but he keeps me from getting too
coarse and rough. Every fellow needs something innocent and good about
him sometimes."

"Oh, no! Keep him if you want him. But would you mind telling me about
him?"

"I'd rather not now," Burleigh said, quietly, and Lloyd Fenneben knew
when to drop a subject.

"Then I'm through with you for today, Burleigh. I must let Miss Saxon
have my room now. Come here whenever you like, and bring Bug if you care
to."

Sunrise students always left Dr. Fenneben's study with a little more
of self-respect than when they entered it; richer, not so much from the
word as from the spirit of the head of Sunrise. Victor Burleigh with
little Bug Buler's fat fist clasped in his big, hard hand walked out
of the college door that afternoon with the unconscious baptism of the
student upon him, the dim sense of a fellowship with a scholarly master
of books and of men.

Back in his study Lloyd Fenneben sat looking out once more at the Empire
that meant nothing but dreary distances to the scholarly professor of
Greek, and seemed a paradise to the untrained young fellow from the
prairies.

"I see my stint of cloth for the day," he murmured. "A college professor
in the making who has much to unlearn; a crude young giant who is fond
of killing things, and cares for helpless children; and a beautiful,
wilful, characterless girl to be shown into her womanly heritage. The
clay is ready. It is the potter whose hands need skill. Victor Burleigh!
Victor Burleigh! There's my greatest problem of all three. He has the
strength of a Titan in those arms, and the passion of a tiger behind
those innocent yellow eyes. God keep me on the hilltop nor let my feet
once get into the dark and dangerous ways!"

He looked long at the landscape radiant under the level rays of splendor
streaming from the low afternoon sun.

"I wonder who built that fire, and what that pillar of smoke meant this
afternoon. The mystery of our lives hangs some token in each day."

The shadows were gathering in the Walnut Valley, the pigeons about the
cottage up the river, were in their cotes now, the heat of the day was
over, and with one more look at the far peaceful prairies Dr. Lloyd
Fenneben closed his study door and passed out into the cool September
air.

CHAPTER III. PIGEON PLACE

_Strange is the wind and the tide,
The heavens eternally wide;
Less fathomed, this life at my side_.
--W. H. SIMPSON

THE Sunrise r