Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up their hands in horror
and knew that this was the wild career Dick Forrest had forecast.

But this was only one of Dick Forrest's similar dissipations. He stole
from the Federal Government, at a prodigal increase of salary, its
star specialist in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he
robbed the University of Nebraska of its greatest milch cow professor,
and broke the heart of the Dean of the College of Agriculture of the
University of California by appropriating Professor Nirdenhammer, the
wizard of farm management.

"Cheap at the price, cheap at the price," Dick explained to his
guardians. "Wouldn't you rather see me spend my money in buying
professors than in buying race horses and actresses? Besides, the
trouble with you fellows is that you don't know the game of buying
brains. I do. That's my specialty. I'm going to make money out of
them, and, better than that, I'm going to make a dozen blades of grass
grow where you fellows didn't leave room for half a blade in the soil
you gutted."

So it can be understood how his guardians could not believe in his
promise of wild career, of kissing and risking, and hitting men hot on
the jaw. "One year more," he warned, while he delved in agricultural
chemistry, soil analysis, farm management, and traveled California
with his corps of high-salaried experts. And his guardians could only
apprehend a swift and wide dispersal of the Forrest millions when Dick
attained his majority, took charge of the totality of his fortune, and
actually embarked on his agricultural folly.

The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his principality, that