like reason to you, or is it just a stripling's restlessness?"

Elizabeth Burton looked from her husband's face to that of her eldest
child. It seemed to her that the father's eyes were wistful and sorely
distressed, and that 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 Cæsar's ambition was breaking his heart
to go. Her husband, with much of life behind, could only yield with
something like a break in his own. Her eyes moistened.

"If he feels called into the world, Tom--" she began, then halted. The
husband waited, and she went on again. "If he feels it so strong, maybe
it must mean something. It's mighty hard to say. But, Tom, I know Ham
better than anybody else does. He's not the kind of boy to leave us
alone. If we need him he'll stay."

"That's not the question, mother." The father who had yesterday been
dictatorial and intolerant was now the just judge who refused to be
beguiled by personal preferences. Only his pupils betrayed the pathos of
his 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 would gall him an' blister him even if he wasn't already chafin'
with discontent. It seems like he can't do it willin'ly. Can we let him
do it any other way? We're lookin' back, mother, but I reckon life runs
forward."

"It ain't just my life I'm thinkin' about--" broke in Ham's voice, but
his father stopped him with an uplifted hand.