avel-stained, and over
his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, its miscellaneous contents making
sharp, angular protuberances on its surface. He had left the ranch with
clothes and books enough to give the bag a pretty weight, and this he
had unconcernedly increased by the insertion into the straining
receptacle of many a "specimen" picked up by the way. For the eyes were
keen and observant that looked out from under the strongly marked brows,
and bits of fluorite and "fool's gold," and of rarer minerals as well,
which had lain for years beside the road, noted as little by cowboy and
ranchman and mountain tourist as by the redman whose feet first trod the
pass, were destined to-day to start on their travels, enlisted in the
service of Science.

It must have been a daring specimen indeed that should have thought of
resisting its fate when it came at the hands of Waldo Kean. There was a
certain rough strength not only in the muscular frame, but in the face
itself, with its rude features, its determined outlines, its heavy
under-lip; and in the stiff black hair roughly clipped on the ample
skull, growing in a bushy thatch above the keen dark eyes. It seemed but
natural that just that type of boy should feel himself drawn to the
study of the rocky foundation of things.

Four years ago Waldo Kean had found out that he wanted to be a
geologist, and that to this end he must go to college. Yet though the
college was in Springtown, and though Springtown lies close to the foot
of the "range," it had taken him four years to get there. During that
enforced interval he had done his full share of the heavy ranch work, he
had found one and another means of accumulating a little capital of his
own; at off hours and off seasons he had cudgelled his brain over books
with ugly difficult titles and anything but tractable contents. In short
he had fairly earned his passport, and now, at last, on this radiant
October morning, he was striding over the few intervening miles that
separated him from that wonderful Land of Promise, where Latin and Greek
grew on every tree, and the air was electric with the secrets of Science
itself. What wonder that he was unconscious of hardship and fatigue,
that he counted as nothing the three days' tramp; the icy nights spent
out under the chill stars; the only half-satisfied hunger of a healthy
boy, living on food which the dry mountain air was rapidly reducing to a
powdery consistency! He was going to College