A Master's Degree Part 29

"I know the whole story. Dennie told me when you had that awful fight, and Trenchie told me long ago, that you thought I must have money to make me happy. Why I, more than Dennie, or you, who gave Bug his claim?"

Elinor put up her hands to Victor, who took them both in his, as he drew her to him and kissed her sweet red lips. And there was a new heaven and a new earth created that night in the soft silvery moonlight of the Walnut Valley.

"I'd rather be here with you than over the river with anybody else. I feel safer here," she murmured, remembering when they had striven in the darkness and the storm to reach this very height.

But Victor Burleigh could not speak. The mastery for which he had striven seemed to bring meed of reward too great for him to grasp with words.

THE PARTING

... _There is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!_ --KIPLING

COMMENCEMENT day at Sunrise was just one golden Kansas June day, when

The heart is so full that a drop overfills it.

Victor Burleigh, late of a claim out beyond the Walnut, Professor-to-be in Harvard University, and Vincent Burgess, acting-Dean of Sunrise, only a degree less beloved than Dean Fenneben himself, met on the morning of commencement day at the campus gate, one to go to the East, the other to stay in the West. Side by side they walked up the long avenue to the foot of the slope, together they climbed the broad flight of steps leading up to the imposing doorway of Sunrise with the big letter S carved in relief above it. And after pausing a moment to take in the matchless wonder of the landscape over which old Sunrise keeps watch, the college portal swung open and the two entered at the same time.

Inside the doorway, under the halo of light from the stained gla.s.s dome with its Kansas motto, wrought in dainty coloring. Elinor Wream, niece of the Dean of Sunrise, and Dennie Saxon, old Bond Saxon's daughter, who had earned her college tuition, stood side by side, awaiting them. And beyond these, on the rotunda stairs, Dr. Lloyd Fenneben was looking down at the four with keen black eyes. Beside him on the broad stairway was Marian Burgess Burleigh, the white-haired, young-faced woman of Pigeon Place, and Bug Buler--everybody's child.

The barriers were down at last: the value of common life, the power of Strife and Sacrifice and Service, the joy of Supremacy, the conflict of rich red blood with the thinner blue, the force of culture against mere physical strength, the power of character over wealth--these things had been wrought out under the gracious influence of Dr. Lloyd Fenneben in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut.

"Come up, come up; there is room up here," the Dean called to the group in the rotunda. "There's an A.B. for all who have conquered the Course of Study, and a Master's Degree for everyone who has conquered himself."

The common level so impossible on a September day four years ago, came now to two strong men when the commencement exercises were ended, and Sunrise became to the outgoing cla.s.s only a hallowed memory.

The hour is high noon, the good-bys are given, and from the crest of the limestone ridge the ringing chorus, led by good old Trench, sounds far and far away along the Walnut Valley:

Rah for Funnybone!

Rah for Funnybone!

Rah for Funnybone!

_Rah!_ RAW RAH!!!