few cents per pound he asked in advance of the catalogued
prices were paid eagerly. He lived alone, and never
talked of his work; so none of the harvesters of the fields
adjoining dreamed of the extent of his reaping. The
idea had been his own. He had been born in the cabin
in which he now lived. His father and grandfather
were old-time hunters of skins and game. They had
added to their earnings by gathering in spring and fall
the few medicinal seeds, leaves, and barks they knew.
His mother had been of different type. She had
loved and married the picturesque young hunter, and
gone to live with him on the section of land taken
by his father. She found life, real life, vastly different
from her girlhood dreams, but she was one of those
changeless, unyielding women who suffer silently, but
never rue a bargain, no matter how badly they are
cheated. Her only joy in life had been her son. For
him she had worked and saved unceasingly, and when
he was old enough she sent him to the city to school
and kept pace with him in the lessons he brought home
at night.

Using what she knew of her husband's work as a guide,
and profiting by pamphlets published by the government,
every hour of the time outside school and in
summer vacations she worked in the woods with the boy,
gathering herbs and roots to pay for his education and
clothing. So the son passed the full high-school course,
and then, selecting such branches as interested him,
continued his studies alone.