"Nen, I like you fornever," Bug declared, shutting his lips so tightly that his checks puffed.

"How do you happen to have this child here, Burleigh?" questioned Fenneben.

"Because he's got nobody else to look after him," answered Vic.

"How about an orphan asylum?"

Vic looked down at the little fellow cuddled against his arm, and every feature of his stern face softened.

"Will it make any difference about him if I get my lessons, sir? I can't let Bug go now. We are the limit for each other—neither of us got anybody else. I take care of him, 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.