WHEN Stover returned after the summer vacation to the full glory of a sophomore, he had changed in many ways. The consciousness of success had given him certain confidence and authority, which, if it was more of the manner than real, nevertheless was noticeable. He had aged five or six years, as one ages at that time under the grave responsibilities of an exalted leadership.

A great change likewise had come in his plans. During the summer Tough McCarthy's father had died, and Tough had been forced to forego his college course and take up at once the seriousness of life. Several offers had been made Dink to go in with Hungerford, Tommy Bain, and others of his crowd, but he had decided to room by himself, for a time at least. The decision had come to him as the result of a growing feeling of restlessness, an instinctive desire to be by himself and know again that shy friend Dink Stover, who somehow seemed to have slipped away from him.

Much to his surprise, this feeling of restlessness dominated all other emotions on his victorious return to college. He felt strangely alone. Every one in the class greeted him with rushing enthusiasm, inquired critically of his weight and condition, and passed on. His progress across the campus was halted at every moment by acclaiming groups, who ran to him, pumping his hand, slapping him on the back, exclaiming:

"You, old Dink Stover!"

"Bless your heart."

"Put it there."

"Glad to see you again."

"How are you?"

"You look fit as a fiddle!"

"The All-American this year!"

"Hard luck about McCarthy."

"Ta-ta."

His was the popular welcome, and yet it left him unsatisfied, with a strange tugging at his heart. They were all acquaintances, nothing more. He went to his room on the second floor in Lawrence, and, finding his way over the bare floor and the boxes that encumbered, reached the window and flung it open.

Below the different fences had disappeared under the joyful, hilarious groups that swarmed about them. He saw Swazey and Pike, two of the grinds of his own class, men who "didn't count," go past hugging each other, and their joy, comical though it was, hurt him. He turned from the window, saying aloud, sternly, as though commanding himself:

"Come, I must get this hole fixed up. It's gloomy as the devil."

He worked feverishly, ripping apart the covers, ranging the furniture, laying the rugs. Then he put in order his bedroom, and, whistling loudly, fished out his bedclothes, laid the bed, and arranged his bureau-top. That done, he brought forth several photographs he had taken in the brief visit he had paid the Storys, and placing them in the position of honor lit his pipe and, camping on a dry-goods box, like Scipio amid the ruins of Carthage, dreamily considered through the smoke-wreaths the distant snap-shots of a slender girl in white.

He was comfortably, satisfactorily in love with Jean Story. The emotion filled a sentimental want in his nature. He had never asked her for her photograph or to correspond, as he would have lightly asked a hundred other girls. He knew instinctively that she would have refused. He liked that in her---her dignity, and her reserve. He wanted her regard, as he always wanted what others found difficult to attain. She was young and yet with an old head on her shoulders. In the two weeks he had spent in camp, they had discussed much together of what lay ahead beyond the confines of college life. He did not always understand her point of view. He often wondered what was the doubt that lay in her mind about him. For, though she had given him a measure of her friendship, there was always a reserve, something held back. It was the same with Bob. It puzzled him; it irritated him. He was resolved to beat down that barrier, to shatter it some way and somehow, as he was resolved that Jim Hunter, whose intentions were clear, should never beat him out in this race.

He rose, pipe in mouth, and, taking up a photograph, stared at the laughing face and the quiet, proud tilt of the head.

"At any rate,?' he said to himself, "Jim Hunter hasn't got any more than this, and he never will."

He went back to the study, delving into the packingboxes. From below came a stentorian halloo he knew well:

"Oh, Dink Stover, stick out your head!"

"Come up, you, Tom Regan, come up on the jump!"

In another moment Regan was in the room, and his great bear clutch brought Stover a feeling of warmth with its genuineness.

"Bigger than ever, Tom."

"You look fine yourself, you little bantam!"

"Lord, but I'm glad to see you!"

"Same to you."

"How'd the summer go?"

"Wonderful. I've got four hundred tucked away in the bank."

"You don't say so!"

"Fact."

Stover shook hands again eagerly.

"Tell me all about it."

"Sure. Go on with your unpacking; I'll lend a hand. I've had a bully summer."

"What's that mean?" said Stover, with a quizzical smile. "Working like a slave?"

"No, no; seeing real people. I tried being a conductor a while, got in a strike, and switched over to construction work. Got to be foreman of a gang, night shift."

"You don't mean out all night?"

"Oh, I slept in the day. You get used to it. They're a strange lot, the fellows who work while the rest of you sleep. They brushed me up a lot, taught me a lot. Wish you'd been along. You'd have got some education."

