the oligarchy of the great, 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 and after
that sat through the evening meal with no mention of the things in his
heart. It was his father who first broached the subject and he broached
it bluntly while the family sat about him, in the spirit of the
primitive family council.

"Ham," he said slowly, "I've been sittin' here all day turnin' your
notions over in my mind. You want to go away from here and to abandon
this place where you was born; where your mother and me started
housekeepin'; where we've lived for twenty years. If we decided to do
that--an' it wouldn't be no easy thing for either your mother or
me--what plans would you aim to carry out?"

The boy shook his head. He did not shake it in the abashed fashion of
one confronted with a question for which he has no answer, but with the
frank manner of one brushing aside a trivial and irrelevant question.

"I don't know yet. First I've got to have an education, then I'll decide
what I'm going to do, and when I decide I'll succeed."

The father's brows knitted themselves gravely and with displeasure.
"Then, after all your talk and bragging, you haven't got no definite
plan. All you argue for is cutting loose from the roof over us an'
livin' up our little savin's."

"I know that I can give you big things in the place of little things."
The lad's voice again mounted and into his face came the flush of