McGregor looked at her and nodded his head absent-mindedly. He thought of the nights in his room when the hard heavy work of the day in the warehouse seemed to have benumbed his brain. “Besides the business here I have seventeen hundred dollars in the savings bank,” said Edith, turning aside to conceal the eager hopeful look in her eyes. “I want to invest it. I do not want it lying there doing nothing. I want you to take it and make a lawyer of yourself.” Edith sat rigid in her chair waiting for his answer. She felt that she had put him to a test. In her mind was a new hope. “If he takes it he will not be walking out at the door some night and never coming back.” McGregor tried to think. He had not tried to explain to her his new notion of life and did not know how to begin. “After all why not stick to my plan and be a lawyer?” he asked himself. “That might open the door. I'll do that,” he said aloud to the woman. “Both you and mother have talked of it so I'll give it a trial. Yes, I'll take the money.” Again he looked at her as she sat before him flushed and eager and was touched by her devotion as he had been touched by the devotion of the undertaker's daughter in Coal Creek. “I don't mind being under obligations to you,” he said; “I don't know any one else I would take it from.” In the street later the troubled man walked about trying to make new plans for the accomplishment of his purpose. He was annoyed by what he thought to be the dulness of his own brain and he thrust his fist up into the air to look at it in the lamplight. “I'll get ready to use that intelligently,” he thought; “a man wants trained brains backed up by a big fist in the struggle I'm going into.” It was then that the man from Ohio walked past with his hands in his pockets and attracted his attention. To McGregor's nostrils came the odour of rich fragrant tobacco. He turned and stood staring at the intruder on his thoughts. “That's what I am going to fight,” he growled; “the comfortable well-to-do acceptance of a disorderly world, the smug men who see nothing wrong with a world like this. I would like to frighten them so that they throw their cigars away and run about like ants when you kick over ant hills in the field.” CHAPTER II McGregor began to attend some classes at Chicago University and walked about among the massive buildings, erected for the most part through the bounty of one of his country's leading business men, wondering why the great centre of learning seemed so little a part of the city. To him the University seemed something entirely apart, not in tune with its surrounding. It was like an expensive ornament worn on the soiled hand of a street urchin. He did not stay there long.