"I'll try to remember." Her face lighted. "These opportunities have given you magnificent physical strength. I know people who would give a fortune just to have your superb strength." He straightened up. "Well, I'd be glad to give it to 'em, if I could only have a chance to know somethin'." "Know what?" "Know how a man ought ter live." There was in his voice a deep, vibrant undertone of earnestness. "It's a great thing to live, isn't it?" She spoke as though pondering some vital question. Jack Harding watched her curiously. "Some jest half live, schoolma'am." "That is probably true," she responded, "but God created us capable of something better. He has given us His world to know, and the people in it." "The people in it," he repeated contemptuously. "Some people are a bad lot, schoolma'am, an' I'm one of 'em." "You must not speak so of yourself. A man who will protect a woman, in order that she may continue her work unmolested, is not a bad lot. Now I should call you a pretty _good_ sort of a man." A luminous smile. Almost any man would have become her willing slave for that smile. As her voice gave special emphasis to the word "good," he squared his shoulders again. She continued: "A man doesn't know how good he really is until he begins to try to help some one else up. Then he finds out." "I need to be helped," he said, in a tone that seemed to be intended for her ear alone. "I am ignorant,--don't know nothin'. Can't hardly read, or write, or cipher. Could yer learn me?" She looked at the strong man before her, touched by his appeal. "What do you wish to learn?" "First readin' an' writin' an' cipherin'." "What next?" "Oh, everythin', I guess." The others had caught fragments of the conversation, and now joined in. Mike Maloney spoke first. "Do yez think yez are a kid again, Jack, that yez are sthartin' wid book learnin'?" "No, Mike, not a kid, but a dunce." Before the teacher could protest, he continued: "Ye'll find me an ignoramus, schoolma'am. A fellow out on the range, or in a minin' camp, don't git much schoolin'. But sometimes when ye're alone under the open sky, an' the stars come out, there's somethin' in here" (striking himself on the chest) "that is--is--unsatisfied. I want somethin'. I don't know what it is I want, but I believe you can help me find out." Let those scoff who will; there is such a thing as divine unrest; and when this takes possession of a man, his evolution has begun. John Harding went on with increasing earnestness. "Yer see, schoolma'am, this not knowin' is awful. Y're not all a man should measure up to. Y're in prison like, hide bound. It's come ter me ter-night, all ter onct, that an ignoramus is in bondage, an' that only education can set him free." The tide of his feeling gave him a rough eloquence. It was evident his words found a responsive echo in the other cowboys' hearts.