foundations. Still, to these two,
opening their hearts to each other in the kindly glow of the firelight,
the storm was forgotten.

After a pause she began softly and very slowly to tell the story.

"Your father was a noble man, Willis, such as I am sure you will be if
you are spared to live. His boyhood I do not know much about, only that
it was spent on his father's farm. He went to Kalamazoo for his
schooling, and it was there that I first met him. He worked hard, saved
his money, and went to Ann Arbor for his college work. He was ambitious
to become a great engineer, and was always tinkering at some kind of a
machine. He used to joke with me about becoming a great inventor, and
after we were married he did try his hand at a patent coupler and a
back-firing device for a gas engine. He was just like you, my boy, always
dreaming and seeing things in the out-of-doors. I can remember the
delight he found in rising early on summer mornings to search for
caterpillars, moths, and worms in the nearby woods, and he would put a
strange bug in every bottle I had in the house.

"After our marriage we moved to Lansing, and he became superintendent in
an electrical manufacturing company. He had a little shop of his own in
the basement at home, and during the long winter evenings of the first
year that we were there he built furniture for our little home. The chair
we are sitting in, Willis, is one of his first pieces. We were very happy
together there, and it wasn't long before you came. The summer before you
were born his company sent him West to install mine machinery. It was
then that he became interested in the great gold mines of Colorado.
Everybody seemed to be prospecting and staking gold claims. He thought he
saw his chance to get rich quickly, so he, too, began prospecting. He
very soon developed a great love for the mountains, and while you were a
baby he used to go to Colorado Springs for his vacations. His mind was
very active, and as he became more closely acquainted with the mines he
conceived an idea for a machine to roast gold ore by electricity. In the
winter evenings he would sit sketching its parts and dreaming over his
plans. Sometimes in his boyish enthusiasm he would assure me that he
would yet be a rich man."

"And what about his mine, mother; doesn't that come into the story pretty
soon?" "Yes, yes, but don't hurry me, son. It seems so very strange to be
sitting here telling you all about him, for it se