FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60  
61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>   >|  
een the burning arch of the sky and the scorching sands. Great cities rose before his eyes, beckoning him, calling to him: brooding cities of gray turrets and foggy streets; strange cities lit with sunset fires on domes and minarets; laughing cities gay with festivals. All these things he was hungry to see; to see as a master of the world walking its varied ways, achieving its affairs. Through his waking dreams marched a parade of great figures, Hannibal, Caesar the Corsican, Talleyrand, Disraeli, Montagu, Pitt, the men with whom this tongueless voice proclaimed his brotherhood; the men who had found life's granite as hard as that which lay heaped about him, who had conquered it and chiseled it into monuments of history. His hand slipped under his pillow and closed on the dollars he had made. His troubled face smoothed into a smile. "Slivers Martin paid me ten dollars," he murmured to himself, "an' I bought the lot of 'em for seven." CHAPTER IV When young Jefferson Edwardes set out the next morning for his winter's imprisonment in the shack where he must fight the white specter of slow death, amid the white isolation of the snow, he left behind him a household to all outward seeming as quiet as it had ever been. But all that morning and afternoon while Ham was away at school, Tom Burton sat deeply engrossed in calculations involving scraps of paper upon which he was laboriously figuring, and frequent consultation of a slender bank-book. And Ham, as he trudged back across the snow, came with a face set for combat. Hitherto he had obeyed and now the time had come when his inherent power of leadership must assert itself. If the world could not conquer him--and he was utterly certain it could not--he must not flinch from the task of riding down the first opposition he met--even though it be the opposition of his own blood. Afterward his family should know only tenderness and ease and luxury, but now they must acknowledge his mastery. Of the possibility of failure he never dreamed. His star was in the heavens and Destiny had spoken. Just as the cork plunged to the bottom of the pail must inevitably rise to the top, so he must rise. He was of the oligarchy of the great, of the chosen of the gods, and now the voices of Destiny were calling him to the undertaking of his mission. Tonight the question must be thrashed out, yet when he arrived at the house he went quietly about the round of monotonous chores and af
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60  
61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
cities
 

opposition

 

Destiny

 
morning
 

dollars

 

calling

 
frequent
 

trudged

 

question

 
slender

consultation

 

combat

 

inherent

 
leadership
 
mission
 

assert

 

Tonight

 

figuring

 
Hitherto
 

obeyed


school

 

Burton

 

monotonous

 

afternoon

 

chores

 

deeply

 

engrossed

 

arrived

 

laboriously

 

scraps


quietly

 

calculations

 
involving
 

thrashed

 

tenderness

 
luxury
 

Afterward

 

family

 

bottom

 

plunged


dreamed

 

heavens

 
failure
 

acknowledge

 

mastery

 
possibility
 

flinch

 
chosen
 
oligarchy
 
utterly