made
him hot and confused. Yet it was a good vision, perhaps that was
why--a picture of countless toiling human beings travelling on his
roads all down the coming ages, knowing them for good roads, and
praising the maker. But he was a boy and was abashed at the vision and
hoped Caesar did not guess at it. Caesar, however, saw it all more
clearly than Christopher himself and was not abashed but well
content.

The boy went back to Caesar's side. The thing was done, spoken of, made
alive, and now he could plead for it, work to gain his end,--also
there was a glow in his face and a new eagerness in his manner.

"Oh, Caesar, do say it's possible. I always wanted to do it, even when
I was a little chap, and watched men breaking stones on the road."

"It's quite possible, only it will want working out. You must go
abroad--France--Germany--I must see where to place you."

"Yes, I must learn how they are made everywhere, and then--then there
must be roads to be made somewhere--in new countries if not here."

They talked it out earnestly; Caesar himself caught the boy's
enthusiasm, and the moment Mr. Aston came in he too was drawn into the
discussion and offered good advice.

Thus Christopher's future was decided upon as something to be worked
out quite independent of Peter Masters and his millions. Perhaps
because he had seen the vision which covered Christopher with shy
confusion, Aymer became very prosaic and practical over the details,
and Mr. Aston was the only one of the trio who gave any more thought
to the boy's dream on its sentimental side. He used to sit in the
evenings watching the two poring over maps, letters and guidebooks,
thinking far thoughts for them both, occasionally uttering them.

"I wonder," he remarked one night, "if you know what a lucky young man
you are, Master Christopher, not only in having a real wish concerning
your own future--which is none too common a lot--but in being free to
follow it."

Christopher looked up from the map he was studying.

"Yes, I know I'm lucky, St. Michael. It must be perfectly horrible to
have to be something one does not want to be. I suppose that's why
lots of people never get on in the world. It seems beastly unfair."

"Yet I've known men to succeed at work for which they had no original
aptitude," returned Mr. Aston quietly.

"Mightn't they have succeeded better at what they did like?"

"That is beside the mark, so that they did not fail altogether. I knew