't take long,
did it?" Wilbur flushed a little, and his chum, seeing this, went on
laughingly: "Don't mind my roasting, old man, only you were 'way up in
the clouds."

The boy's expression cleared instantaneously, and he laughed in reply.

"I suppose I was," he said, "but it's great to feel you've got the thing
you've been working for. As you know, Fred, I've been thinking of this
for years; in fact, I've always wanted it, and I've worked hard to get
it. And then the Chief Forester's fine; he's just fine; I liked him ever
so much."

"Did you have much chance to talk with him?"

"Yes, quite a lot. I thought I was likely enough to meet him, and p'raps
he would formally tell me I was appointed and then bow me out of the
office. Not a bit of it. He told me all about the Service, showed me
just what there was in it for the country, and I tell you what--he made
me feel that I wanted to go right straight out on the street and get
all the other boys to join."

"Why?"

"Well, he showed me that the Forest Service gave a fellow a chance to
make good even better than in the army or the navy. There you have to
follow orders mainly; there's that deadly routine besides, and you don't
get much of a chance to think for yourself; but in the Forest Service a
chap is holding down a place of trust where he has a show to make good
by working it out for himself."

"Sounds all right," said the older boy. "Anyway, I'm glad if you're
glad."

"What I like about it," went on Wilbur, "is the bigness of the whole
thing and the chance a chap has to show what he's made of. Glad? You bet
I'm glad!"

"You weren't so sure whether you were going to like it or not when you
went in to see about it," said Fred.

"Oh, yes, I was. I knew I was going to like it all right. But I didn't
know anything about where I might be sent or how I would be received."

"I think it's just ripping," said his friend, "that it looks so good to
you, starting out. It makes a heap of difference, sometimes, how a thing
begins."

"It surely does. Right now, the whole thing seems too good to be true."

"Well," said the other, "as long as it strikes you that way I suppose
you're satisfied now for all the grind you did preparing for it. But I
don't believe it would suit me. It might be all right to be a Forest
Ranger, but you told me one time that you had to start in as a Fire
Guard, a sort of Fire Policeman, didn't you?"

"Sure!"

"Well, that doesn't sound particul