"I may do something of the sort with you next summer," said Stover quietly.

"They tell me Tough McCarthy's not coming back."

"Yes; father died."

"Too bad. Going to room alone?"

"For a while. I want to get away --- think things over a bit, read some."

"Good idea," said Regan, with one of his sharp appraising looks. "If a man's given a thinker, he might just as well use it."

Hungerford and Bob Story joined them, and the four went down to Mory's to take possession in the name of the sophomore class. Regan, to their surprise, making one of the party, paid as they paid, with just a touch of conscious pride.

The good resolves that Dink made to himself, under the influence of the acute emotions he had felt on his return, gradually faded from his memory as he felt himself caught up again in the rush of college life. He found his day marked out for him, his companions assigned to him, his standards and his opinions inherited from his predecessors. Insensibly he became a cog in the machine. What with football practise and visiting the freshman class in the interest of his society, he found he was able to keep awake long enough to get a smattering of the next day's work and no more.

The class had scattered and groups with clear tendencies had formed, Hunter and Tommy Bain the center of little camps serious and ambitious, while off the campus in a private dormitory another element was pursuing mannish delights with the least annoyance from the curriculum.

The opposition to the sophomore societies had now grown to a college issue. Protests from the alumni began to come in; one of the editors of the Lit made it the subject of his leader, while the college, under the leadership of rebels like Gimbel, arrayed itself in uncompromising opposition and voted down every candidate for office that the sophomore societies placed in the field.

That the situation was serious and working harm to the college Stover saw, but, as the fight became more bitter, the feeling of loyalty, coupled with distrust of the motives of the assailants, placed him in the ranks of the most ardent defenders, where, a little to his surprise, he found himself rather arrayed with Tommy Bain and Jim Hunter in their position of unrelenting conservatism, fighting the revolt which was making head in the society itself, as Bob Story and Joe Hungerford led the demand for some liberal reform.

However, the conflict did not break out until the close of the season. The team, under the resolute leadership of Captain Dudley, fought its way to one of those almost miraculous successes which is not characteristic of the Yale system as it is the result of the inspiring guidance of some one extraordinary personality.

Regan went from guard to tackle, and Stover, back at his natural position of end, developed the promise of freshman year, acclaimed as the All-American end of the year. Still the possibility of Regan's challenge for the captaincy returned constantly to his mind, for about the big tackle was always a feeling of confidence, of rugged, immovable determination that perhaps in its steadying influence had built up the team more than his own individual brilliancy. Dink, despite himself, felt the force of these masterful qualities, acknowledging them even as, to his displeasure, he felt a rising jealousy; for at the bottom he was drawn more and more to Regan as he was drawn to no other man.

About a month after the triumphant close of the football season, then, Stover, in the usual course of a thoroughly uneventful morning, rose as rebelliously late as usual, bolted his breakfast, and rushed to chapel. He was humanly elated with what the season had brought, a fame which had gone the rounds of the press of the country for unflinching courage and cold head-work, but, more than that, he was pleasantly satisfied with the difficult modesty with which he bore his honors. For he was modest. He had sworn to himself he would be, and he was. He had allowed it to make no difference in his relations with the rest of the class. If anything, he was more careful to distribute the cordiality of his smile and the good-natured "How are you?" to all alike without the slightest distinction.

"How are you, Bill?" he said to Swazey, the strange unknown grind who sat beside him. He called him by his first name consciously, though he knew him no more than this slight daily contact, because he wished to emphasize the comradeship and democracy of Yale, of which he was a leader. "Feelin' fine this morning, old gazabo?"

"How are you?" said Swazey gratefully.

"Tough lesson they soaked us, didn't they?"

"It was a tough one."

"Suppose that didn't bother you, though, you old valedictorian."

"Oh, yes, it did."

Stover, settling comfortably in his seat, nodded genially to the right and left.

"I say, Dink."

"Hello, what is it?"

"Drop in on me some night."

"What?" said Stover surprised.

"Come round and have a chat sometime," said Swazey, in a thoroughly natural way.

"Why, sure; like to," said Stover bluffly, which, of course, was the only thing to say.

"To-night?"

"Sorry; I'm busy to-night," said Stover. Swazey, of course, being a grind, did not realize the abhorrent, almost sacrilegious, social break he was making in inviting him on his society evening.

"To-morrow, then?"

"Why, yes; to-morrow."

"I haven't been very sociable in not asking you before," said Swazey, in magnificent incomprehension, but I'd really like to have you."

