ong. To this watcher it
seemed that he looked out from the halfway point of the nation, from
the halfway house of a nation's irresistible development.

Franklin had taken with him a small canteen of water, but bethinking
himself that as of old the young man beseeching his dream neither ate
nor drank until he had his desire, he poured out the water at his side
as he sat in the dark. The place was covered with small objects, bits
of strewn shells and beads and torn "medicine bundles"--pieces of
things once held dear in earlier minds. He felt his hand fall by
accident upon some small object which had been wetted by the wasted
water. Later, in the crude light of the tiny flame which he had
kindled, this lump of earth assumed, to his exalted fancy, the grim
features of an Indian chieftain, wide-jawed, be-tufted, with low brow,
great mouth, and lock of life's price hanging down the neck. All the
fearlessness, the mournfulness, the mysticism of the Indian face was
there. Franklin always said that he had worked at this unconsciously,
kneading the lump between his fingers, and giving it no thought other
than that it felt cooling to his hand and restful to his mind. Yet
here, born ultimately of the travail of a higher mind, was a man from
another time, in whose gaze sat the prescience of a coming day. The
past and the future thus were bridged, as may be done only by Art, the
enduring, the uncalendared, the imperishable.

Shall we say that this could not have been? Shall we say that Art may
not be born in a land so young? Shall we say that Art may not deal
with things uncatalogued, and dare not treat of unaccepted things?
Nay, rather let us say that Art, being thought, has this divine right
of elective birth. For out of tortures Art had here won the deep
_imprimatur_.

Edward Franklin, a light-hearted man, rode homeward happily. The past
lay correlated, and for the future there were no longer any wonderings.
His dream, devoutly sought, had given peace.

[*]Before his twenty-ninth year Edward Franklin's hair had always been
a dark reddish brown. When he returned from a certain journey it was
noticed that upon his temple there was a lock of snowy whiteness.
Shon-to, a Cheyenne Indian, once noticed this and said to Franklin:
"You have slept upon the Dreaming Hill, and a finger has touched you!
Among my people there was a man who had a spot of white in his hair,
and his father had this spot, and his son after him.