w--about one to each forest."

"And there are only six District Foresters?"

"Yes. One is in Montana, one in Colorado, one in New Mexico, one in
Utah, one in California, and one in Oregon. And they have under their
charge, so I learned to-day, nearly two hundred million acres of land,
or, in other words, territory larger than the whole state of Texas and
five times as large as England and Wales."

"I had forgotten the figures," said the geologist. "That gives each
District Forester a little piece of land about the size of England to
look after. And they can tell you, most of them, on almost every square
mile of that region, approximately how much marketable standing timber
may be found there, what kinds of trees are most abundant, and in what
proportion, and roughly, how many feet of lumber can be cut to the acre.
It's always been wonderful to me. That sort of thing takes learning,
though, and you've got to dig, Wilbur, if you want to be a District
Forester some day."

"I'm going to get there some day, all right."

"If you try hard enough, you may. By the way, there's one of them going
in now. That's the house, on the other side of the Circle."

The boy looked across the curve and scanned all the men going in the
same direction, quite with a feeling of companionship. One of the men
who overtook and passed them, giving a hearty greeting to Masseth as he
went by, was Roger Doughty, a young fellow who had distinguished himself
in the Geological Survey, having taken a trip from south to north of
Alaska, and Wilbur's companion felt a twinge of regret that his nephew
had not entered his own service.

Wilbur, however, was always a "woods" boy, and even in his early
childish days had been possessed with a desire to camp out. He had read
every book he could lay hands on that dealt with "the great outdoors,"
and would ten thousand times over rather have been Daniel Boone than
George Washington. Seeing his intense pleasure in that life, his father
had always allowed him to go off into the wilds for his holidays, and in
consequence he knew many little tricks of woodcraft and how to make
himself comfortable when the weather was bad. His father, who was a
lawyer, had wanted him to enter that profession, but Wilbur had been so
sure of his own mind, and was so persistent that at his request he had
been permitted to go to the Colorado Ranger School. From this he had
returned even more enthusiastic than before, and Masseth, seeing