"Oh, it is much too long a yarn to tell you now," laughed his host. "Were we to begin that tale we should not get to the theater to-night, say nothing of having any dinner." "I'd like to hear the story," persisted Stephen. "You will be reading it from a book some day." "I'd rather hear you tell it." "If that isn't a spontaneous compliment, Ackerman, I don't know what is," laughed Mr. Tolman. The steamboat man did not reply but he could not quite disguise his pleasure, although he said a bit gruffly: "We shall have to leave the story and go to the show to-night. I've bought the tickets and there is no escape," added he humorously. "But perhaps before you leave New York there will be some other chance for me to spin my yarn for you, and put your father's railroad romances entirely in the shade." The butler announced dinner and they passed into the dining room. If, however, Stephen thought that he was now to leave ships behind him he was mistaken, for the dining room proved to be quite as much of a museum as the library had been. Against the dull blue paper hung pictures of racing yachts, early American fighting ships, and nautical encounters on the high seas. The house was a veritable wonderland, and so distracted was the lad that he could scarcely eat. "Come, come, son," objected Mr. Tolman at last, "you will not be ready in time to go to any show unless you turn your attention to your dinner." "That's right," Mr. Ackerman said. "Fall to and eat your roast beef. We are none too early as it is." Accordingly Stephen fixed his eyes on his plate with resolution and tried his best to think no more of his alluring surroundings. With the coming of the ice-cream he had almost forgotten there were such things as ships, and when he rose from the table he found himself quite as eager to set forth to the theater as any other healthy-minded lad of his age would have been. The "show" Mr. Ackerman had selected had been chosen with much care and was one any boy would have delighted to see. The great stage had, for the time being, been transformed to a western prairie and across it came a group of canvas-covered wagons, or prairie schooners, such as were used in the early days by the first settlers of the West. Women and children were huddled beneath the arched canopy of coarse cloth and inside this shelter they passed the weary days and nights of travel. Through sun and storm the wagons rumbled on; jogging across the rough, uncharted country and jolting over rocks, sagebrush, and sand. There were streams to ford, mountains to climb on the long trip westward, but undaunted by obstacles the heroic little band of settlers who had with such determination left kin and comfort behind them passed on to that new land toward which their faces were set.