As I rode Satan over to The Manor after supper I thought of all my past life in which Braxton Bragg had figured. I remembered him first as a large, bullying, overgrown boy, three years older and much larger than I. I remembered his small, bullet-shaped head, the fat, heavy jowls, the short neck, and the loud laugh. From the first he had teased and derided me. I did not understand it then, but it was plain now. Young as he was, he had set his plans to work to discredit me with my grandsire; to own The Home Stretch himself, and to win Eloise. The conceit of him! Only one great thing Braxton Bragg had in him, his aim. That was something to his credit: but without brain and heart behind it, of what availed the aim? He was like a wharf-rat, stealing on board a man-of-war, to shoot a thirteen-inch gun at the moon! He had never been a boy, a real playmate to me. He had always been cruel to the little negroes around us, and to dumb animals, and in everything he had been a coward and a bully. I had never taken his designs on Eloise seriously, nor had she. Yet his persistency was notable, even up to now, when her engagement to Colonel Goff had been announced. Braxton Bragg, I decided, meant to deceive Elsie, to play with her, this little creature of fun and love, this pure little flower that was as much of The Home Stretch as the flowers on the hills, the locust blossoms that perfumed all the air in spring. He had beaten me out of my birthright by deceit and make-believe. I could stand that. I could make my own Home Stretch, as every man must make his, whether he will it or not, if he and his home shall ever become two halves that make one. And he must make it by work of heart as well as of brain and of body if he hold it truly: for God is inexorable, and His law of possession is: _if you have not earned it, you shall not hold it_! In vain do men subterfuge with that law, by gifts, inheritance, entail, by trustees and trusts; shambling along they may go a generation: then God and His Higher Court decrees, and the little tenants by courtesy pass out. The little mice who have not the love of it, which has been born of labor, the pride of it begot of sacrifices given, find themselves food in the claws of the great eagles which work and dare. This last act of Braxton Bragg roused me to an anger I had never felt before in all my life. I had always been for quietness and peace. I did not know it then, but I know now that there are Three of me—Me, Myself, and my Soul—which are almost as distinct one from another as three separate personalities.