. When he had finished, Wallace drew a
deep breath.

"When I am home," said he simply, "I live in a big house on the Lake
Shore Drive. It is heated by steam and lighted by electricity. I touch a
button or turn a screw, and at once I am lighted and warmed. At certain
hours meals are served me. I don't know how they are cooked, or where
the materials come from. Since leaving college I have spent a little
time down town every day; and then I've played golf or tennis or ridden
a horse in the park. The only real thing left is the sailing. The wind
blows just as hard and the waves mount just as high to-day as they did
when Drake sailed. All the rest is tame. We do little imitations of the
real thing with blue ribbons tied to them, and think we are camping
or roughing it. This life of yours is glorious, is vital, it means
something in the march of the world;--and I doubt whether ours does. You
are subduing the wilderness, extending the frontier. After you will come
the backwoods farmer to pull up the stumps, and after him the big farmer
and the cities."

The young follow spoke with unexpected swiftness and earnestness. Thorpe
looked at him in surprise.

"I know what you are thinking," said the boy, flushing. "You are
surprised that I can be in earnest about anything. I'm out of school up
here. Let me shout and play with the rest of the children."

Thorpe watched him with sympathetic eyes, but with lips that obstinately
refused to say one word. A woman would have felt rebuffed. The boy's
admiration, however, rested on the foundation of the more manly
qualities he had already seen in his friend. Perhaps this very
aloofness, this very silent, steady-eyed power appealed to him.

"I left college at nineteen because my father died," said he. "I am now
just twenty-one. A large estate descended to me, and I have had to care
for its investments all alone. I have one sister, that is all."

"So have I," cried Thorpe, and stopped.

"The estates have not suffered," went on the boy simply. "I have done
well with them. But," he cried fiercely, "I HATE it! It is petty and
mean and worrying and nagging! That's why I was so glad to get out in
the woods."

He paused.

"Have some tobacco," said Thorpe.

Wallace accepted with a nod.

"Now, Harry, I have a proposal to make to you. It is this; you need
thirty thousand dollars to buy your land. Let me supply it, and come in
as half partner."

An expression of doubt crossed the landloo