"Don't make game of me, grandfather," said Harlan, coloring.
"Oh, I'm only expressing a wicked hope. There are some men in this State that I'd like to see punished to that extent." He chuckled. "Put me down for fifty thousand dollars, first subscriber to your campaign fund."
"I can appreciate the humor of that joke," said Harlan. "For I've had a liberal education in the past year—I've found out just how little I know." He added wearily, "And I've found out how hard it is to be what you want to be."
His grandfather tipped his head back into his clasped hands, his characteristic attitude. He squinted out across the hills.
"Bub," he said, "I had the first real blow of my life the other day. A man pointed me out on the train and told another man, loud enough so that I overheard him, that I was Harlan Thornton's grandfather—'and I forget his first name,' he said, 'it begins with T.'"
They ate supper together in the old mess-hall, back on their former footing. Word by word it came out of the Duke—his admiration for this boy who had made his own way. Every blow he had dealt his grandfather's personal pride had brought the reactionary glow of appreciation of this scion who could hit so hard and so surely.
He watched him saddle his horse after supper. He did not ask where he was going.
Harlan did not know. His longing drew him down the long street and across the big bridge, his horse walking slowly.