"What law?"

"Natural law," said Gurney. "What do you think beat you with Edith?
Did Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question
something powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you,
and you weren't against HER, but you set yourself against the power
that had her in its grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won
in a walk! What's taken Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much
strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load across the broken
bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked thing
into standing. Well, you couldn't! Now here's Bibbs. There are
thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he.
It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business
man as Jim and Roscoe put together."

"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.

"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has
the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success
in anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to
remain asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit
for the life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life
he OUGHT to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead
it--he's obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and,
blindly, he knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it.
Let me tell you something more. You don't know what you've become
since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a
bafflement stronger than your normal grief. You're half mad with a
consuming fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very
self of the law that took Jim from you. That was a law concerning