He knew exactly how the square would look. It seemed very long ago and very far away. He felt that he had bidden farewell to it for good and all, and he began in his mind to go yet even farther back to the time he had lived with his father in the little claim shanty on the North Fork of the Platte. He recalled the first book he had read, Wood's Natural History, filled with cuts of wonderful birds and beasts. He remembered how he used to spell out the chapters while he attended to the sheep. He could hear now in his imagination the plaintive first bleats of the new-born lambs. And then the day of the freshet, which carried off almost all of the litttle herd and drowned out the corrals, came to him. Then the death of his father all alone in the sod-house, and the weary ride down to the town for help. The grave with the slab of shale for a head-stone, where they had laid the only relative he knew of in the world, to rest. The kindness that had been shown to him by a German family on the next half section was the next remembrance. Then came his apprenticeship to Mr. Van Clees; his attending public school; his growing to be a man, and the awakening of ambi-
