The house seemed to huddle in the gathering shadows with melancholic
despair. Its walls looked out over the unproductive acres around it as
grimly as a fortress overlooks a hostile territory, and its occupants
lived with as defensive a frugality as if they were 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 the farm, and, when his studies
were done, he must go to his bed, exhausted in body and mind, to be
awakened at sunrise and retread the cheerless round of drudgery. Every
other tomorrow while life fettered him here held a repetition of just
that and nothing more.

The white fire of rebellion leaped mutinously up in Ham's heart. He
would go away. He would answer the loud clarion that called to him from
beyond the horizons. The first line of hills should no longer be his
remotest frontier. And if he did that--a whispering voice of loyalty and
conscience argued insistently--who would wear the heavy 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 his few possessions packed in his battered
bag. Very well; if that were the only way, it must be his way. The
voices were calling--always calling--and it might as well be tonight.
Destiny is impatient of temporizing. Yes, tonight he would start out
there, somewhere, where the battles were a man's battles, and the
rewards a man's rewards.

But at the door his mother met him. There was a moisture of unshed tears