drive him out."

"So they accept us in the winter, do they, and cast us out in the summer
when the ribbon-clerks come?" Edwardes spoke musingly, yet amusedly, and
in his accustomed manner of self-communion. "After all, men are much
alike everywhere, aren't they? The lepers must not walk the streets of
Jerusalem, but they may sit in full concourse at the Jaffa and Damascus
gates where their wrappings are brushed by every caravan that goes in or
out."

Ham, who was just entering, stood on the kitchen threshold in time to
hear a man, whom he had never seen before, talking casually of the world
beyond the seas. Perhaps this man knew, too, the cities that brought
conquerors as well as prophets into their own; perhaps to him the
sepia-tinted monuments of Rome and the great tomb in the Place des
Invalides were familiar spots! And the man was young himself--almost a
boy. For an instant, Ham stood there while his eyes traveled around the
room, contemptuously taking in the cheap lithographs and offensive
ornaments which he knew so well and hated so sincerely. He straightened
resolutely, and his hands clenched. There would be a time when the
earth's greatest artists should contribute paintings for his walls, and
palaces give up to him their bronzes and tapestries.

When a half-hour later Ham Burton was alone with the stranger he found
himself asking and answering many questions. He had not meant to impart
his secret of discontent, but just as Mary had confided her troubles at
the roadside, so Ham told his as he sat on the edge of the bed in the
chilly attic-room of the farm-house. Perhaps it was because this man had
actually seen the things that existed beyond the sky-line, and had
walked through the veil of mystery which the boy himself so burned to
penetrate. At all events it transpired. Ham had shown his little store
of greedily conned books and had bared to the gaze of the other his
naked and scorching torture of ambition. The lad knew something of the
men who had made themselves masters of the world and wished to know
more. Edwardes had not even laughed when Ham declared with naive
conviction: "None of them men ever did anything I couldn't do, if I got
the chance." It was impossible to laugh, though listening to such
boundless egotism, in the face of so deep a sincerity and such an
implicit self-belief as shone from those young eyes.

"Sometimes the great man knows his greatness in advance," said the
visitor gravely. "Som