At one time, soon
after his "nooning" as he liked to call it, the sun blazed so fiercely
that he had ignominiously fled before it and taken refuge for an hour or
more among the trees. That was the episode which he least liked to
remember. He did not quite see why mending a road in the sun should be
so much more dangerous than playing polo at high noon, but, somehow, it
hurt more; and he recollected that his late father, who was a physician,
had once told him that pain was Nature's warning. Having, then, entered
into a close alliance with Nature, he thought it well to take her hints.

Before many days his apprenticeship was over and he was working like a
born day-laborer. After the first week he was well rid of aches and
pains; the muscles of his back were strengthened, the palms of his hands
were hardened, his skull, he thought to himself, must have thickened. In
all things, too, he was tuned to a lower key. But if the exhilaration of
that first morning was gone, it had only given place to something
better; namely, a solid sense of satisfaction. He knew it was all an
episode, this form of work at least; he knew that when his "job" was
done he should go back into the world and take up the life he had once
made a failure of; but he knew also that he should not fail again. A
sense of power had come into him; he had made friends with work for its
own sake. He believed that his brain was as good as his muscles, that it
would respond as readily to the demands he should put upon it. And he
had learned to be strenuous with himself.

Wakefield was in correspondence with a friend in San Francisco who
wanted him to come out there and practise law. He decided, rather
suddenly, to do so, coming to his decision the day after he was told
that Dorothy Ray was engaged to be married.

It was Dick Dayton who brought him the news. As he listened, he felt
something as he did that first day in the canon when the sun got too
strong for him. He thought, after Dayton left him, that he should have
given up the game then and there, if it had not been for some blasting
he was to do in the morning. The holes were all drilled, and it would be
a day's job to clear away the pieces and straighten things out at that
point. He should hate to have another man go on with the job. They might
cut him out with Dorothy,--that was sure to come, sooner or later,--but,
by the Great Horn Spoon! they should not get his job away from him!

It was not until he ha