stion until he had landed a trout
which he had hooked a moment before. It was a heavy fish--and Caleb
had promised to teach him how to handle that fly-rod! Then he looked
up.

"Once Old Tom sed they'd be payin' me more'n he ever earned in his
lifetime, jest to go a-raound and tell 'em how much good lumber they
was in standin' trees. Is that--is that what you mean?"

"Partly--partly, but not entirely, either," Caleb went on. "You said
last night that when they got to lumbering these mountains, they'd be
taking it out by steam. When they do they'll want men who know the
woods--but they'll have to know how to bridge rivers and cross swamps,
too, won't they?"

The boy promptly forgot his fishing. Knee-deep in the stream he faced
squarely around toward Caleb, and from that glowing countenance the man
knew that he had only repeated something which, long before, had
already fired the boy's imagination.

"They's places where I kin git 'em to learn me them things, ain't
they?" he demanded.

"Yes," said Caleb. "There are places. And you--you were thinking of
going to school?"

"Thinkin' of it?" echoed Steve. "I always been thinkin' of it. Why,
thet's all I come outen the timber fer!"

"But you said you meant to locate something to do," the man argued,
nonplussed, "after you had looked around a trifle."

Steve's eyes dropped toward the white drill trousers and big boots, the
latter half-hidden from sight by the swirling water.

"I got to earn money first," he explained patiently. "I--I jest
couldn't git to go to school--in these here clothes!"

"Oh!" murmured Caleb. "Oh!" And then, recovering himself: "That'll
take a long time," he ventured.

The boy smiled, strangely--the first smile of man's sophistication
which Caleb had seen upon his face.

"I've always hed to wait a long time fer everything I've wanted," he
answered, "but I always git it, just the same, if I only want it hard
enough."

[Illustration: "I've always hed to wait a long time for everything I've
wanted," the boy answered, "but I always get it, just the same, if I
only want it hard enough."]

Caleb cleared his throat, self-consciously.

"Still," he argued again, "it would waste some very valuable years.
Now--now what do you think of staying with me, and--and starting in
this fall?"

The boy's lips fell apart while he stood and gaped up into Caleb's
slightly red face.

"You mean," he breathed, "you mean--jest live--with you?"

"