"Why, thankee."

Stover, entrapped, received the invitation with perfect gravity, although resolved to find some excuse.

But the next day, thinking it over, he said to himself that it really was his duty, and, reflecting how pleased Swazey would be to receive a call from one of his importance, he determined to give him that pleasure. Setting out after supper, he met Bob Story.

"Whither away?" said Story, stopping.

"I'm going to drop in on a fellow called Swazey," said Stover, a little conscious of the virtue of this act. "I sit next to him in chapel. He's a good deal of a grind, but he asked me around, and I thought I'd go. You know ---the fellow in our row."

"That's very good of you," said Story, with a smile which he remembered after.

Stover felt so himself. Still, he had the democracy of Yale to preserve, and it was his duty. He went swinging on his way with that warm, glowing, physical delight that, fortunately, the slightest virtuous action is capable of arousing.

With Nathaniel Pike, a classmate, Swazey roomed in Divinity Hall, where, attracted by the cheapness of the rooms, a few of the college had been able to find quarters.

"Queer place," thought Dink to himself, eyeing a few of the divinity students who went slipping by ham. "Wonder what the deuce I can talk to him about. Oh, well, I won't have to stay long."

Swazey, of course, being outside the current of college heroes, could have but a limited view. He found the door at the end of the long corridor and thundered his knock, as a giant announces himself.

"Come in if you're good-looking!" said a piping voice.

Stover entered with strongly accentuated good fellowship, giving his hand with the politician's cordiality.

"How are you, Nat? How are you, Bill?"

He ensconced himself in the generous arm-chair, which bore the trace of many masters, accepted a cigar and said, to put his hosts at their ease:

"Bully quarters you've got here. Blame sight more room than I've got."

Pike, cap on, a pad under his arm, apologized for going.

"Awful sorry, Stover; darned inhospitable. This infernal News grind. Hope y'will be sociable and stay till I get back."

"How are you making out?" said Stover, in an encouraging, generous way.

Pike scratched his ear, a large, loose ear, wrinkling up his long, pointed nose in a grimace, as he answered:

"Danged if I don't think I'm going to miss out again."

"You were in the first competition?" said Stover, surprised---for one trial was usually considered equivalent to a thousand years off the purgatory account.

"Yep, but I was green --- didn't know the rules."

"Lord, I should think you'd have had enough!"

"Why, it's rather a sociable time. It is a grind, but I'm going to make that News, if I hit it all sophomore year."

"What, you'd try again?"

"You bet I would!"

There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about Pike, uncouth as was his dress and wide sombrero, that appealed to Stover. He held out his hand.

"Good luck to you! And say ---if I get any news I'll save it for you."

"Obliged, sir --- ta-ta!"

"Holy cats!" said Drnk, relapsing into the armchair as the door banged. "Any one who'll stick at it like that gets all I can give him."

"He's a wonderful person," said Swazey, drawing up his chair and elevating his hobnailed shoes. "Never saw anything like his determination. Wonderful! Green as salad when he first came, ready to tickle Prexy under the ribs or make himself at home whenever a room struck his fancy. But, when he got his eyes open, you ought to have seen him pick up and learn. He's developed wonderfully. He'll succeed in life."

Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey's part, but he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.

"Did you go to school together?" he said.

"Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him when I landed here ---just bumped together, as it were."

"You don't say so?"

"Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek prose composition ---cursed be the memory! ---when I came out of Alumni Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight ---looked like a chicken had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago ---but spunky as you make 'em. Never had put a collar on his neck --- I got him up to that last spring; but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he didn't know a soul. No more did I. So we said, 'Why not?' And we did. We hunted up these quarters, and we've got on first-rate ever since. No scratching, gouging, or biting. We've been a good team. I've seen the world, I've got hard sense, and he's got ideas --- quite remarkable ideas. Danged if I'm not stuck on the little rooster."

Stover reached out for the tobacco to fill a second pipe, all his curiosity aroused.

"I say, Dink," said Swazey, offering him a match, this college is a wonderful thing, isn't it?" He stood reflectively, the sputtering light of the match illuminating his thoughtful face. "Just think of the romance in it. Me and Pile coming together from two ends of the country and striking it up. That's what counts up here ---the perfect democracy of it!"

"Yes, of course," said Stover in a mechanical way. He was wondering what Swazey would think of the society system, or if he even realized it existed, so he said curiously:

"You keep rather to yourselves, though."

