a broader plot."

On General Prince's lips flickered a quiet smile.

"Is there a broader thing than independence?" he inquired, and the
answer came back with a quick uptake.

"At least a bigger thing, sir. Breadth is only one dimension, after all.
A larger concept, perhaps, comes by adding one syllable to your word and
making it interdependence. Inexorably you must follow the human cycle
and some day, sir, your country must stand with its elder brethren,
grappled in the last crusade. Then only will the word Americanism be
completely spelled."

The Kentuckian's eyes kindled responsively to the animation of his
companion's words, his manner. It was a phase of this interesting man
that he had not before seen, but his own response was gravely calm,

"I am thinking," he said whimsically, "that this wine-like air has gone
to our heads. We are standing in a high place, dreaming large dreams."

The Scot nodded energetically.

"I dare say," he acceded. "After all a hermit is thrown back on dreaming
for want of action." He broke off and when he spoke again it was with a
trace of embarrassment, almost of shyness which brought a flush to his
cheeks.

"I've been living here close to the life that was the infancy of your
nation, and I've been imagining the wonder of a life that could start
as did that of these hardy settlers and pass, in a single generation,
along the stages that the country, itself, has marched to this day. It
would mean birth in pioneer strength and simplicity, and fulfilment in
the present and future. It would mean ten years lived in one!"

"It would have had to begin two centuries ago," Prince reminded him,
"and to run, who can say, how far forward?"

Half diffidently, half stubbornly, McCalloway shook his head.

"You saw that boy last night who called you a 'great horse-thievin'
raider'?" The gray eyes twinkled with reminiscence. "In every essential
respect he is a lad of two hundred years ago. He is a pioneer boy, crude
as pig-iron, unlettered and half barbaric. Yet his stuff is the raw
material of which your people is made. It needs only fire, water, oil
and work to convert pig-iron into tempered steel."

Prince looked into his companion's eyes and found them serious.

"You mean to try," he sceptically inquired, "to make the complete
American out of that lad in whose veins flows the blood of the
vendetta?"

"I told you that we hermits were dreamers," answered McCalloway. "I've
never had a son