Four years ago Waldo Kean had found out that he wanted to be a geologist, and that to this end he must go to college. Yet though the college was in Springtown, and though Springtown lies close to the foot of the "range," it had taken him four years to get there. During that enforced interval he had done his full share of the heavy ranch work, he had found one and another means of accumulating a little capital of his own; at off hours and off seasons he had cudgelled his brain over books with ugly difficult titles and anything but tractable contents. In short he had fairly earned his passport, and now, at last, on this radiant October morning, he was striding over the few intervening miles that separated him from that wonderful Land of Promise, where Latin and Greek grew on every tree, and the air was electric with the secrets of Science itself. What wonder that he was unconscious of hardship and fatigue, that he counted as nothing the three days' tramp; the icy nights spent out under the chill stars; the only half-satisfied hunger of a healthy boy, living on food which the dry mountain air was rapidly reducing to a powdery consistency! He was going to College; he was going to be a Geologist. What did he care for any paltry details by the way? He seated himself for his noon meal, the last crumbling sandwich of his store, at the foot of a big pine-tree, just where the pass narrows to a wild ravine. As he took out the slice of bread and meat neatly wrapped about with brown paper, his thoughts reverted with a certain sore compunction to the hand that had prepared it for him. It had been his mother's farewell service, and he somehow realized now as he had not realized at the time, how much all those careful preparations meant, to her and to himself. He remembered how, late Saturday night, she had sat mending a new rip in his best coat, and that when she pricked her finger, and a little bead of red blood had to be disposed of before she could go on with the work, he had wondered why women were always pricking their fingers when there was no need. It was not until the very moment of departure that the pain of it seized him. His mother was a quiet, undemonstrative woman of the New England race, and if mother and son loved each other,--as it now transpired that they did,--no mention had ever been made of the fact on either side. The consequence was, that when, at parting, an iron hand seemed to be gripping the boy's throat, he had been so taken at unawares, that he had found it impossible to articulate a single word. On the mother's part there had been one little, half-suppressed sob that sounded in his ears yet. It left an ache in him that he did not at first know what to do with, but which clearly called for heroic treatment. Accordingly, after much pondering the situation, he had adopted a great resolution,--a resolution which involved no less arduous a task than that of writing a letter to his mother and telling her that he loved her.