"Oh, I know pretty much what I want to know about men. I've sized 'em up and know what sorts to reach out for when I want them. Now I want to learn something real." He looked at Stover with a sort of rugged superiority in his glance and said: "I've earned my own way ever since I was twelve years old, and some of it was pretty rough going. I know what's outside of this place and what I want to reach. That's what a lot of you fellows don't worry about just now."

"Swazey, tell me about yourself," said Stover, surprised at his own eagerness. "By George, I'd like to hear it! Why did you come to college?"

"It was an idea of the governor's, and he got it pretty well fixed in my head. Would you like to hear? All right." He touched a match to the kindling, and, his coat bothering him, cast it off. "The old man was a pretty rough customer, I guess --- he died when was twelve; don't know anything about any one else in the family. I don't know just how he picked up his money; we were always moving; but I fancy he was a good deal of a ruin hound and that carried him off. He always had a liking for books, and one set idea that I was to be a gentleman, get to college and get educated; so I always kept that same idea in the back of my head, and here I am."

"You said you'd earned your living ever since you were twelve," said Stover, all interest.

"That's so. It's pretty much the usual story. Selling newspapers, drifting around, living on my wits. Only I had a pretty shrewd head on my shoulders, and wherever I went I saw what was going on and I salted it away. I made up my mind I wasn't going to be a fool, but I was going to sit back, take every chance, and win out big. Lord of mercy, though, I've seen some queer corners---done some tough jobs! Up to about fifteen I didn't amount to much. I was a drifter. I've worked my way from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, stealing rides and hoofing it with tramps. I've scrubbed out bar-rooms in Arizona and Oklahoma, and tended cattle in Kansas City. I sort of got a wandering fit, which is bad business. But each year I tucked away a little more of the long green than the year before, and got a little more of the juice of books. About four years ago, when I was seventeen --- I'd saved up a few hundreds --I said to myself:

"'Hold up, look here, if you're ever going to do anything, it's about time now to begin.' So I planted my hoof out in Oklahoma City and I started in to be a useful citizen."

The pipe between Stover's lips had gone out, but he did not heed it. A new life ---life itself ---was suddenly revealing itself to him; not the guarded existences of his own kind, but the earnest romance of the submerged nine-tenths. As Swazey stopped, he said impulsively, directly:

"By George, Swazey, I envy you!"

"Well, it's taught me to size men up pretty sharply," said Swazey, continuing. "I've seen them in the raw, I've seen them in all sorts of tests. I've sort of got a pretty guess what they'll do or not do. Then, of course, I've had a knack of making money out of what I touch --it's a gift."

"Are you working your way through here?" said Stover. All feeling of patronage was gone; he felt as if a torrent had cleared away the dust and cobwebs of tradition.

"Lord, no," said Swazey, smiling. "Why, boy, I've got a business that's bringing me in between four and five thousand a year-running itself, too."

Stover sat up.

"What!"

"I've got an advertising agency, specialties of all sorts, seven men working under one. I keep in touch every day. Course I could make more if I was right there. But I know what I'm going to do in this world., I've got my ideas for what's coming---big ideas. I'm going to make money hand over fist. That's easy. Now I'm getting an education. Here's the answer to it all."

He drew out of his pocketbook a photograph and passed it over to Stover.

"That's the best in the world; that's the girl that started me and that's the girl I'm going to marry."

Dink took the funny little photograph and gazed at it with a certain reverence. It was the face of a girl pretty enough, with a straight, proud, reliant look in her eyes that he saw despite the oddity of the clothes and the artificiality of the pose. He handed back the photograph.

"I like her," he said.

"Here we are," said Swazey, handing him a tintype.

It was grotesque, as all such pictures are, with its mingled sentimentality and self-consciousness, but Stover did not smile.

"That's the girl I've been working for ever since," said Swazey. "The bravest little person I ever struck, and the squarest. She was waiting in a restaurant when, I happened to drop in, standing on her own feet, asking no favor. She's out of that now, thank God! I've sent her off to school."

Dink turned to him with a start, amazed at the matter-of-fact way in which Swazey announced it.

"To school ---" he stammered. "You've sent her."

"Sure. Up to a convent in Montreal. She'll finish there when I finish here."

"Why?" said Stover, too amazed to choose his methods of inquiry.

"Because, my boy, I'm going out to succeed, and I want my wife to know as much as I do and go with me where I go."

The two sat silently, Swazey staring at the tintype with a strange, proud smile, utterly unconscious of the story he had told, Stover overwhelmed as if the doors in a great drama had suddenly swung open to his intruding gaze.

