job which gave opportunity or leisure for this was good enough.
Livelihood was but a garment, at most; life was the body beneath.
Furthermore, young Banneker would find, so his senior had assured him,
that he possessed an open sesame to the minds of the really intelligent
wheresoever he might encounter them, in the form of a jewel which he
must keep sedulously untarnished and bright. What was that? asked the
boy. His speech and bearing of a cultivated man.

Young Banneker found that it was almost miraculously true. Wherever he
went, he established contacts with people who interested him and whom he
interested: here a brilliant, doubting, perturbed clergyman, slowly
dying of tuberculosis in the desert; there a famous geologist from
Washington who, after a night of amazing talk with the young prodigy
while awaiting a train, took him along on a mountain exploration; again
an artist and his wife who were painting the arid and colorful glories
of the waste places. From these and others he got much; but not
friendship or permanent associations. He did not want them. He was
essentially, though unconsciously, a lone spirit; so his listener
gathered. Advancement could have been his in the line of work which had
by chance adopted him; but he preferred small, out-of-the-way stations,
where he could be with his books and have room to breathe. So here he
was at Manzanita. That was all there was to it. Nothing very mysterious
or remarkable about it, was there?

Io smiled in return. "What is your name?" she asked.

"Errol. But every one calls me Ban."

"Haven't you ever told this to any one before?"