“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. CHAPTER III. PIGEON PLACE _Strange is the wind and the tide, The heavens eternally wide; Less fathomed, this life at my side_. --W. H. SIMPSON THE Sunrise rotunda was ringing with a chorus from three hundred throats as three hundred students poured out of doors, and over-flowed the ridge and spilled down the broad steps, making a babel of musical tongues; while fitting itself to every catchy college air known to Sunrise came the noisy refrain: Rah for Funnybone! Rah for Funnybone! Rah for Funnybone! _Rah!_ RAH! RAH!!! Again it was repeated, swelling along the ridge and floating wide away over the Walnut Valley. Nor was there a climax of exuberance until the appearance of Dr. Lloyd Fenneben himself, with his tall figure and striking presence outlined against the gray stone columns of the veranda. All this because it was mid-October, a heaven-made autumn day in Kansas, with its gracious warmth and bracing breath; with the Indian summer haze in shimmering amethyst and gold overhanging the land; and the Walnut Valley, gorgeous in the glow of the October frost-fires, winding down between broad seas of rainbow-radiant prairies. And all this gladness and grandeur, by the decree of Dr. Fenneben, was given in fee simple to these three hundred young people for the hours of one perfect day--their annual autumn holiday. No wonder they filled the air with shouts. And before the singing had ceased the crowd broke into groups by natural selection, and the holiday was begun. Whatever bounds of time Nature may give to the seed in which to become a plant, or to the grub to become a butterfly, there is no set limit wherein the country-bred boy may bloom into a full-fledged college student.