The visitor did not immediately reply. He seemed to be reflecting, and,
when his answer came, Ham straightened himself in his seat and sat rigid
as if struggling to fix a seal on his own lips and remain a silent
listener.

"Perhaps so and perhaps not," suggested Edwardes. "The open sea doesn't
offer much prospect in a storm, but it may be better than a sinking
ship."

Tom Burton's eyes lighted with the same stubborn glint that had given
his Pilgrim forefathers kinship with the granite of their shores.

"My ancestors have lived here since they ran the Indians out," he said
quietly. "They're buried here an' they fought for this country an' won
it. I guess what they bled for is worth holdin'."

"Your forefathers fought for the whole land, not only this section of
it," suggested Edwardes mildly. "Right here the acres are stony and
unproductive. You can't hope to compete with the farmer whose crops grow
near arteries of transportation."

"All we need is roads--an' aqueducts--an' some day they'll come."

"Perhaps," admitted the younger man. "The question is how many can hold
out till then?"

Tom Burton looked up and for an instant his eyes blazed. "Well, for one,
I can! By God, I don't mean to be run away from my home by a panicky
notion of hard times. I can stay here an' fight to a finish--an' when
I'm licked, my boys can go on fightin'."

His eldest son rose and paced the floor with the restlessness of a caged
leopard. At the black window he halted to gaze out on the bitterness of
the night. The ultimatum of his father's obstinacy galled him beyond
endurance. He heard himself pledged to the emptiness and futility of a
life-sentence which he loathed; from which he was seeking escape and his
soul clamored to rise in its vehement repudiation. Yet he felt that just
now his heart was in too hot a conflagration to make speech safe. If he
spoke at this moment he must speak in violent passion and bitter
denunciation, and so with his hands tautly clutched at his back he held
his counsel and paced the floor. Old Tom Burton's unaccustomed hours in
the confinement of convalescence had left him petulant. The courtesy of
the stranger's argument was lost upon him. All he saw was that it was
argument, and he was in a condition to be irritated by little things.

For a while he watched the restless wanderings of his son from window to
stove and from stove back to window, then his voice broke out sharply in
dictatorial peevishne