were the text books. The man balked at nothing. Indeed, he seemed to
find a curious, grim satisfaction in accomplishing the most menial and
disagreeable tasks; and when he made mistakes, as he often did, he
laughed at himself with such bitter, mocking humor that the Dean
wondered.

"He's got me beat," the Dean confided to Stella. "There ain't nothin'
that he won't tackle, an' I'm satisfied that the man never did a stroke
of work before in his life. But he seems to be always tryin' experiments
with himself, like he expected himself to play the fool one way or
another, an' wanted to see if he would, an' then when he don't he's as
surprised and tickled as a kid."

The Dean himself was not at all above assisting his new man in those
experiments, and so it happened that day when Patches had been set to
repairing the meadow pasture fence near the lower corrals.

The Dean, riding out that way to see how his pupil was progressing,
noticed a particularly cross-tempered shorthorn bull that had wandered
in from the near-by range to water at the house corral. But Phil and his
helpers were in possession of the premises near the watering trough, and
his shorthorn majesty was therefore even more than usual out of patience
with the whole world. The corrals were between the bull and Patches, so
that the animal had not noticed the man, and the Dean, chuckling to
himself, and without attracting Patches' attention, quietly drove the
ill-tempered beast into the enclosure and shut the gate.

Then, riding around the corral, the Dean called to the young man. When
Patches stood beside his employer, the cattleman said, "Here's a blamed
old bull that don't seem to be feelin' very well. I got him into the