He had told her of his seven-years' struggle upward from the cowboy's saddle to a place of honor in the faculty of the institution where he had beaten out the hard, slow path to learning; she knew of his purpose in coming to the western Kansas plains. Until this moment she had believed it to be a misleading and destructive illusion that would break his heart and rive his soul, as it had the hearts and souls of thousands of brave men and women before him. Now she had a new revelation, the moonlight on his face, bright in his fair hair, picturing him as rugged as a rock uplifted against the dim sky. She knew him then for a man such as she never had met in the narrow circle of her life before, a man strong to live in his purpose and strong to die in it if the need might be. He would conquer where others had failed; the strength of his soul was written in his earnest face. "I think I'll go over to Ascalon," Morgan said presently, turning to them, speaking slowly. "Will you let me have a horse?" "Go to Ascalon! Lands save us!" Mrs. Stilwell exclaimed. "No, no--not tonight!" Violet protested, hurrying forward as if she would stay him by force. "You wait till morning, son," Stilwell counseled calmly, so calmly, indeed, that his wife turned to him sharply. "Maybe I'll go with you in the morning." "You've got no business there--let them kill each other off if they want to, but you keep out of it!" said his wife. "If you'll let me have a horse--" Morgan began again, with the insistence of a man unmoved. "You forgot about our cattle, Mother," Stilwell chided, ignoring Morgan's request. "I'm goin' to sue Sol Drumm, I'm goin' to have the papers ready to serve on him the minute he steps off of the train. If there's any way to make him pay for the damage he's done me I'm goin' to do it." "There's more than one way," said Fred. "If the law can't----" "Then we lose," his father finished for him, in the calm resignation of a just man. Morgan's intention of going to Ascalon to square accounts with his persecutors as soon as he had the strength to warrant such a move was no secret in the Stilwell family. Fred had offered his services at the beginning, and the one cowboy now left out of the five but recently employed by Stilwell had laid his pistol on the table and told Morgan that he was the man who went with it, both of them at his service when the hour of reckoning should arrive. Now Stilwell himself was beginning to show the pistol itch in his palm. Morgan was grateful for all this uprising on the part of his new friends in his behalf, to whom his suffering and the cruelty of his ordeal appealed strongly for sympathy, but he could not accept any assistance at their hands. There could be no satisfaction in justice applied by any hand but his own. If otherwise, he might as well go to the county attorney, lodge complaints, obtain warrants and send his enemies to jail.