imes
smiled in very grimness as he thought of what this had once and so
recently been, and how far beyond his own care the progress of his
fortunes had run. At times he reflected upon this almost with regret,
realizing strongly the temptation to plunge irrevocably into the battle
of material things. This, he knew, meant a loosing, a letting go, a
surrender of his inner and honourable dreams, an evasion of that
beckoning hand and a forgetting of that summoning voice which bade him
to labour agonizingly yet awhile toward other aims. The inner man,
still exigent, now exhorted, now demanded, and always rebelled.
Franklin's face grew older. Not all who looked upon him understood,
for to be _hors concours_ is to be accursed.

Something was left to be desired in the vigour and energy of Franklin's
daily life, once a daily joy in virile effort and exertion. Still too
much a man to pity himself, none the less he brooded. His hopes and
dreams, he reflected, had once flowered so beautifully, had shown so
fair for one brief summer day, and lay now so dead and shrivelled and
undone! There was no comfort in these later days.

And then he thought yearningly of the forceful drama of the wild life
which had shrunk so rapidly into the humdrum of the uneventful. At
times he felt a wild yearning to follow this frontier--to follow till
the West sunk into the sea, and even then to follow, until he came to
some Fortunate Islands where such glorious days should die no more. He
recalled the wild animals and the wild men he had known, and saw again
the mocking face of the old wide plains, shifting and evading, even as
the spirit of his own life evaded him, answering no questions directly,
always beckoning, yet always with finger upon lip, forbidding speech.
Almost with exultation he joined in the savage resentment of this land
laid under tribute, he joined in the pitiless scorn of the savage
winter, he almost justified in his own soul the frosted pane and the
hearth made cold, and the settlers' homes forever desolated.

Yet ever a chill struck Franklin's soul as he thought of the lost
battle at the Halfway House. There was now grass grown upon the dusty
trail that once led up to the low-eaved house. The green and gray of
Nature were shrouding busily the two lonely graves of those who had
fought the, frontier and been vanquished in that night of terror, when
the old West claimed its own. The Halfway House of old was but a
memory.