azed up through
the spreading branches to the marvellous blue of the sky. When he should
be a scientific man and know all sorts of things besides
geology,--meteorology and chemistry and the like,--perhaps he should
find out why the sky looked so particularly deep and palpitating when
you were lying flat on your back and there were some pine branches in
between. He meant, one of these days, to know everything there was to be
known, and to discover a little something new besides.

A train of cars thundered by on the other side of the brook not thirty
yards from his feet. He did not change his position, but looking down
the long length of his legs, he saw the roaring, snorting beast of an
engine rush by, trailing its tail of cars behind it.

"And yet the power isn't in the steam," he thought to himself, "but in
the brain that controls it. Just the brain. That's all." At the thought
a sudden impatience seized him to arrive at that goal where the brain
takes command, and he sprang to his feet, and shouldering his pack,
strode on down the pass. Tramp, tramp, tramp! went the heavy boots; the
great bag weighed like lead across his shoulders; a gnawing hunger had
somehow got into him since he swallowed the crumbling bread and meat.

"The water was good, at any rate," he said to himself, glancing more
appreciatively than before at the crystal stream that still raced on a
level with the road. The way led across both brook and railroad just
there, and there was a sharp turn in the walls of the canon. He looked
back and saw a train rushing down the pass, swiftly,--surreptitiously,
it seemed, so curiously little noise did it make on the down-grade. An
instant later he had turned the corner, and found himself face to face
with a pair of horses harnessed to a buggy, trotting rapidly up the
pass, straight toward that railroad crossing. They were already close
upon him and he could see a man and woman seated in the buggy. He had
only time to fling his pack to one side and wave his arms in warning,
and then, his warning being unheeded, he sprang at the horses' heads and
seized the bridles. The horses reared and plunged, there was the sharp
whistle of a whiplash, a stinging blow cut him across the face. The
blood rushed to his head in a sudden fury, but instinctively he kept his
hold upon the plunging horses. They had all but dragged him to the track
when the train rushed by. The whole thing had happened in twenty seconds
of time.

He