Somewhere it lay awaiting him; nor did he even know in what form.

Robert Fairchild's life had been a plodding thing of books and accounts, of high desks which as yet had failed to stoop his shoulders, of stuffy offices which had been thwarted so far in their grip at his lung power; the long walk in the morning and the tired trudge homeward at night to save petty carfare for a silent man's pettier luxuries had looked after that.

But the recoil had not exerted itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without hardly knowing what the term meant.

Old Beamish caught the light in the eyes, the quick contraction of the hands, and smiled.
"You don't need to tell me, Son," he said slowly.

"I can see the symptoms.