It was a poor starved-to-death school that the boys found at Lawrence
in those days; with half a dozen instructors--most of whom were still
in their twenties; with books lent by the instructors, and with
appliances devised by necessity. But John was happy; he was making
money with his horses, doing chores for his board, and carrying papers
night and morning besides. The boy's industry was the marvel of the
town. His limp got him sympathy, and he capitalized the sympathy.
Indeed, he would have capitalized his soul, if it had been necessary.
For his Yankee blood was beginning to come out. Before he had been in
school a year he had swapped, traded, and saved until he had two
teams, and was working them with hired drivers on excavation
contracts. In his summer vacations he went to Topeka and worked his
two teams, and by some sharp practice got the title to a third. He was
rollicking, noisy, good-natured, but under the boyish veneer was a
hard indomitable nature. He was becoming a stickler for his rights in
every transaction.

"John," said Bob, one day after John had cut a particularly lamentable
figure, gouging a driver in a settlement, "don't you know that your
rights are often others' wrongs?"

John was silent a moment. He looked at the driver moving away, and
then the boy's face set hard and he said: "Well--what's the use of
blubbering over him? If I don't get it, some one else will. I'm no
charitable institution for John Walruff's brewery!" And he snapped the
rubber band on his wallet viciously, and turned to his books.

But on the other hand he wrote every other day to his mother and every
other day to Ellen Culpepper with unwavering precision. He told his