fell. There's a heap to be said fer livin' straight an' simple. We're self-respectin' men an' women with clean blood in our veins that don't have to bow down to no man. We've li

but he didn't stay here because he wanted to rest. He went, an' now he's restin' down there at S

and through the snow-burdened forest

of a deeply troubled indecis

a failure here. The man that makes a fight here has got to have his heart in it an' he's got to love the soil. That don't fit your case! I ain't ready to admit yet that I ain't the head of my own family. I ain't made up my mind yet what we'll do. Maybe we'll stay right here an' maybe we'll go away." The father ran one hand wearily through the thick

utes longer and then with a low-voiced good-night he pressed his father's hand, and felt the grip of stern affection on his own. He took up and lighted the small lamp t

illing gray of dawn. Yet he stopped with half his clothes removed, and, going to an improvised shelf in the corner, took down a battered volume. It was not until the lamp warned him of the spent hours with its dying sputter that he

n Mary was asleep. It was cold in the room, and outside the world was bitter, but Ham was far from sleep. In his mind still worked and seethed the unresting ferment which had become a torment. The annals of the grea

uds and swallowed in a smother of darkness. Even the snow

l his gaze set toward his desire, and because vaguely he thought of New

it almost seemed to his burning eyes that while he gazed toward that spot hundreds of miles away which he had never seen, there slowly kindled in the sky a pale and luminous aura, such as hangs over the spires and shafts of a giant city. His fancy pictured the unsainted

wdly biting him. His spirit was the spirit of a hatching eaglet impat

e ain't much difference between doin' big things an' little things, except that you'

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