Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/135

 further," I said. 'Julius Cæsar' always was a favorite of mine and one thing I knew. "He said, 'Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.

Jerry nodded. "That's right. My friend's clever; he can see now, if he couldn't when he was younger. Then there's something else—a twist in his brain that's not in mine? Yet I don't know: maybe we're identical, inwardly as well as outside. Maybe the difference is that I never knew what it was to want without being able, lawfully, to get. The cards are stacked in this game of civilization which we play."

That hit one of my pet ideas, as I've mentioned; so I objected, "No, they're not."

"I remember what you think, Steve. I liked to think it too; but now I've gone from the side the cards favor to the side that gets the worst of the deal. What in the devil is law, Steve?"

"Law?" I said.

Again he laughed. "You said that, old Top, as though I'd asked 'What is the sun?' It shines on you so, Steve; to ask about it is to you the acme of foolish questions; but it's not to the man who's brought up under the cloud. What is law? I never even looked up a dic-