He was conscious of what he did and said, but he did not do and say it of his own volition.  He was like a man who dimly sees and hears another man.  Subconsciously he was repeating:  “Not another one till to-morrow. ...  Not another one till to-morrow. ...”

Abruptly he turned away from Lightener and, setting down each foot heavily with a clump, he plodded toward the wash room.  He was going to rest.  He was going to feel cool water on his head and his neck; he was going to revel in cool water... and then he would sleep.  Sleep!  He made toward sleep as one lost in the desert would make toward a spring of sweet water. ...

Lightener stood and looked after Bonbright.  His granite face did not alter; no light or shade passed over it.  Not even in his gray eyes could a hint of his thoughts be read.  Simply he stood and looked after Bonbright, outwardly as emotionless as a block of the rock that he resembled.  Then he walked to his office, sat down at his desk, selected and lighted a cigar, and tilted back in his chair.

“There’s something to that Bonbright Foote formula,” he said to himself.  “It’s all wrong, but it could produce that.”

Then, after a few moments of puffing and of studying the thing, he said:  “We’ll see if he comes back to-morrow. ...  If he does come back—­”

At home that evening Hilda asked him about Bonbright.  He was ashamed to confess to her what he had done to the boy—­yet he was proud of having done it.  To his own granite soul it was right to subject men to such tests, but women would not understand.  He knew his daughter would think him a brute, and he did not want his daughter to think any such thing.  “If he comes back in the morning—­” he promised.

Bonbright came back in the morning, though he had been hardly able to drag himself out of bed.  It was not strength of body that brought him, but pure will.  He came, looking forward to the day as a man might look down into hell-but he came.  “I’ll show them,” he said, aloud, at the breakfast table, as he forced himself to drink a cup of coffee.  Ruth did not understand.  She did not understand what was wrong with him; feared he was on the verge of an illness.  He had come home the night before, scarcely speaking to her, and had gone directly to bed.  She supposed he was in his room preparing for dinner, but when she went to call him she found him fast asleep, moaning and muttering uneasily.

“What did you say?” she asked, uneasily.

“Didn’t know I spoke,” he said, and winced as he moved his shoulders.  But he knew what he had said—–­that he would show them.  It wasn’t Malcolm Lightener he was going to show, but the men—­his fellow laborers.  The thing that lay in his mind was that he must prove himself to be their equal, capable of doing what they could do.  He wanted their respect—­wanted it pitifully.