Managing vice-president of the biggest mining business in the state, third largest land-owner in Bragg County, governor after next January! Well, he had gotten where he had planned, sixteen uneven years ago. He recalled vaguely the vision that he had had, when he had sat on the same crest beside Nathaniel Guild, and decided to purchase. He would bring the city, and the state, to the feet of the mountain.... He had done it. The jutting enginehouse smokestacks, the ramp offices to the right, the snarl and screech of the loaded cars on the narrow-gauge lines, forced themselves into his attention. Not a scene of beauty; and there was a charred desolation where Hillcrest Cottage had once spread its graceful lines. It was not the dream he had had. A man dreamed blindly; life brought to pass a substitute instead of the sought goal. It was a necessary process; since dreams must conflict, and the restless shift of things constantly opened new possibilities, closed old ones. No, it was not what he had pictured.... There was no son beside him now, to take up the work in turn and pass it on to endless Judsons. Pelham.... Hollis in service, too pleased with the work to give it up.... Ned already determined to be a surgeon.... But it was a magnificent achievement. Musing, he walked over the grayed site of the old house. His toe met an obstacle jutting in the grass. He poked it up with his cane. It was the fused handle of the Bohemian glass epergne which had been grandfather Judson's. He slipped it into his pocket to show Mary. His wife, her face lined and colorless, as if from too many hours and years spent indoors, listened with intent attention to his account of the afternoon. Two sickly spots of color glowed at what the governor had said. "But ... it will mean a hard contest, will it not?" "I don't think so. The primary is the only chance for a real fight; and the Tennant crowd will stop that in advance. You'll have to brighten up a bit, Mary. You ought to do more entertaining...." "I'm not very strong, Paul." His gruff "Nonsense!" was the prelude to the further account of the planned amalgamation with National Steel. "We're still to have control of this district; Florence and I will be elected directors. It had to come; competition is waste; cooperation is the modern method." His wife sat with her eyes intent upon the melted fragment of colored glass in her hand. She turned it this way and that, up before the fading light, seeking what semblance of the colorful old token of Jackson life remained in it, what part was merely a charred, dead fragment of happier beauty. "So I thought," he continued, unaware of her absorption, "that we could entertain the visiting gentlemen and their wives at dinner to-morrow evening." A pinched expression of pain crossed her face. "You have not realized, Paul, that I am frailer this spring than any time since Ned was born...." "I mean at the Steelmen's Club, not here. It won't be any trouble...."