apidly forecast the possibilities of the
profession which he had chosen, and with grim self-confidence felt them
well within his power. Beyond that, then, he asked himself, in his
curious self-questioning manner, what was there to be? What was to be
the time of his life when he could fold his hands and say that, no
matter whether it was success or failure that he had gained, he had
done that which was in his destiny to do? Wherein was he to gain that
calmness and that satisfaction which ought to attend each human soul,
and entitle it to the words "Well done"? Odd enough were some of these
self-searchings which went on betimes in the little office of this
plainsman lawyer; and strangest of all to Franklin's mind was the
feeling that, as his heart had not yet gained that which was its right,
neither had his hand yet fallen upon that which it was to do.

Franklin rebelled from the technical side of the law, not so much by
reason of its dry difficulty as through scorn of its admitted weakness,
its inability to do more than compromise; through contempt of its
pretended beneficences and its frequent inefficiency and harmfulness.
In the law he saw plainly the lash of the taskmaster, driving all those
yoked together in the horrid compact of society, a master inexorable,
stone-faced, cruel. In it he found no comprehension, seeing that it
regarded humanity either as a herd of slaves or a pack of wolves, and
not as brethren labouring, suffering, performing a common destiny,
yielding to a common fate. He saw in the law no actual recognition of
the individual, but only the acknowledgment of the social body. Thus,
set down in a day miraculously clear, placed among strong characters
who had never yet yielded up their souls, witnessing that time which
knew the last blaze of the spirit of men absolutely free. Franklin
felt his own soul leap into a prayer for the continuance of that day.
Seeing then that this might not be, he fell sometimes to the dreaming
of how he might some day, if blessed by the pitying and understanding
spirit of things, bring out these types, perpetuate these times, and so
at last set them lovingly before a world which might at least wonder,
though it did not understand. Such were his vague dreams,
unformulated; but, happily, meantime he was not content merely to dream.

CHAPTER XX

THE HALFWAY HOUSE

"Miss Ma'y Ellen," cried Aunt Lucy, thrusting her head in at the door,
"oh, Miss Ma'y Ellen, I w