“Elinor, my father's cruel murder and my mother dying alone were one kind of grief. My fight with those deadly poison things to rescue little Bug was another kind. My days of hardship and poverty on the claim, with only Bug and me in that desolate loneliness, was still another. But none of these seem a sorrow beside what I must face henceforth. And yet I have one joy mine now. You did care down in the glen. May I keep that one gracious joy--mine always?” “You have always won in every game. You will in this struggle. Don't forget the name your mother gave you.” Her eyes were luminous with tears. “We must go down to the Corral now. Tomorrow will make things all right. I shall be proud of you and your success everywhere, for you will succeed.” “I may not be worthy of victory,” he said, sadly. “You have never been unworthy. Don't be now.” She smiled bravely. They turned from the west prairie and the sunset, and slowly they passed out of its passing radiance down to the darkening spaces of the old Kickapoo Corral. And the day with its gladness and sorrow, whether for loss or gain, slipped into the shadowy beauty of an April twilight. CHAPTER IX. GAIN, OR LOSS? _Ye know how hard an Idol dies, an' what that meant to me--E'en take it for a sacrifice, acceptable to Thee_. --KIPLING THE ball game on Friday, the thirteenth, was a great event this year. The Sunrise football eleven had held the championship record with an uncrossed goal line in the autumn. The basket-ball team had had no defeat this year. Debating tests had given Sunrise the victory. That came through Trench and the crippled student. And the state oratorical struggle repeated the story, a conquest, all the greater because Victor Burleigh, the athlete, wore also the laurels of oratory. And why should he not, with that fine presence and magnificent voice? As Dr. Fenneben listened to his forceful logic he saw clearly the line for the boy's future, a line, he thought, that could end at last only in the pulpit.