Frank stood looking about him with a curious stirring of his heart. There was a gaudy poster pasted up on the shack announcing cheap tickets to Seattle, with a line or two about a circus and some attraction at an opera house. In the meanwhile the scream of a whistle came ringing across the shadowy trees and the boy was troubled by the familiar sights and sounds. The wet rails, the freight cars, and the brilliant poster reminded him of the cities he had turned his back upon some time ago. Then, though the daylight was rapidly growing clearer, a big blazing lamp broke out from among the firs with a cloud of steam streaming behind it, and a locomotive and a row of clanging cars swept through the depot. The lights from the windows flashed into Frank's face, flickered upon the shack and rows of stumps, and grew dim again, after which the din receded and came throbbing back fainter and fainter. As he listened to it, a sudden fierce longing seized the boy. He wanted to hear the clamor of the cities again, to see the big stores and the hurrying crowds. Almost a year had elapsed since he had even seen a train, and a journey of two or three hours would take him back to the stir and bustle of civilization away from the constant monotonous toil with ax and saw in the lonely bush. He wondered what his people were doing in Boston. In the winter season there were festivities and gayety there, and he had once enjoyed them with his old companions who had most likely forgotten him. Some had gone into business, two were at Harvard, and another had entered the army; but he stood, dressed in miry long boots and old well-mended garments still damp with salt water, in a little desolate depot in the wilderness. He fancied that he was justified in feeling rather sorry for himself. Then with an effort he drove these thoughts away. After all, his place was not in the cities. He had no money and there was nobody to give him a fair start in life, while he admitted that it was very doubtful that he had any talent for business. He might, perhaps, become a clerk or something of the kind, but it once more occurred to him that he was better off in the bush. Indeed, though he scarcely realized this, the bush had already made a striking change in him, and it is possible that his eastern friends would have had trouble in recognizing him as the pale lad they had sent away to Minneapolis. His face was bronzed and resolute, he was taller, tougher, and broader around the chest, and he could now toil all day at a task which would once have broken him down in a couple of hours. Then he started as he noticed that Mr. Oliver was looking at him with a smile. "You seem to be thinking rather hard," the rancher remarked. "I was," Frank admitted hesitatingly. "It was the train that put the ideas into my mind."