stayed because you needed me."

"I guess I could keep a watch on you, if I had to," announced the father
shortly.

"You couldn't keep a ball an' chain on me," retorted the son. "I
wouldn't be much use that way about the farm."

The elder Burton very deliberately lighted his pipe. Like many men who
fly suddenly into passions at nothing, he had the surprising faculty of
remaining calm when anger might be expected. Now he said only, "Let's
hear your notion, son. What's been keepin' you awake of nights?"

"It hasn't been just thinkin' about myself that's done it," began Ham,
steadying his voice, though it still held a throb of fervor which
neither his father nor mother had ever heard before. "I've been thinkin'
about all of you. You an' mother are workin' your fingers to the bone
an' your hearts to the breakin' point--for what? Just now you sent Mary
away cryin' to bed because she wanted to be pretty. Why shouldn't she
want to be? Isn't it part of a woman's mission? You call a thing vanity
that's just havin' some life an' ambition in her heart. What's life got
in store here for Mary or for Paul or for me? We're startin'--not endin'
up. We have our ambitions. If we stay here Mary will be drudgin' till
she dies. Paul's got the soul of a great musician, an' he might as well
be dead right now as to stay here, an' as for me I'd a heap rather be
dead."

"Oh, I see," commented Tom Burton very drily. "You figure that it'll be
pleasanter for us to move into a palace somewhere, an' have a dozen or
two servants waitin' on us. All right, where's the palace comin' from?"

Ham spoke in absolute confidence. "I'll get it for you--as many palaces
as you want," he declared with steady-eyed effrontery; "if only you give
me the chance. All I ask is this. For God's sake, take the chain off
me--let me get into the fight."

Ham Burton was a tall and well-thewed lad for his age. His muscle fiber
had drawn strength from the ax and the log-pole, but as yet it had not
become heavy with decades of hard labor. He still stood slender and
gracefully tapering from shoulders to waist and just now there was
something trance-like in his earnestness which made wild prophecies seem
almost inspired. The hard-headed father eyed him with good-humored
irony.

"And how do you figure to get us all these things, son?" he inquired.

"I'll show you," came the quick and undoubting response. "All I want you
to do is to leave this place and educate me. Every yea