felt that he
would dare anything, do anything, if he could bring back to Becky the
dreams of which Dalton robbed her.

Night after night he sat in his room up-stairs in the old Schoolhouse,
and wrote on "The Trumpeter Swan." It was an outlet for his pent-up
emotions, and something of the romance which was denied him, something of
the indignation which stirred him, something of the passions of love and
revenge which fought within him, drove his pen onward, so that his little
tale took on color and life. Crude, perhaps, in form, it was yet a song
of youth and patriotism. It was Randy's call to his comrades. There was
to be no compromise. They must make men look up and listen--to catch the
sound of their clear note. The ideals which had made them fight
brutality and greed were living ideals. They were not to be doffed with
their khaki and overseas caps. Their country called, the whole world
called, for men with faith and courage. There was no place for
pessimism, no place for materialism, no place for sordidness.

His hero was, specifically, a man who had come back from the fighting,
flaming with the thought of his high future. He had found the world
smiling and unconcerned. It was this world which needed to listen to the
call of trumpets--high up----

The chapters in which he wrote of love--for there was a woman in the
story--were more beautiful than Randy realized. It was of a boy's love
that he told--delicately. It was his own story of love denied, yet
enriching a life.

Yet--because man cannot live up always to the measure of his own vision,
there came often between Randy and the written page the image of George
Dalton, smiling and insolent. And he would lay down his pen, and lean
his head on his hand, and gaze into space, and sometimes he would speak
on in the silence. "I will make him suffer."

It was in one of these moments that he saw how it might be done. "He
would let fruit drop to the ground and rot if no other man wanted it," he
analyzed keenly, "but if another man tried to pick it up, he would fight
for it."

Dalton was still at King's Crest. Mrs. Waterman had not responded
satisfactorily to the operation. The doctors had grave doubts as to her
recovery. Madge was convalescing at the Flippins'.

Randy had been content, hitherto, to receive bulletins indirectly from
both of the invalids. But on the morning following the birth of his
great idea he rode on horseback to King's Crest. H