night--fought against
the jealousy that prompted him to hedge Christopher about with
precautions and restrictions which, however desirable they might seem
to his finite wisdom, yet were, he knew, only the outcome of his
smouldering jealousy, and might well grow to formidable barriers for
Christopher to climb in later years. Aymer fought, too, for that sense
of larger faith that in the midst of careful action yet leaves room
for the hand of God and does not confound the little ideas of the
builder with the vast plan of the Great Architect.

So the letter--the little fact which stood for such great
possibilities--was shown to Christopher, to whom it was a mere
nothing, to be tossed aside with scorn.

"I don't want to be under him," he commented indignantly, "I don't
care about his old axles," and then because Caesar was silent and he
felt himself in the wrong, he apologised.

"All the same, I don't want to go to him unless you particularly wish
it, Caesar," he insisted.

But Caesar did not answer directly.

"You are certain you want to be an engineer?" he asked at length.

"Certain,--only--" Christopher stopped, went over to the window and
looked out.

They were in London and it was an evening in early spring. There was a
faint primrose glow in the sky and a blackbird was whistling at the
end of the garden. The hum of the great town was as part of the
silence of the room.

Now at last must come the moment when Christopher must speak plainly
of his darling purpose that had been striving for expression these
many months, that purpose which had grown out of a childish fancy in
the long ago days when his mother and he toiled along the muddy
wearisome roads, or wended painfully through choking white dust under
a blazing sun----

* * * * *

"Mother, how does roads get made here in the country, are they made
like in London?"

"Yes, Jim, they were made somewhere by men, not over well, I think,
for walkers such as we are."

"I'll make roads when I'm big," announced Jim, "real good ones that
you can walk on easily."

* * * * *

So Christopher broke his purpose to Caesar abruptly.

"I want to be a Road Engineer."

"A what?"

"A Roadmaker. To make high roads,--not in towns, but across countries.
Roads that will be easy to travel on and will last." Again he stopped,
embarrassed, for the vision before him which he only half saw,