him of peace and quiet, of the possibility of living on the life he had
been born to and had learned to love! One of the class which fostered
him was robbing him, he feared with a great fear, of the sweet girl whom
he loved better than he loved his life. Surely it would be no sin, no
act of real dishonesty for him to slip down from his stump when none was
looking and secure a stick or two of the explosive!

Speciously he argued this out in his mind and reached the wrong
conclusion which he wished to reach.

If he could but get one of those sticks of dynamite! When progress came,
as, now, he felt convinced it would, to drive him from his mountains and
the still which made life possible to him, he could meet it, at the
start, with one of its own weapons. That, even though he had a hundred
such, he could fight the fight successfully, could, in the end, find
triumph, he did not for an instant think. The might of the encroaching
army had impressed him, and he knew that, soon or late, he would be
forced to yield to it; but he coveted those sticks of dynamite. One of
them would give him some slight power, at least. He acknowledged to
himself that he would steal one if he got the chance, despite his innate
hatred of all pilferers. Such theft would merely be the taking of an
unimportant tribute from the power which would, eventually, claim much,
indeed, from him.

From the distance came the screaming whistle of a locomotive pulling in
along the newly built roadway to eastward. It was followed by a flurry
of excitement among all the men at work around about him.

"There comes the mail," he heard one handsome young chap shout.