Franklin began to grow.

Freed from the dwarfing influences of army life, as well as from the repressing monotony of an old and limited community, he found in the broad horizon of his new surroundings a demand that he also should expand.

As he looked beyond the day of cattle and foresaw the time of the plough, so also he gazed far forward into the avenues of his own life, now opening more clearly before him.

He rapidly forecast the possibilities of the profession which he had chosen, and with grim self-confidence felt them well within his power.

Beyond that, then, he asked himself, in his curious self-questioning manner, what was there to be?
What was to be the time of his life when he could fold his hands and say that, no matter whether it was success or failure that he had gained, he had done that which was in his destiny to do?
Wherein was he to gain that calmness and that satisfaction which ought to attend each human soul, and entitle it to the words "Well done"?
Odd enough were some of these self-searchings which went on betimes in the little office of this plainsman lawyer; and strangest of all to Franklin's mind was the feeling that, as his heart had not yet gained that which was its right, neither had his hand yet fallen upon that which it was to do.
Franklin rebelled from the technical side of the law, not so much by reason of its dry difficulty as through scorn of its admitted weakness, its inability to do more than compromise; through contempt of its pretended beneficences and its frequent inefficiency and harmfulness.
In the law he saw plainly the lash of the taskmaster, driving all those yoked together in the horrid compact of society, a master inexorable, stone-faced, cruel.