The Green Forest tribune., 1916-04-07

grew stouter and stronger every year and became more and more the stu oldest blockhead that ever thumbed a schoolbook. l was fourteen to a day when I squeezed through the final grammar grade; think of it-fourteen years old and still with the woman teachers! I found out afterward that l got my dubiously given passport to the high school chiefly because my father was one of the best-known and best-lOved men in the old home town Perhaps it wasn't the magic seven that built me all over new that summer; :; perhaps it was only the change in schools and teachers. But from that year on all the hard things were too easy. It was as if somebody or some thing had suddenly opened a closed door in my brain and let the daylight into all the dark corners at once"
 Grislow sat up and finished for him.
 Yes; and since that time you have stayed your way through the univer- sity, and butted into the reclamation service, and played skittles with every other mans chances of promotion un- til you have come out at the top of the heap in the construction division all of which you're much too modest to brag about. But, say; we've skipped one of the seven-year flag sta tions. What happened when you were twenty-one-or were you too busy just then chasing the elusive engineering degree to take notice?"
 Brouillard was staring out over the loom of the dozen campfres-out and across the valley at the massive bulk of Mount Chigringo rising like huge barrier dark to the skyline save for g single pinprick of yellow light fixing the position of solitary miners cabin half way between the valley level and the summit. When he spoke again the Photographer had been giver time to shave another pipe charge ot tobacco from his pocket plug and tc fill and light the brier.
 When I was tWenty-one my father died, and"--he stopped short and ther went on in a tone which was more than half apologetic-"I don't minC telling Grislow; you're not the kint to pass it on where it would hurt. Al twenty-one I was left with back loa( that l am carrying to this gCGd day; that I will probably go on carryins through life"
 Grislow walked around the fire kicked two or three of the oharred los ends into the blaze, and growled wher the resulting smoke rose up to choke and blind him.
 Forget it, Victor" he said "In less than a hundredth part of that time you'll be at the top of the reclamation service pay roll-won't that help out?'
 No; not appreciably."
 Grislow gave it up at that and went back to the original contention.
 Were lodging the main issue," he said. What is the active principle of your 'sevens-or haven't you fig ured it out?"
 Change" was the prompt rejoin der; always something different radically different
 And what started you off into the memory woods, particularly tonight? ?'
 "Coincidences. It began with that hopelessly unreliable little clock that Anson persists in carrying around with him wherever he goes. While you were up on the hill cutting your spruce tips Anson went over to his tent and lighted up, and a few minutes after ward I heard the clock strike-seven Just as I was comfortably forgetting the significant reminder the clock went off again, striking slowly, as if the mechanism were nearly run down."
 Another seven?" queried Grislow
 "No; it struck four"
 "Well?" was the bantering comment, T suppose Anson was tinkering with his little tin god of timepiece. It's a habit of his."
 q was curious enough to go and look. When I lifted the flap the tent was empty. The clock was ticking away on Anson's soap-box dressing