ly that might enlighten and not insult,
but it was difficult. At last he spoke.

"Uncle Levi, I cannot see what such effort and success as yours amount
to if they do not place the next generation higher. What you say you
have deplored in your own life should prove to you what I ought to
have. Your experience counts for so much, you know. I expect to work,
and work hard--I always have worked hard. I'm two years ahead of most
fellows of my age. But I want to start from where you and my Aunt
Olive leave off, I want to mingle with my kind--I am all but qualified
to enter Yale--I could not go--back!"

"Your kind! Go back!" Levi's eyes flashed under his shaggy brows.
"What is your kind? Have you ever mingled with those above or below
you? And as to going back--is it degrading to place yourself in a
position from which you can accept or decline a great opportunity
intelligently? I was forced to learn my lesson in a hard school; you
can still learn the lesson even with the limitations of luxury. Your
'kind' is good, bad, and indifferent, and there are other kinds. I see
you before me, young and hopeful--but ignorant and blind. I want to
open every avenue to you that leads to successful manhood. You are
losing nothing by my plan; you are gaining much." Something very
pleading rang in Markham's voice, but Lansing was deaf to it.

"Uncle Levi--I cannot! I'd be a disappointment to you if I tried.
I've got to go on with the fellows. I'd lose more than you know if I
broke away now and--and buried myself in the mill, and then tried later
to pick up. You've never been through what I have--the break would be
the end of me! You'd know it when it was too late. I mean to try to
be the best of my kind, indeed I do--but the fellow I am is the result
of my training and it means everything to me."

What Levi Markham saw before him now was the son of Lansing
Hertford--all resemblance to the mother was gone. Baffled and defeated
by a something invincible and beyond his understanding, the old man
faced the calmness of the young fellow in the chair across the desk.
When he spoke he addressed a Hertford only.

"You have heard my proposition, Lansing; I mean to stand by it; unless
you can accept my terms I shall change my will."

Could Markham only have understood he would have known that it was the
pride of his race, not the Hertfords', that spurred Lansing to retort
angrily:

"I did not know I was being bought. I tho