"She's the real student," said Swazey fondly. "She gets it all---all the romance of the big things that have gone on in the past. By George, the time'll come when we'll get over to Greece and Egypt and Rome and see something of it ourselves." He put the photographs in his pocketbook and rose, standing, legs spread before the fire, talking to himself. "By George, Dink, money isn't what I'm after. I'm going to have that, but the big thing is to know something about everything that's real, and to keep on learning. I've never had anything like these evenings here, browsing around in the good old books, chatting it over with old Pike---he's got imagination. Give me history and biography---that inspires you. Say, I've talked a lot, but you led me on. What's your story?"

"My story?" said Stover solemnly. He thought a moment and then said: "Nothing. It's a blank and I'm a blank. I say, Swazey, give me your hand. I'm proud to know you. And, if you'll let me, I'd like to come over here oftener."

He went from the room, with a sort of empty rage, transformed. Before him all at once had spread out the vision of the nation, of the democracy of lives of striving and of hope. He had listened as a child listens. He went out bewildered and humble. For the first time since he had come to Yale, he had felt something real. His mind and his imagination had been stirred, awakened, hungry, rebellious.

He turned back, glancing from the lights on the campus to the room he had left --- a little splotch of mellow meaning on the somber cold walls of Divinity, and then turned into the emblazoned quadrangle of the campus, with its tinkling sounds and feverish, childish ambitions.

"Great heavens! and I went there as a favor," he said. "What under the sky do I know about anything --- little conceited ass!"

He went towards his entry and, seeing a light in Bob Story's room, suddenly hallooed.

"Oh, Bob Story, stick out your head." "

"Hello, yourself. Who is it?"

"It's me. Dink."

"Come on up."

"No, not to-night."

"What then?"

"Say, Bob, I just wanted you to know one thing."

"What?"

"I'm just a plain damn fool; do you get that?"

"What the deuce?"

"Just a plain damn fool --- good-night!"

And he went to his room, locked the door to all visitors, pulled an arm-chair before the fire, and sat staring into it, as solemn as the wide-eyed owls on the casters.

THE hours that Dink Stover sat puffing his pipe before the yellow-eyed owls that blinked to him from the crackling fireplace were hours of revolution. His imagination, stirred by the recital of Swazey's life, returned to him like some long-lost friend. Sunk back in his familiar arm-chair, his legs extended almost to the reddening logs, his arms braced, he seemed to see through the conjuring clouds of smoke that rose from his pipe the figures of a strange self, the Dink Stover who had fought his way to manhood in the rough tests of boarding-school life, the Dink Stover who had arrived so eagerly, whose imagination had leaped to the swelling masses of that opening night and called for the first cheer in the name of the whole class.

That figure was stranger to him than the stranger in his own entry. Together they sat looking into each other's eyes, in shy recognition, while overhead on every quarter-hour the bell from Battell Chapel announced the march toward midnight. Several times, as he sat plunged in reverie, a knock sounded imperiously on the locked door; but he made no move. Once from the campus below he heard Dopey McNab's gleeful voice mingling with the deep bass of Buck Waters:

"Oh, father and mother pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
That's the way we do in college life.
Hooray!"

For a moment the song was choked, and then he heard it ring in triumphant crescendo as the two came up his steps, pounding out the rhythm with enthusiastic feet. Before his door they came to a stop, sang the chorus to a rattling accompaniment of their fists, and exclaimed:

"Oh, Dink Stover, open up!"

Receiving no response, they consulted

"Why, the geezer isn't in."

"Let's break down the door."

"What right has he to be out?"

"Is there any one else we can annoy around here?"

"Bob Story is in the next entry."

"Lead me to him."

"About face!" March!

"Oh, father and mother ay all the bills,
And we have all the fun:
That's the way we do ---"

The sound died out. Upstairs a piano took up the refrain in a thin, syncopated echo. From time to time a door slammed in his entry, or from without the faint halloo:

"Oh, Jimmy, stick out your head."

Dink, shifting, poked another log into place and returned longingly to his reverie. He could not get from his mind what Swazey had told him. His imagination reconstructed the story that had been given in such bare detail, thrilling at the struggle and the drama he perceived back of it. It was all undivined. When he had thought of his classmates, he had thought of them in a matter-of-fact way as lives paralleling his own.

"Wonder what Regan's story is ---the whole story?" he thought musingly. "And Pike and all the rest of ---" He hesitated, and then added, "--of the fellows who don't count."

He had heard but one life, but that had disclosed the vista of a hundred paths that here in his own class, hidden away, should open on a hundred romances. He felt, with a sudden realization of the emptiness of his own life, a new zest, a desire to go out and seek what he had ignored before.

