"All a man can do for Kansas!" Fenneben repeated slowly.

"Sure, and I'll tell you something more. This town
is busted, absolutely busted. I, and a few others,
brought this college here as an investment for ourselves.
It ain't paid us, and we've throwed the thing over.
I've just closed a deal with a New Jersey syndicate that gets me
rid of every foot of ground I own here. The county-seat's goin'
to be eighteen miles south, and it will be kingdom come,
a'most, before the railroad extension is any nearer 'n that.
Let your university go, and come with me. I can make you
rich in six months. In six weeks the coyotes will be howlin'
through your college halls, and the prairie dogs layin'
out a townsite on the campus, and the rattlesnakes coilin'
round the doorsteps. Will you come, Funnybone?"

The trustee waited for an answer. While he waited, the soul of the young
dean found itself.

"Funnybone!" Lloyd repeated. "I guess that's just what I need--
a funny bone in my anatomy to help me to see the humor of this thing.
Go with you and give up my college? Build up the prosperity of a commonwealth
by starving its mind! No, no; I'll go on with the thing I came here to do--
so help me God!"

"You'll soon go to the devil, you and your old school.
Good-by!" And the trustee left him.

A month later, Dean Fenneben sat alone in his university barracks