The Forbidden Trail. Honoré Morrow
and early in February Roger found himself alone in the world.
Roger escaped with only a mild attack of the disease, but the shock of his loss left him for a time, it seemed, spiritually and physically bankrupt. There was nothing left. The worn out farm was eaten up by mortgages. The stock and implements would only just pay food bills, the doctor, the funeral expenses.
One cold gray afternoon Roger closed the gate for the last time and, suitcase in hand, started down the road to town. He had not covered half the distance when he met Ernest.
"Hey, Rog, old man, I was just coming up. Where are you going?"
"To Mrs. Winkler's. Got my room there for taking care of the furnace, walks, and any old thing."
"Forget it!" exclaimed Ernest. "You're coming home with me until you get braced up. Mother and Dad said so."
"That'll make it harder when I do get back. Besides, old lady Winkler might not hold the place for me." Roger spoke firmly. Nevertheless he allowed Ernest to help him with the suitcase and made no objection when his chum turned off Main Street toward the Wolf home.
Mrs. Wolf kissed him and put him to bed, while Elsa brought a hot water bottle and a cup of hot milk. He hung about the house for several days, dreading the return to college and Mrs. Winkler. But Mrs. Wolf knew Roger almost as well as his own mother had known him. She left him alone until one snowy afternoon, after a prolonged absence in his room, he came into the kitchen with traces of tears about the eyes. Mother Wolf was paring apples for mince meat. Papa Wolf would eat no food not prepared by hers or Elsa's hands.
"Help me with these nut meats, Roger, there's a good boy," she said.
Roger sat down by the table with a long sigh and began to pick at the hickory nuts.
"Elsa's gone to Choral Union practice," volunteered Mother Wolf. "Ernie is doing some laboratory work he said he was behind in. You must be getting somewhat behind, too, Roger."
"I guess so," agreed Roger, indifferently.
"Papa met Dean Erskine in the Post Office yesterday. The Dean said you were the most promising man in your class."
"What good does that do," asked Roger, "when they're gone and can't know?"
"How do you know they can't know?" asked the little woman sharply. "Older and wiser people than you believe otherwise. One thing is sure, that the only real thing you can do for your parents now is to carry on what they began. Life is short and there's no time to waste, Roger dear, no time to waste."
"Are you getting tired of me here?" asked Roger quickly.
Mother Wolf's pretty blue eyes filled with tears. "Do you have to be unkind, Roger?" she asked.
"Forgive me!" he exclaimed. "I know you'd let me live here if you thought it would be good for me."
There was silence. The coal range glowed and the snow without sifted endlessly past the window. Suddenly Roger rose and putting on his overcoat and cap went out into the storm.
Dean Erskine was in the little office off the junior laboratory. Roger had not seen him since the day of his father's funeral, but he kept his voice and manner casual.
"Good afternoon, Dean Erskine. How many hours am I behind in lab work?"
The Dean too was off hand. "I've lost count, Roger."
"It's sort of sniveling baby work, anyhow," said Roger. "I did it all once; up in the corn crib."
"I know that," said Erskine. "That's why I've let you neglect it so outrageously. I had hopes too that you'd wake up and ask to do other things. But it seemed that you preferred experimenting with Welsh rarebits at Hepburn Hall and marshmallow sundaes at Allen's."
Roger had the grace to blush. He grinned sheepishly, then said soberly: "I'm through with all that now."
"Oh, it has its place in a normal man's life! Only you seem to have crowded several years of it into two. If you're not in training I don't mind if you smoke. Only close that door into the classroom."
The Dean pulled out an outrageous old pipe. Roger closed the door, then lighted a cigarette. The two smoked in the silence of old friendship for a while, then Roger said,
"Dean, what do you know about solar heat?"
The Dean looked at him suspiciously. "The usual things. Why?"
"I'm not trying to trip you," exclaimed Roger. "I've read all I can find on it, and that's darned little. You know those arrangements of mirrors in an umbrella-like frame, focussing the sun's rays on a point at the center, where the steam boiler is located?"
"Yes," said the Dean.
"Well, I don't believe the fellows that are working along that idea are right. The mechanism is hopelessly complicated, unwieldy and expensive."
Erskine nodded, his gaze on Roger's dreaming eyes.
"Ever since I was a kid," said the boy, slowly, "in fact ever since the factory went to pieces, I've had a pipe dream. It's sort of nutty, you know, and I suppose you'll think it's childish, but—"
"Let's have it. I accept your apologies," said the Dean, smiling.
And so Roger was launched for the first time on the telling of his dream. He was a little halting and incoherent at times, but his old friend listened attentively. When Roger had finished, he said,
"It's a good dream, Roger, and sound in its general premises. Have you ever got down to brass tacks with it and tried to design a solar engine?"
"No, I've only a lot of notes and sketches. It always seemed to cost so much that I never had courage to go any farther."
Erskine refilled his pipe. "I have a dream too. Only mine is in pretty good working shape. My dream has been to turn out of this school men who were practical engineers but who also had ideas. Men who were never satisfied with a bridge, a motor, a gas engine after they had finished it, but would be forever trying to improve it. Such men, of course, are rare, but in the fifteen years I've been here, I've sent out five or six lads who have given American engineering a real lift. I haven't come across a fellow before though who had any concrete vision of the world's labor problems in relation to the inventing game."
He fell to brooding and Roger waited patiently. Erskine finally looked up. "It's a big dream, boy. Too big for you or any other man to put over in a single generation. But we'll do what we can toward giving it a start. You cut out junior laboratory and get to work on your designs. When you finally get one that seems workable, we'll have the shops make a model." He paused, then rose and Roger rose too while the Dean put a hand on his broad young shoulder. "You've launched on the finest, most thankless, most compelling, most discouraging, most heart thrilling game in the world, Roger. You'll probably be poverty stricken all your life, but Lord! Lord! what riches of the mind will be yours!"
Roger flushed and lifted his head in a gesture that was infinitely young.
"I'm used to poverty, sir."
"I know you are and so am I. Good night, Roger!"
"Good night, Dean! Thank you!" and Roger, in spite of his grief, returned to the Wolfs' with his face set triumphantly toward the future.
The next morning he deposited his suitcase in old lady Winkler's most meager and coldest bedroom and after he had stoked the furnace and shoveled the walks he bolted for the college drafting room.
It was not until the fall of his senior year that Roger completed a design of a solar engine which Dean Erskine was willing to turn over to the University shops, that a model might be made. Roger had taken Ernest into his confidence and that faithful friend undertook to make all drawings for him. Ernest had no originality of mind, but he was an excellent workman and a first class mathematician and laboratory man. Early in January, the model was completed, and on a cold Saturday afternoon, the test was made. Roger and Ernest came home to the Wolfs' for supper deeply discouraged.
"But