Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall. He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at the time, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him for assistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection--the money was his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at the Stenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in the scale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of Valentine Simmons, of Cannon. He considered these facts totally ignorant of the fact that they were but the reflection of his own inchoate need born in the anguish of his wife's death; he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility--sharpened by the hoarse cry from the stiffening lips of Lettice--to the world without. He thought of the possibility before him neither as a scheme of philanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation. He considered it solely in the light of his own experience, as a practical measure to give men their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The cost to himself would be small--his money had faded from his conceptions, his necessities, as absolutely as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by the touch of a magic wand. He had never realized its potentiality; lately he had ignored it with the contempt of supreme indifference. Now an actual employment for it occupied his mind. The stove glowed with calorific energy; General Jackson, who had been lying at his feet, moved farther away. The lamplight grew faint and reddish, and then expired, trailing a thin, penetrating odor. In the dark the heated cylinder of the stove shone rosy, mysterious. Gordon Makimmon was unaware of his own need; yet, at the anticipation of the vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money in opposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of a sudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent blood carried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endless strife of bitter and rugged men in high, austere places, stirred once more through his relaxed and rusting being. He thought, aglow like the stove, of the struggle that would follow such a determination, a struggle with the pink fox, Valentine Simmons. He thought of himself as an equal with the other; for, if Simmons were practised in cunning, if Simmons were deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have no necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable.--He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out of Cannon's grasping fingers. "By God!" he exclaimed, erect in the dark; "but Edgar Crandall will get his apples." The dog licked his hand, faithful, uncomprehending. IX