The Little Lady of the Big House

ond, clad in his oldest clothes, Young D

on up that way and make the sleepin' crimpy. D'ye

e matter with south? We can head for Los Angele

ey you got?"

Young Dick

ydory; but you ain't. The folks that's lookin' after you'll raise a roar. They'll have

and that for a couple of days, layin' low most of the time, paying our w

he trains. With an excess of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far as Modesto. After that, under the teaching of Tim, he traveled without paying, riding blind baggage

reading the same while they lay in the grass by some water-tank, branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact that honor beyond price w

n wouldn't raise a roar if I snitched on you for that

the matter, Young Dick concluded that there was n

ard, in Arizona, did Young

... though that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages thrown in, while you an' I ar

ring heat-waves of the desert

wenty million?" Young

million,

per cent. What does twenty million

hesi

and willing to go back--but not for years an' years--we'll fix it up, you and I. When I say the word, you'll write to your father. He'll jump out to where we a

t of money," was Tim's nonchalant

irty thousand goes into a million thirty-three times,

lads were fired out of an empty box-car by a brake-man who should have known better. The tres

stle," he said; "but wha

me," the brakeman insisted. "The engine's takin' w

narrow way between the train and the abyss, than the train began to move. Young Dick, quick and sure in all his perceptions and adjustments, dropped on the instant to hands and knees on the trestle. This gave him better holding and more space, because he crouched bene

drop!" Young

the depth beneath, Tim tried to drop on hands and knees. But the first twist of his shoulders brought him in contact with the car and nearly out

to the fall, his face to the passing cars, his arms by his sides, with nowhere save under his feet a holding point, balanced and

raction of half a foot from the narrow space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim slowly and deliberately sway out, sway out to the extremest limit, and yet not sway out far enough. The thing was physically inevitable. An inch more, and Tim would have escaped the car. A

wherein doctors and nurses and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give a happy lea

be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the living. And right there, beside the strangely cr

t yet fourteen, and he was accepted as the mascot of the ranch and made into a "sure-enough" cowboy by cowboy

s the Black River and beyond. John Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the coming of the farmer and adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, in order to do so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got for nothing the use of the millions of acres of adjacent range that was worth

he straddled the horse that was apportioned him, insisted on riding night-herd, and knew no hint of uncertainty when it came to him to turn the flank of a stampede with a flying slicker. He could take a chance. It was his joy to take a chance. But at such times he never failed of due respect for reality. He was well aware that

d to Ah Sing. Though unburdened by his twenty millions, Young Dick never forgot them, and, fearing his estate might be distributed among remote relatives who might possibly inhabit

at first hand, and floating laborers and petty criminals. Among other things, he got acquainted with farms and farmers, and, in New York State, once picked berries for a week with a Dutch farmer who was experimenting with one of the first silos erected in the United States. Nothing of what he learn

ffected. He was a traveler, and they were alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of his twenty millions, there was neither need nor temptation for him to steal or rob.

the books. So he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a windjammer bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater to

kitchen to identify him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed a second time. It was when she shook

ardians at the hastily summoned meeting. But this di

ave my own ideas of the world and what I want to do in it. I didn't come home because of a sense of duty to anybody here. I came home because it was time, because of

locum suggested. "That will

his head

ne year. That means work. But my mind's like acid. It'll bite into the books. I shall hire a coach, or half a d

onth," Mr. Cro

hook h

along with some of my money here in San Francisco. I don't care to handle my business affairs yet, but

oked their disma

rockett began. "You are as unreasona

e other disagreement was over my money.

As your guardians, how would it be looked upon if we

th, right now?" Dick

thousand any time," M

ou three are afraid of is that I'll misspend my money--taking to drinking, horse-racing, and running around with chorus girls. Here's my proposition to make you easy on that: let it be a drawing account for the four of us. The moment any of

quiescence, but went on as fro

in charge of the house, because I've got too much work mapped out for myself already. I promise you you won't regret giving me a

f the Jingle-bob. He had learned to sit silent and to think while cow men talked long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, by virtue of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews with professors and college presidents and practical men of affairs; and he listen

hat he retained a month, or three months, he discharged a dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably he paid such dischargees a full month

with the sure knowledge that it was the cheapest. A year of high school physics and a year of high school chemistry were necessary to enter the university. When he had cramm

," Professor

ll he was through. Then

w the world. I know what I want and why I want it. They do physics for an hour, twice a week, for two terms, which, with two vacations, occupy one year. You are the top teacher on the Pacifi

dollars," Professor Carey rejoined

our salary is-

rofessor Carey

up his hand to stall off interruption. "You've just told me I couldn't buy a week of your time for a thousand dollars

ears?" Professor C

y three years in one, and the we

ccepted," Profess

," Dick said stiffly, "why na

So did Professor Barsdale, head

f southwestern Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and he worked, and played, lived in the open air, and did three conventional years of adolescent education in one year without straining himself. He fished, hunted, swam, exercised, and equipp

Dick's account for the year. "Sixteen thousand for education, all itemized, inc

nations just the sam

y entered Belmont at the same time, and, if he's lucky,

rockett, "is that from now on what that boy s

ahead of them in knowledge of the world. Why, I know things, good and bad, big and little, about

o do is to keep the speed of the classes, and I'll be graduated when I'm twenty-one. From now on

son was s

u mean by a

you know-- and I'm interested in gasoline engines. I'm going

demurred. "It's a fool notion all thes

experimenting, and it means money, so keep me a good d