t--excuse me, parson!" said he contritely. "I mean,
don't stop for a little thing like _me_!"

Laurence leaned forward. "Man," said he, impressively, "he won't have
to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
you know it!"

"Huh!" said John Flint, non-committally.

Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.

"Padre," said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
old custom, after dinner, "do you really know what I mean to do when
I've finished college and start out on my own hook?"

"Put 'Mayne & Son' on the judge's shingle and walk around the block
forty times a day to look at it!" said I, promptly.

"Of course," said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and _I'm_ going
to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.

"It's my town," with his chin out. "It could be a mighty good town.
It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure."

"May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?"

"It'll be a steam shovel!" said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.

"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out--and they
are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
_looks_ new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to _do_
things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
the devil with fire;--I'm going to blocka