assured inspiration. "The thing that tells me is something you wouldn't
understand. I can't any more put 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 except a
feelin' of power. There's only one thing in God's whole world that can
stop me, an' that's ignorance and lonesomeness. You call it all
dreamin'--well, give me a chance and I'll make it all so real that you
can't have any more doubts."

"I thought," said Tom Burton a bit wearily, "that maybe you might have
some sensible argument, but all you've got is moonshine. I've been
settin' here figurin' all day so that, if you could convince me, I'd
know where I stood with the bank, but it don't hardly seem worth talkin'
about."

"I can't make you understand," declared the boy unwaveringly, "because
you're thinkin' in hundreds where I'm thinkin' in millions. You ask 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't know
what I'm going to do because I haven't seen yet what battle-field is
best worth winnin'. When I see what's the biggest--I'll win it."

"So you want us to take what we've saved and gamble it all on your good
opinion of yourself. Do you realize, my son, 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't have nothin' left to gamble with a second time.
Ain't it a good deal to pay for learnin' the folly of self-conceit?"

The boy's answer was direct and swift and confident. "One chance is all