“No, ma’am! I wouldn’t take a nickel of it if he begged me to! I’ve been pretty near where I was ready to steal to get money to pull me out of a hole; but I’ll never take one single cent of what grandma left Harlan, or of what she left you either. If she’d meant me to have it she’d have given it to me herself; but she didn’t have any faith in me, and she says so in plain words in her will. You don’t expect me to take help from her that she wanted to _prevent_, do you? Never in this world!” “There! You see?” Mrs. Oliphant lamented, appealing to her husband. “I knew it hurt him, in spite of what he said. I knew it!” “You’re all wrong,” Dan stoutly maintained. “She kind of explained to me what she was goin’ to do, though I didn’t see what she meant. It was just a few minutes before she died. She told me to remember not to be hurt, but she needn’t have worried about it, and I told her so. So don’t _you_ worry about it. I didn’t begin to build Ornaby on my expectations from her; I’ve carried it along this far by myself, and I expect to carry it the rest of the way. And I’m goin’ to build that factory! George McMillan thinks maybe he can float some of the stock for it in New York, and I don’t know but he’s got a little money of his own he may want to put in. The way I feel, why, it looks to me as if I was about ready to climb out on the top o’ the heap right now; and I’m certainly not baby enough to be hurt because my grandmother didn’t have any faith in me.” He continued to protest and perhaps protested too much; for although it was clear enough to his parents that he was so heartened by his thirty-five hundred dollars as to anticipate miracles, yet it was not to be believed that his pride had suffered no injury at all. What appeared in his grandmother’s will as a severe criticism of his ability and judgment was more than a mere neutral lack of faith; and Mrs. Oliphant’s intuition had touched the truth; he was indeed hurt—but he never admitted it. Moreover, he remained steadfast in refusal; he would neither allow his mother to help him with money nor countenance any appeal of hers, or his father’s, to Harlan. Both of them, uncountenanced, did with faint hope reopen the subject to Harlan, though they did it indirectly;—they made allusions to the pathos of the brave and independent position his brother had taken. But Harlan only looked slightly badgered, and replied that this extolled position of Dan’s was the only possible correct one under the circumstances.