m that the wider field of work would give him greater
personal fame, to be used ultimately for a wider influence. All one long
day as he worked with hammer and saw at his trade, Grant turned the
matter over in his mind. He could see himself in a larger canvas,
working a greater good. Perhaps some fleeting unformed idea came to him
of a home and a normal life as other men live; for at noon, without
consciously connecting her with his dream, he took his problem to Laura
Van Dorn at her kindergarten. That afternoon he decided to accept the
offer, and put much of his reason for acceptance upon Kenyon and the
boy's needs. That night he penned a letter of acceptance to the lecture
bureau and went to bed, disturbed and unsatisfied. Before he slept he
turned and twisted, and finally threshed himself to sleep. It was a
light fragmentary sleep, that moves in and out of some strange hypnoidal
state where the lower consciousness and the normal consciousness wrestle
for the control of reason. Then after a long period of half-waking
dreams, toward morning, Grant sank into a profound sleep. In that sleep
his soul, released from all that is material, rose and took command of
his will.

When Grant awoke, it was still black night. For a few seconds he did not
know where he was--nor even who he was, nor what. He was a mere
consciousness. The first glimmer of identity that came to him came with
a roaring "No," that repeated itself over and over, "No--no," cried the
voice of his soul--"you are no mere word spinner; you are a fighter; you
are pledged, body and soul; you are bought with a price--no, no, no."

And then he knew where he was and he knew surely and without doubt or
quaver of faith that he must not give up his place in the fight. When he
thought of Kenyon living on the bounty of the Nesbits, he thought also
of Dick Bowman, ordering his own son under the sliding earth to hold the
shovel over Grant's face in the mine.

So Grant Adams bent his shoulders to this familiar burden. In the early
morning, before his father and Jasper were up, the gaunt, ungainly
figure hurried with his letter of refusal to the South Harvey Station
and put the letter on the seven-ten train for Chicago.

That evening, sitting on their front porch, the Dexters talked over
Grant's decision. "Well," said John Dexter, looking up into the mild
November sky, and seeing the brown gray smudge of the smelter there, "so
Grant has sidled by another devil in his road