He left the fire suddenly, dug into his sweater, and flung a great ulster about him. He went out and across the chilly campus to the very steps where he had gone with Le Baron on his first night, drawing up close to the wall for warmth. And again he thought of the other self, the boyish, natural self, the Dink Stover who had first come here.

What had become of him? Of the two selves it was the boy who alone was real, who gave and received in friendship without hesitating or appraising. He recalled all the old schoolmates with their queer nicknames --- the Tennessee Shad, Doc MacNooder, the Triumphant Egghead, and Turkey Reiter. There had been no division there in that spontaneous democracy, and the Dink Stover who had won his way to the top had never sought to isolate himself or curb any natural instinct for skylarking, or sought a reason for a friendship.

"Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read, or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material --- varsity material --- society material; I've lost all the imagination I had, and know less than when I came; and I'm the popular man ---' the big man'--- in the class! Great! Is it my fault or the fault of things up here?"

Where had it all gone --- that fine zest for life, that eagerness to know other lives and other conditions, that readiness for whole-souled comradeship with which he had come to Yale? Where was the pride he had felt in the democracy of the class, when he had swung amid the torches and the cheers past the magic battlements of the college, one in the class, with the feeling in the ranks of a consecrated army gathered from the plains and the mountains, the cities and villages of the nation, consecrated to one another, to four years of mutual understanding that would form an imperishable bond wherever on the face of the globe they should later scatter? And, thinking of all this young imagination that somehow had dried up and withered away, he asked himself again and again:

"Is it my fault?"

Across the campus Buck Waters and Dopey McNab, returning from their marauding expedition, came singing, arm in arm:

"Oh, father and mother pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
That's the way we do in college life,
Hooray!

The two pagans passed without seeing him, gloriously, boyishly happy and defiant, and the rollicking banter recalled in bleak contrast all the stern outlines of the lives of seriousness he had felt for the first time.

At first he revolted at the extremes. Then he considered. Even their life and their point of view was something unknown. It was true he was only a part of the machine of college, one of the wheels that had to revolve in its appointed groove. He had thought of himself always as one who led, and suddenly he perceived that it was he who followed.

A step sounded by him, and the winking eye of a pipe. Some one unaware of his tenancy approached the steps. Stover, in a flare-up of the tobacco, recognized him.

"Hello, Brockhurst," he said.

"Hello," said the other, hesitating shyly.

"It's Stover," said Dink. "What are you doing this time of night?"

"Oh, I prowl around," said Brockhurst, shifting from one foot to the other.

" Sit down."

"Not disturbing you?"

"Not at all," said Stover, pleased at this moment at the awe he evidently inspired. "I got sort of restless; thought I'd come out here and smoke a pipe. Amusing old spot."

"I like it," said Brockhurst. Then he added tentatively: "You get the feeling of it all."

"Yes, that's so."

They puffed in unison a moment.

"You're hitting up a good pace on that Lit competition," said. Dink, unconscious of the tone of patronage into which he insensibly fell.

"Pretty good."

"That's right. Keep plugging away."

"Why?" said Brockhurst, with a little aggressiveness.

"Why, you ought to make the chairmanship," said Dink, surprised.

"Why should I?"

"Don't you want to?"

"There are other things I want more."

"What?"

"To go through here as my own master, and do myself some good."

"Hello!"

Stover sat up amazed at hearing from another the thoughts that had been dominant in his own mind; amazed, too, at the trick of association which had put into his own mouth thoughts against which a moment before he had been rebelling.

"That's good horse sense," he said, to open up the conversation. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to do the best thing a fellow can do at our age. I'm going to loaf."

"Loaf!" said Dink, startled again, for the word was like treason.

"Just that."

"But you're not doing that. You're out to make the Lit. You're heeling something, like all the rest of us," said Stover, who suddenly found himself on the opposite side of the argument, revolting with a last resistance at the too bold statement of his own rebellion.

"I'm not 'heeling' the Lit," said Brockhurst. His shyness disappeared; he spoke energetically, interested in what he was saying. "If I were, I would make the chairmanship without trouble. I'm head and shoulders over the rest here, and I know it. As it is, some persistent grubber who sits down two hours a day, thirty days a month, nine months of the year for the next two years, who will regularly hand in one essay, two stories, a poem, and a handful of portfolios will probably beat me out."

"And you?"

"I? I write when I have something to write, because I love it and because my ambition is to write."

