“You are right, Burleigh. A gentleman does n't want to use his strength like a beast to destroy. The only legitimate battle is when a man must fight with a man as he would fight with a beast, to save himself, or something dearer to him than himself, from beastly destruction. Get into the bigger game, my boy, where the strife is for larger scores, and add to a proud athletic record, the prouder record of self-control. The prairies have given you a noble heritage, but culture comes most from contact with cultured men. Don't take on airs because you have more red blood than our Harvard man. The influence of the great universities, directly or indirectly, on a life like yours is essential to your usefulness and power. You may educate your conscience to choose the right before the wrong, but, remember, an educated conscience does not always save a man from being a fool now and then. He needs an educated brain sometimes by which to save his soul. Meantime, settle with your conscience, if you owe it anything. It is a troublesome creditor. I'll leave you now to square yourself with that fellow you must live with every day—Victor Burleigh. We'll drop everything else henceforth and face toward tomorrow, not yesterday.”
Lloyd Fenneben grasped the boy's hand in a firm, assuring grip and left him.
“If Sunrise means Strife, I'll face it,” Vic said to himself. “As to money, I have only my two hands and that old mortgaged quadrangle of prairie sod out West. But if culture like Fenneben's might win Elinor Wream, God help me to win it.”
Up in the library a week later Professor Burgess came in while Dennie Saxon was putting the books in order. Burgess was often to be found where Dennie was, but Burgess himself had not noted it, and nobody else knew it, except Trench. Trench was a lazy fellow, who always lived in the middle of his pasture, where the feeding was good. That gave him time to study mankind as it worried about the outer edges.
“Don't you get tired sometimes, Miss Dennie?” the Professor asked. He was not happy himself for many reasons, and two of them were Elinor and Vic, who separately, and differently, seemed to wear out his energy. Dennie Saxon never wore on anybody's nerves.
“Yes, I do, often,” Dennie answered.
“Why do you do this?” he queried.
“To get my college education.” Dennie smiled, hopefully. “I like the nice things and nice ways of life. So I'm working for them.”
“Elinor has all these without working for them,” Vincent thought.
Then for no reason at all his mind leaped to Dennie's father and his own vow on the stormy night in October.