"I have been watching my children, my boy, especially," said Hiram. "I don't know about all this that you've been saying. It's a big subject; but I do know about this boy of mine. I wish I'd 'a' taken your advice, Mark, and put him in your school. But his mother was set on the East--on Harvard." Tears were in his eyes at this. He remembered how she, knowing nothing of college, but feeling it was her duty to have her children educated properly, a duty she must not put upon others, had sent for the catalogues of all the famous colleges in the country. He could see her poring over the catalogues, balancing one offering of educational advantage against another, finally deciding for Harvard, the greatest of them all. He could hear her saying: "It'll cost a great deal, Hiram. As near as I can reckon it out it'll cost about a thousand dollars a year--twelve hundred if we want to be v-e-r-y liberal, so the catalogue says. But Harvard's the biggest, and has the most teachers and scholars, and takes in all the branches. And we ought to give our Arthur the best." And now--By what bitter experience had he learned that the college is not in the catalogue, is a thing apart, unrelated and immeasurably different! His eyes were hot with anger as he thought how the boy's mother, honest, conscientious Ellen, had been betrayed. "Look here, Mark," he blazed out, "if I leave money to your college I want to see that it can't ever be like them eastern institutions of learning." He made a gesture of disgust. "Learning!" "If you leave us anything, Hiram, leave it so that any young man who gets its advantages must work for them." "That's it!" exclaimed Hiram. "That's what I want. Can you draw me up that kind of plan? No boy, no matter what he has at home, can come to that there college without working his way through, without learning to work, me to provide the chance to earn the living." "I have just such a plan," said Hargrave, drawing a paper from his pocket. "I've had it ready for years waiting for just such an opportunity." "Read it," said Hiram, sinking deep in his big chair and closing his eyes and beginning to rub his forehead with his great hand. And Hargrave read, forgetting his surroundings, forgetting everything in his enthusiasm for this dream of his life--a university, in fact as well as in name, which would attract the ambitious children of rich and well-to-do and poor, would teach them how to live honestly and nobly, would give them not only useful knowledge to work with but also the light to work by. "You see, Hiram, I think a child ought to begin to be a man as soon as he begins to live--a man, standing on his own feet, in his own shoes, with the courage that comes from knowing how to do well something which the world needs."