s
face westward. Along the ridges of the high Rockies, through Wyoming and
Montana, he wandered, ever on the lookout for the glint of gold in the
white quartz. Little by little he moved westward, picking up a
sufficient living, until he found himself one winter shut in by the
snows in a remote valley on the upper waters of the Gallatin River. He
stopped one night at a lonely ranch house. In the course of the evening
his host told him of a catastrophe that had befallen the widely
scattered inhabitants of that remote valley. The teacher of the district
school had fallen sick, and there was little likelihood of their getting
another until spring.

That is a true catastrophe to the ranchers of the high valleys cut off
from every line of communication with the outer world. For the
opportunities of education are highly valued in that part of the West.
They are reckoned with bread and horses and cattle and sheep, as among
the necessities of life. The children were crying for school, and their
parents could not satisfy that peculiar kind of hunger. But here was the
relief. This wanderer who had arrived in their midst was a man of parts.
He was lettered; he was educated. Would he do them the favor of teaching
their children until the snow had melted away from the ridges, and his
cayuse could pick the trail through the canons?

Now school-keeping was farthest from this man's thoughts. But the needs
of little children were very near to his heart. He accepted the offer,
and entered the log schoolhouse as the district schoolmaster, while a
handful of pupils, numbering all the children of the community who could
ride a broncho, came five, ten, and even fifteen miles daily, through
the winter's snows and storms and cruel cold, to pick up the crumbs of
learning that had lain so long untouched.

What happened in that lonely little school, far off on the Gallatin
bench, I never rightly discovered. But when spring opened up, the master
sold his cayuse and his pick and his rifle and the other implements of
his trade. With the earnings of the winter he made his way to the school
that the state had established for the training of teachers; and I count
it as one of the privileges of my life that I was the first official of
that school to listen to his story and to welcome him to the vocation
that he had chosen to follow.

And yet, when I looked at his face, drawn into lines of strength by
years of battle with the elements; when I looked a