rn the
way you don't want it."

"I tell you it's done promised to help the farmer," put in Amos heavily,
bringing his large red hand down upon the table. "Ain't it been helpin'
the manufacturer all these years? Ain't it been lookin' arter the
labourer, black an' white? Ain't it time for it to keep its word to the
farmer?"

"In the meantime I'd finish that piece of ploughing, if I were you,"
suggested Nicholas. "The more work in the fall the less in the
spring--that's a proverb for you."

"I don't want no proverb," returned Amos sullenly. "I want my rights,
an' I want the country to give 'em to me."

"I ain't never seen no good come of settin' down an' wishin' for
rights," remarked his wife tartly. "It's a sight better to be up an'
plantin'."

Nicholas finished his breakfast, and a little later walked in to town.
He was in exuberant spirits, and his thoughts were high on the
scaffolding where his future was building. Success and Eugenia startled,
allured, delighted him. He was at the age of sublime self-confidence,
but his eyes were not bandaged by it. He knew that without success--such
success as he dreamed of--there could be, for him, no Eugenia. He
believed in her as he believed in the sun, and yet he was not sure of
her--he could not be until he possessed her and she bore his name. That
she might not love him he admitted; that she might even love another he
saw to be dimly possible; but he was determined that so long as no other
man held her his arms should be open. In the first ardour of his mood
his relative position to that society of which she formed a part was
lost sight of, if not obscured. Now he realised bitterly that he might
work for a lifetime in the class in which he was born, and at the end
still find Eugenia far from him. He must rise above his work and his
people, he must cut his old name anew, he must walk rough-shod where his
mind led him--among men who were his superiors only in the accident of a
better birthright. And if on that higher plane his ambitions did not
betray, he would bring honour to his State and to Eugenia.

Here the two loves of the boy and the man stood out boldly. The old
romantic fervour with which he had longed for the days of Marshall and
Madison, of Jefferson and Henry, still lingered on as an exotic
patriotism in an era of time-servers and unprofitable servants. There
was an old-fashioned democracy about him--a pioneer simplicity--as one
who had walked from the great d