it would be to
have a few days' rest. And his head was aching, and he was very stiff.
Then he looked at the Supervisor, quiet and unflinching in anything that
was to be done, working with him and helping him despite the big
interests for which he was responsible, he thought of the Forest Service
to which he was pledged to serve, he remembered his little tent home and
the portion of the range over which he had control, and straightened up.

"What time to-morrow?" he said. "I'll be ready."

"Middle of the afternoon," said Merritt. "So long."

He bade good-by to the doctor and his wife, and after having seen that
Kit was properly attended to, went on his way to the Kern River Valley,
to visit the Edison power plant erected on the river, and to prepare for
the installation of the new pulp-mill.

In the meantime, Wilbur, more fatigued by the day's excitement than he
had supposed himself to be, had fallen asleep, a sleep unbroken until
the evening. And all evening the doctor and his wife told him stories of
the Forest Service men and of the various miners, lumbermen,
prospectors, ranchers, and so forth, all tales of manliness, courage,
and endurance, and not infrequently of heroism. But when Wilbur told of
the professor and asked about other greenhorns that had come to the
forest, the doctor turned and asked him if he knew anything of "the boy
from Peanutville."

"He had just come into camp up here in the Sierras," said the doctor on
receiving the lad's negative reply, "from some little place in the
middle West that was giving itself airs as a city. He had read somewhere
about the forest Rangers, and he himself had been on several Sunday
School picnics in the woods, so he thought that he knew all about it. At
the end of his first couple of days' work he said:

"'I never supposed that a Ranger had to cut brush and build fence and
grub stumps and slave like a nigger. I don't believe he ought to. I
don't think it's what my people would like to have me do. I always
supposed that he just rode around under the trees and made outsiders toe
the mark.'

"I said he was a new Guard," the doctor continued, "but he said this in
camp to a group of old-timers with whom he had been working. They hadn't
worried him at all, but had given him a fair show and helped him all
they could. But this was too rich. They glanced at each other with
mingled contempt and amusement, then put on mournful faces, looked on
him solemn-eyed, and regrett