“What?” asked Wayland curiously.

Mr. Bat Brydges was revising his inventory of the old “duffer.”  Wayland was laughing openly.  The old man had become oblivious of both, with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and tense compression of the lips—­

“The—­fate—­o’—­this—­land,” he ripped out in hammer raps, “the fate of this land, boys, with all time lookin’ on since ever Time began!  Y’re the fiery furnace of all the world’s hopes and fears, of all earth’s people, of all poets’ dreams; an’ God only knows what a mess o’ slag y’re turning out!  Y’r muck rakers are belching y’r failures to the four corners of earth!  Justice perverted!  Courts in fee to the highest bidder!  More murders—­murders in this fresh new clean land than all the stew pots o’ filth the old nations have brewed in a thousand years; and murders unpunished!  Y’r Government—­the great world experiment—­is it the wull o’ the people, or the wull of a gilded clique o’ tricksters?”

The old man stretched out his hands above the Valley.  “What are ye doing with y’r freedom, the freedom that the children o’ light prayed for and fought for and died for?  When there’s one law for the rich and another for the poor, when ye have to bribe y’r own self-elected rulers to do y’r wull, where is y’r freedom different from the freedom in France before the Revolution?  Is it not written ’my house shall be for all nations; but ye have made it a den of thieves?’ Ye have what all the nations of the earth have bled for, what prophets have prayed for, and patriots died for; and all the world is looking on asking, sneering, scoffing, saying ye pervert the Ark o’ the Covenant of God, saying lawlessness stalks under y’r banners, saying y’ wrest the judgment to the highest bidder, aye to the supreme fountain head o’ y’r courts!  The fate o’ this land, boys!  Them’s the stakes I’d play for, if I had lusty blows to spare.  I’d up—­I’d up—­I’d strip me naked of every back-thought and expediency and self-interest and hold-back!  I’d hurl the lie—­in the teeth—­of a scoffing world—­I’d show all nations o’ time that the people, the plain common good people, can keep the law sound as the Ark o’ the Covenant of God; and—­and—­I’d hurl y’r traitor leaders—­y’r Judas Iscariots huckstering the land’s good for paltry silver—­I’d hurl y’r grafters an’ y’r heelers an’ y’r bosses an’ y’r strumpet justices, who sell a verdict like a harlot, I’d hurl them to the bottom of Hell!  An’ may Hell be both deep and hot—­old fashioned extra for the pack of them!”

He shook his trembling fist at the vacuous air.  “Fight—­right—­might!  I’d paint the words in letters o’ blood till they awakened this land like the fiery cross of old!  I’d fight—­fight—­fight till they had to kill every man o’ my kind before I’d down!  Before I’d see y’r law outraged, y’r courts perverted, y’r justice bartered and hawked and peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from blackmailer to high judge—­but A didna mean to break loose.  Y’r fair scene stirred m’ blood; and A’m an old man; and A love the land.  A was born West.  A’m none of y’r immigration boomsters who goes in a Pullman car, then tells the world all about—­Now, which way to y’r Missionary Williams?”