CONTENTS
CHAPTER I -- JIM LESLIE WRITES A LETTER
CHAPTER II -- THE STORY-BOOK WEST
CHAPTER III -- BENNINGTON HUNTS FOR GOLD AND FINDS A KISS
CHAPTER V -- THE SPIRIT MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER VI -- BENNINGTON AS A MAN OF BUSINESS
CHAPTER VII -- THE MEETING AT THE ROCK
CHAPTER VIII -- AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER IX -- THE HEAVENS OPENED
CHAPTER X -- THE WORLD MADE YOUNG
CHAPTER XII -- OLD MIZZOU RESIGNS
CHAPTER XIII -- THE SPIRES OF STONE
CHAPTER XIV -- THE PIONEER'S PICNIC
CHAPTER XV -- THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
CHAPTER XVII -- NOBLESSE OBLIGE
CHAPTER XVIII -- THE CLAIM JUMPERS
CHAPTER XIX -- BENNINGTON PROVES GAME
CHAPTER XXI -- THE LAND OF VISIONS
CHAPTER XXII -- FLOWER O' THE WORLD
In a fifth-story sitting room of a New York boarding house four youthswere holding a discussion. The sitting room was large and square, andin the wildest disorder, which was, however, sublimated into a certainsystem by an illuminated device to the effect that one should "Have aPlace for Everything, and then there'll be one Place you won't have tolook." Easels and artists' materials thrust back to the wallsufficiently advertised the art student, and perhaps explained theuntidiness.
Two of the occupants of the room, curled up on elevated window ledges,were emitting clouds of tobacco smoke and nursing their knees; theother two, naked to the waist, sat on a couple of ordinary bedroommattresses deposited carefully in the vacant centre of the apartment.They were eager, alert-looking young men, well-muscled, curly of hair,and possessing in common an unabashed carriage of the head which, moreplainly than any mere facial resemblance, proved them brothers. They,too, were nursing their knees.
"He must be an unadorned ass," remarked one of the occupants of thewindow seats,