The boy’s answer was direct and swift and confident.  “One chance is all I need.  It’s only a coward that wants a guarantee of more chances, if he fails once.  What sort of a farmer do you think Paul will ever make?  He couldn’t heft a second-growth log of timber.  But out there in the world where a man’s rated higher than a mule maybe Paul’s got it in him to be great.  Some day Mary’s goin’ to be a woman and a beautiful woman.  She’s got a right to life.  Don’t you ever see the difference between life an’ just livin’?  It’s the difference between havin’ a soul and havin’ nothin’ but a belly.”

“Do you suppose”—­the father spoke petulantly despite his resolution to hear his son to the end—­“do you suppose we’ve always been poor because we liked it?”

“If you stay poor,” came the prompt retort, “it’s because you won’t let me change it.  We’re stayin’ here an’ slowly starvin’ our hearts an’ brains an’ souls because Money’s got us bluffed.  I’m goin’ to make money my slave an’ not my master—­an’ if you’ll trust me you can have it to play with.”

“You tell me that you are one of the almightiest great men that was ever born, an’ that somethin’ keeps on tellin’ you so.  You tell me that I can’t understand the voice you hear,” said Tom Burton slowly.  “Don’t you know that all the lunatic asylums are full of Emperors of Germany and Kings of England—­an’ they all hear them same kind of voices?  That’s why they’re there.”

“But there’s one Emperor of Germany and one King of England outside them places—­an’ they’re on thrones.  All the masters of the world have felt their power an’ folks have laughed at ’em—­at first.”  Ham spoke with desperate seriousness that made his eyes glow steadily and forcefully.  “And yet the big things have been done by those men, and from the first they knew that they were different.  You say I’ve been braggin’.  Did you ever hear me say one word before yesterday about bein’ different from any other boy?  I’m sayin’ it now because there isn’t any use in lyin’.  I know just as well as if I’d already done it, that I can look down on other successful men as far as a mountain-top looks down on a little hill.  I’ve done my work here on this farm, an’ I haven’t ever shirked.  Now I want my chance—­an’ I don’t want my family to go to seed.  I want the blood of the Standishes and the Hamiltons to climb up and not to run down hill and die out in a rotting puddle at the bottom.  I want these things and I’m goin’ to have ’em—­This farm an’ you have fought for a lifetime an’ the farm’s whipped you.  I tell you there is just one thing in God Almighty’s world that can whip me—­just one thing that I’m afraid of—­an’ it’s this farm.  If you stay here I reckon I can’t hardly desert you, but I’d rather you’d kill me outright.  That’s all I’ve got to say.”