“Let me remind you of one thing.”  The young man from the outer world spoke very quietly.  “The chapters of history that stand out in boldest relief are chapters dealing with men who were miracle-workers, men who had something in their eyes that dominated other men.  I have been reared close enough to the center of financial achievement to have seen something of that.  Perhaps that boy of yours is born with the stamp of victory upon him—­who knows?  Given the chance, he may fulfill his own visions.  Both of your sons are dreamers, but the elder may be a doer of dreams as well as a dreamer of dreams.  He’s an unquenchable flame.  Don’t force him to smolder until he bursts into blaze.  Give him a chance to talk.  Give him a safety-valve.”

Tom Burton drew his brows close over perplexed and baffled eyes; eyes full of foreboding and anxiety.  His voice was full of bewilderment.  “What does it all mean?” he murmured half-aloud.  “What’s the cause of all these voices an’ protests where everything’s been quiet an’ peaceable up to now?  Why ain’t we never heard nothin’ about all this before if it’s such a big thing an’ a thing that the Lord intended?” He gazed about him helplessly and with the face of one who sees omens and cannot construe them, but who feels a nameless fear of their portent.

“At all events,” reiterated the guest, “you will do well to hear what the boy wants to say, and now I will bid you good-night.”

When he had gone, the older man sat in thought for awhile, and, when next his voice broke the silence, it was in a much softened timbre, a voice tinged with tenderness.

“Mother,” he called in an undertone, and the woman who had borne his children and stood shoulder to shoulder with him through the years of fight, came over and knelt at his knee.  He took her hand and held it for a while in silence, and then he said a little brokenly:  “Mother, when we first came here from the little church down there, this house looked pretty good to us, didn’t it?”

“To me, Tom,” she said softly, “it has always looked good.”

“Do you remember,” he went on irrelevantly, “when we brought that slip of vine from the mountain and planted it by the porch?  It’s over the roof now.”

The woman only pressed his hand; and after a moment he went on.

“There are a couple of graves out there in the churchyard that I’d hate mightily to leave.”

“The two we lost,” she whispered.

“An’ yet maybe if we stay here we’ll lose ’em all.”  Tom Burton was making a decided effort to hold his voice steady.

“Don’t—­don’t, Tom,” protested the woman.

“When you married me, Elizabeth,” he went on with the air of one resolved to take full account, “I reckon you could have done a good deal better, it’s been a long fight here an’ a hard one.”

“I’ve been happy,” she told him.

“Your hand was right slim then, an’ now it’s hard from work.  To me, there ain’t no other hand as beautiful, mother, but there’s no use denying that we can’t hold out much longer, unless the children stand by an’ help us.”