ess used to it,
and now and then he found his superior's vitriolic comments upon his
efforts almost intolerably galling. Still he had sense enough to
realize that the remedy open to him was a somewhat hazardous one,
because, while it would be easy to walk out of the construction camp,
industrial activity just then was unusually slack in the Mountain
Province. Besides, he was willing to admit that there were excuses for
Cassidy, and there was a certain quiet tenacity in him. He was also
aware that the man with little money has generally a good deal to
bear, for Weston was one who could learn by experience, though that
faculty was not one that hitherto had characterized the family from
which he sprang.

None of the Westons had ever been remarkable for genius--a fact of
which they were rather proud than otherwise. They had for several
generations been content to be men of local importance in a secluded
nook of rural England, which is not the kind of life that is conducive
to original thought or enterprising action. They had chosen wives like
themselves from among their neighbors, and it was perhaps in several
respects not altogether fortunate for Clarence Weston that his mother
had been ultra-conservative in her respect for traditions, since he
had inherited one side of her nature. Still, in her case, at least,
the respect had been idealistic, and the traditions of the highest;
and though she had died when he was eighteen she had instilled into
him a certain delicacy of sentiment and a simple, chivalrous code that
had somewhat hampered him in the rough life he had led in the Canadian
Dominion.

As a very young man he had quarreled with his father over a matter
trifling in itself, but each had clung to his opinions with the
obstinacy of men who have few ideas to spare, and Clarence had gone
out to seek his fortune in western Canada. He had naturally failed to
find it, and the first discovery that there was apparently nobody in
that wide country who was ready to appraise either his mental
attainments or his bodily activity at the value of his board was a
painful shock to the sanguine lad. That first year was a bad one to
him, but he set his teeth and quietly bore all that befell him; the
odd, brutal task, paid for at half the usual wages, the frequent
rebuffs, the long nights spent shelterless in the bush, utter
weariness, and often downright hunger. It was a hard school, but it
taught him much, and he graduated as a man,