A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

It was a great grief to the Rev. Reuben and to his wife when Rufus demonstrated by open and unabashed revolt that he belonged to the non-elect. They had suspected it early in his career; they had prepared themselves for the blow when it should fall. The tender-hearted little grandmother had hoped and prayed till the last, and even continued to pray when she believed that praying was vain and feared that it might be an offence to the Lord.

The Rev. Reuben was made of sterner stuff. "Ephraim," he said, "is joined to his idols, let him alone."

So the quiet, uneventful years passed away, and the boy grew into a man. A man of fine presence, of considerable intellectual attainments—for Reuben Sterne gave the lad the best education he could afford—and of unblemished character.

Rufus wanted to be an engineer, but that was beyond his grandfather's means. His grandmother wanted to apprentice him to a draper, but the boy protested so vehemently that that laudable desire was never carried out. In the end, he found his way into a Redbourne Bank, where he became acquainted with Felix Muller, who was a solicitor's clerk in the town, and who later on succeeded to his master's business. From Redbourne, Rufus removed to St. Gaved as Secretary to the Wheal Gregory Tin Mining Company, Limited, and it was while there that he conceived a scheme for the bettering of his own fortunes and those of the county as a whole.

Rufus could not help recalling the past as he stretched his legs before the fire and listened in dreamy fashion to the talk of the old people. All the years that had fled and gone seemed to live again. All the people that he knew in his boyhood's days gathered round him once more. Voices long since hushed in the great silence spoke to him as they used to do; and eyes that long since had fallen into dust smiled with all their old sweetness.

He always felt a boy again when he came home to Tregannon. The old people were unchanged. They did not look a day older than ten years previously. The house and its ways had been stereotyped for a generation. The same coarse rug was before the fire, on which he had sprawled as a lad. The same kettle sang on the hob, the same poker and tongs shone in the firelight.

The old people still talked on, recalling the events of other years, the one supplying what the other had forgotten. Rufus interposed a monosyllable now and then, but his thoughts in the main were far away from theirs. Suddenly his interest was aroused by an allusion his grandfather made to some wasteful and abortive lawsuit that followed his father's death.

"The ways of the law may be crooked in this country," he said, with energy; "and English lawyers may be blood-suckers in the main, but in America things are fifty times worse."

"Why do you think that?" he questioned, raising his eyes with interest.

"Why, because I've proved it. Your father's title was clear enough, there's no doubt about that. He made his money honestly too. If he'd lived a month or two longer he'd have returned home a rich man."