ask me any old thing, and I'll hand
you all the truth there is in me. I'm an 'illegitimate.' I'm one of the
world's friendless. I'm a product of a wealthy man's licence and
unscruple. I'm an outcast amongst the world's honest born. But it's no
matter. I'm not on the squeal. Those who're responsible for my being did
their best to hand me the things a man most needs. Mind, and body, and
will. Further, they gave me all that education, books, and college can
hand a feller. More than that, my father, who seems to have had more
honesty than you'd expect, handed me a settlement of a hundred thousand
dollars the day I became twenty-one. I never knew him, and I never knew
my mother. The circumstances of my birth were simply told me on my
twenty-first birthday. I know no more. And I care nothing to hunt out
those spectres that don't figger to hand a feller much comfort. The rest
is easy. I hope I'm a feller of some guts--"

Father Adam nodded, and his eyes lit.

"Sure," was all he commented.

"Anyway, I feel like it," Bull laughed. "When I learned all these
things I started right in to think. I thought like hell. I said to
myself something like this: 'There's nothing to hold me where I am.
There's no one around to care a curse. There's that feeling right inside
the pit of my stomach makes me feel I want to make good. I want to build
up around me all that my birth has refused me. A name, a life circle, a
power, a--anyway, get right out and do things! Well, what was I going to
do? It needed thinking. Then I hit the notion."

He laughed again. He was gazing in at himself and laughing at the
conceits he knew were real, and strong, and vital.

"Say." He nodded at the prospect through the doorway. "There it is. This
country's beginning. We don't know half it means to the world yet. Well,
I hadn't enough capital to play with, so I resolved right away to start
in and learn a trade from its first step to its topmost rung, and to
earn my keep right through. Meanwhile my capital's lying invested
against the time I open out. I'm going to jump right into the groundwood
pulp business when the time comes. And out of that I mean to build a
name that folks won't easily forget. Well, I guess you won't find much
that's interesting in all this. It don't sound anything particularly
bright or new. But for what it is it's my notion, and--I'm going to put
it through. That's why I'm here. I'm learning my job from the bottom."

The decision and forc