THE STEADFAST HEART
demanding that Angus equip himself as for a mission. “Bub,” he said, “you’ve got to learn to be a prophet in Israel. You’ve got to learn not only how to stand up for yourself, but how to stand up for the rights, and fight down the wrongs of the whole community.”
Here was an extension of Angus’s creed—to stand up for himself. To that he now added the proposition of the necessity of standing up for the rights of others. Herein Peter Waite laid a foundation which, one day, was to bear a finished structure.
Under the tutelage and solicitude and friendship of three persons, Peter Waite, his teacher, and Mrs. Bassett, Angus grew inwardly and physically. But all the labor expended upon him was as nothing when set beside the miracle wrought by the lifting of fear, by companionship and friendship casually tendered, as though such things were his right, by the realization that, save on the little corner of Earth’s surface occupied by Rainbow, he could stand on his merits, be received according to his deserts, and hope for any position to which his abilities entitled him…. Anywhere in the world—save that one black spot—Rainbow!
Rainbow impended over him always, overshadowed him, intimidated him. Ceaselessly, in remote recesses of his mind was a dread, a night-
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