"Still, that's not exactly loafing."

"It is from your point of view, from the college point of view. It isn't what I write that's doing me any good."

"'What then?" said Stover, with growing curiosity.

"The browsing around, watching you other fellows, seeing your mistakes."

"Well, what are they?" said Dink, with a certain antagonism.

"Why, Stover, here are four years such as we'll never get again --- four years to revel in; and what do you fellows do? Slave as you'll never slave again. Why, you're working harder than a clerk supporting a family!"

"It's a good training."

"For a certain type, yes, but a rather low type. Thank you, I prefer to go my own way, to work out my own ideas rather than accept others'. However, I'm a crank. Any one who thinks differently here must be a crank."

While they were talking the hour of twelve had struck, and presently across the campus came a mysterious line of senior society men, marching silently, two by two, returning to their rooms.

"What do you think of that?" said Stover, with real curiosity.

"That. A colossal mumbo-jumbo that has got every one of you in its grip." He paused a moment and gave a short laugh. "Did you ever stop to think, Stover, that this fetish of society secrecy that is spread all over this Christian, democratic nation is nothing but a return of idol-worship?"

This idea was beyond Stover, and so, not comprehending it, he resented it. He did not reply. Brockhurst, perceiving that he had spoken too frankly, rose.

"Well, I must be turning in," he said. "So long, Stover. You go your way and I'll go mine; some day we'll talk it over ---four years out of college."

"The fellow is a crank," said Dink, going his way.

"Got some ideas, but an extremist. One or two things he said, though, are true. I rather like to get his point of view, but there's a chap who'll never make friends."

And he felt again a sort of resentment, for, after all, Brockhurst was still unplaced according to college standards, and he was Stover, probable captain, one of those rated sure for the highest society honors.

When he awoke the next morning, starting rebelliously from his bed, his head was heavy, and he did not at first remember the emotions of the night, as sleepily struggling through his sweater he ran out of his entry for a hurried cup of coffee. Bob Story hailed him:

"Hold up, you crazy man."

"What's the matter?"

"What the deuce got into you last night?"

"Last night?" said Stover, rubbing his eyes.

"You hauled me out of bed to shout out a lot of crazy nonsense."

"What did I say?" said Dink, trying to open his eyes.

"Nothing new," said Bob maliciously. "You said you were a plain damn fool, and were anxious for me to know it."

"Oh, I remember."

"Well?"

Well what?"

"Explanations?"

Stover did not feel in the mood; besides, the new ideas were too big and strange. He wanted time to understand them. So he said:

"Why, Bob, I just woke up, that's all. I'll tell you about it sometime ---not now."

"All right," said Story, with a quick look. "Drop in soon."

The following night Stover again went over to Swazey's rooms. It being Saturday, one or two men had dropped in: Ricketts, a down-East Yankee who recited in his divisions, a drawling, shuffling stripling with a lazy, overgrown body and a quick, roving eye; Joe Lake, a short, rolling, fluent Southerner from Texas; and Bud Brown, from a small village in Michigan, one of the class debaters who affected a Websterian deportment.

"I brought my pipe along," said Stover genially. "Got a place left where I can stow myself? Hello, Ricketts. Hello, Lake. Glad to shake your hand, Brown. How's the old News getting along, Pike? By the way, I'll give you a story Monday."

"Right in here, sir," said Lake, making room.

A couple of stout logs were roaring in the fireplace, before which, propped up with cushions, the majority of the company were sprawling. Stover took his place, filling his pipe. His arrival brought a little constraint; the conversation, which had been at fever pitch as he stood rapping at the door, dwindled to desultory remarks on inconsequential things.

"Well, I certainly am among the fruits of the class," thought Stover, eyeing the rather shaggy crowd, where sweaters and corduroys predominated and the razor had passed not too frequently.

In the midst of this hesitation, Regan's heavy frame crowded the doorway, accompanied by Brockhurst. Both were surprised at Stover's unaccustomed presence, Brockhurst looking at him with a little suspicion, Regan shaking his hand with new cordiality.

"Have you, too, joined the debating circle?" he said, crowding into a place by Stover and adjusting the fire with a square-toed boot.

"Debating circle?" said Stover, surprised.

"Why, this is the verbal prize ring of the college," said Regan, laughing. "We settle everything here, from the internal illnesses of the university to the external manifestations of the universe. Pike can tell you everything that is going to happen in the next fifty years, and so can Brocky --- only they don't agree. I'm around to get them out of clinches."

"Reckon you get rather heated up yourself, sometimes, Tom," said Lake.

