bers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want
him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together."

"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.

"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has
the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain
asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life
you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT
to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's
obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell
you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than
your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim
from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very
self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to
wield it and twist it--"

The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. "Yes! And by
God, I will!"

"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.

"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
"That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half
a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the
lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A
man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!"

"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney. "Will you be a really big man now
and--"

"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!" Sheridan began to walk to and
fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
his bolt the m