han getting drunk."

Battersleigh's hand was on the door knob. "The consate o' you!" he
said. "Thrue, ye're a fine boy, Ned, an' I know of no conversayshun
more entertainin' than yer own, but I tale that if I didn't get dhrunk
like a gintleman this avenin', I'd be violatin' me juty to me own
conscience, as well as settin' at naught the thraditions o' the Rile
Irish. An' so, if ye'll just excuse me, I'll say good-bye till, say,
to-morrow noon."

CHAPTER XXXII

THE CALLING

And now there still fared on the swift, sane empire of the West. The
rapid changes, the strivings, the accomplishments, the pretensions and
the failures of the new town blended in the product of human progress.
Each man fell into his place in the community as though appointed
thereto, and the eyes of all were set forward. There was no
retrospection, there were no imaginings, no fears, no disbeliefs. The
people were as ants, busy building their hill, underletting it with
galleries, furnishing it with chambers, storing it with riches,
providing it with defences; yet no individual ant looked beyond his own
antennae, or dreamed that there might be significance in the tiny
footprints which he left. There were no philosophers to tell these
busy actors that they were puppets in a great game, ants in a giant
hill. They lived, loved, and multiplied; which, after all, is Life.

To Franklin the days and months and years went by unpunctuated, his
life settling gradually into the routine of an unhappy calm. He
neglected too much the social side of life, and rather held to his old
friends than busied himself with the search for new. Battersleigh was
gone, swiftly and mysteriously gone, though with the promise to return
and with the reiteration of his advice and his well wishes. Curly was
gone--gone up the Trail into a far and mysterious country, though he,
too, promised to remember Ellisville, and had given hostage for his
promise. His friends of the Halfway House were gone, for though he
heard of them and knew them to be prosperous, he felt himself, by
reason of Mary Ellen's decision, in propriety practically withdrawn
from their personal acquaintance. Of the kaleidoscope of the oncoming
civilization his eye caught but little. There had again fallen upon
his life a season of blight, or self-distrust, of dull dissatisfaction
with the world and with living. As in earlier years he had felt unrest
and known the lack of settled purpose, so now