"You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after Ingolby. Then, amid
the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been
carousing.




CHAPTER III

CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS

A word about Max Ingolby.

He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure;
but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yet
whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all,
that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do the
impossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not be
denied.

In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize--fishing-
rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take most
prizes at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump,
the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he could organize a
picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost to himself. His
finance in even this limited field had been brilliant. Other people
paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the others
intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the end
to put things right.