looked
up with a smile.

"If I have, it's been a dour lesson," Norris answered with a wry face.

"Well, if Dad gave his life to his country by dying, I mean to give mine
by living," Dick went on. "There must be things that need doing."

"More than there are men to do them," said his mother softly. "You have
his spirit and his genius. You have health, too. Don't put a bullet in
your young manhood."

"What do you mean, mother?"

"There are a thousand wounds besides those from a gun. I'm counting on
you to live his life as he would have liked to live it--to be his son,
Dick."

"You mustn't expect the sun and the moon to stand still before me."

"Oh, well, I dare say I'm as foolish as other mothers." Mrs. Percival
laughed as though she must do that or cry. "But you were certainly born
to something, Dick. You've shown it ever since you organized your first
militia company and whipped the five-year-olds in the next street."

"And he's kept right on bossing his particular gang ever since. Richard
Dux," smiled Ellery.

The boy grinned up at them, and his mind traveled to those later days
when that leadership of his was so easily acknowledged as to be
axiomatic. He saw in panorama the stormy joys of college life with the
victories of the field. He beheld again the quieter hours when the young
men saw visions together and felt themselves called to put shoulder to
the car of righteousness, while they discussed with the sublime
self-sufficiency of inexperience the politics and sociology of the
world. The fellows all believed in him as one of those who are destined
to be prime pushers at the wheel. Perhaps he would be among those
conquerors who climb aboard and ride, forgetful of the plodding crowd
which toils at the drudgery of progress but does not taste its glory. So
many oblivions go to make one reputation.

Dick knew that power was in him. To others it showed in his unconscious
self-confidence of carriage, in his eyes that glowed, in the electric
something that compelled attraction.

But now college visions were fading into "the light of common day". The
boys had gone home to be men. Success began to look not like an aurora,
but like a solid structure built of bricks that must be carried in hods.
Hods are uninspiring objects.

Dick stared at the pile of unlit logs in the fireplace and felt the
rhythmic strokes of his mother's hand upon his well-thatched head as she
watched him in sympathetic silence; but he saw