"Oh, I jump in myself when I get tired of listening."

Swazey, Lake, Ricketts, and Brown in one corner installed themselves for a session at the national game, appropriating the lamps, and leaving the region about the fireplace to be lit by occasional gleams from the fitful hickories.

Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic.

"The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal --- the business ideal."

"That's a big statement," said Regan.

"It's true. Twenty years ago we had the ideal of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the statesman, of the gentleman, of the man of letters, of the soldier. Now the lawyer is simply a supernumerary enlisting under any banner for pay; the doctor is overshadowed by the specialist with his business development of the possibilities of the rich; we have politicians, and politics are deemed impossible for a gentleman; the gentleman cultured, simple, hospitable, and kind, is of the dying generation; the soldier is simply on parade."

"Wow!" said Ricketts, jingling his chips. "They're off."

"Everything has conformed to business, everything has been made to pay. Art is now a respectable career ---to whom? To the business man. Why? Because a profession that is paid $3,000 to $5,000 a portrait is no longer an art, but a blamed good business. The man who cooks up his novel according to the weakness of his public sells a hundred thousand copies. Dime novel? No; published by our most conservative publishers ---one of our leading citizens. He has found out that scribbling is a new field of business. He has convinced the business man. He has made it pay."

"Three cards," said Swazey's voice. "Well, Brocky, what's your remedy?"

"A smashing war every ten years," said Brockhurst shortly.

"Why, you bloody butcher," said Regan, who did not seize the idea, while from the card-table came the chorus:

"Hooray, Brocky, go it!"

"That's the way!"

"You're in fine form to-night!"

"And why a war?" said Pike, beginning to take notice.

"A war has two positive advantages," said Brockhurst. "It teaches discipline and obedience, which we profoundly need, and it holds up a great ideal, the ideal of heroism, of sacrifice for an ideal. In times of war young men such as we are are inspired by the figures of military leaders, and their imaginations are stirred to noble desires by the word 'country.' Nowadays what is held up to us? Go out --- succeed --- make money."

"That's true, a good deal true," said Regan abruptly. "And the only remedy, the only way to fight the business deal, is to interest young men in politics, to make them feel that there are the new battle-fields."

"Now Tom's in it," said Lake, threshing the cards through his fingers. At the card-table the players began to listen, motioning with silent gestures.

"I am off," said Regan, bending forward eagerly and striking his fist against his open hand. "That's the one great thing our colleges should stand for; they ought to be great political hotbeds."

"And they're not," said Brockhurst shortly.

"The more's the pity," said Regan. "There I'm with you. They don't represent the nation: they don't represent what the big masses are feeling, fighting, striving for. By George, when I think of the opportunity, of what this place could mean, what it was meant to mean! Why, every year we gather here from every State in the Union a picked lot, with every chance, with a wonderful opportunity to seek out and know what the whole country needs, to be fired with the same great impulses, to go out and fight together ---" He stopped clumsily in the midst of a sentence, and flung back his hair, frowning. "Good government, independent thinking, the love of the fight for the right thing ought to begin here ---the enthusiasm of it all. Hang it, I can't express it; but the idea is immense, and no one sees it."

"I see it," said Pike. "That's my ambition. I'm going back; I'm going to own my own newspaper some day, and fight for it."

"But why don't the universities reflect what's out there?" said Regan with a gesture.

"Because, to make it as it should be, and as it was, a live center of political discussion," said Brockhurst, "you've got to give the individual a chance, break through this tyranny of the average, get away from business ideas."

"Just what do you mean when you say we are nothing but a business college?" said Stover, preparing to resist any explanation. He understood imperfectly what Regan was advocating. Politics meant to him a sort of hereditary division; what new forces were at work he completely ignored, though resolved on enlightenment. Brockhurst's attack on the organization of the college was personal, and he felt that his own membership in the sophomore society was aimed at.

"I mean this," said Brockhurst, speaking slowly in the effort to express a difficult thought. "I hope I can make it clear. What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?"

As he paused, Stover, unable to find an opening for dissent, observed with interest the attitudes of the listeners: Pike, his pipe forgotten in the hollow of his hand, was staring into, the fire, his forehead drawn in difficult comprehension; Regan was puffing steady, methodical puffs, nodding his head from time to time. In the background Swazey's earnest face was turned in their direction, and the cards, neglected, were moving in a lazy shuffle; Brown, the debater, man of words rather than ideas, was running his fingers nervously through his drooping hair, chafing for the chance to enter the fray; Lake, tilted back, his fat body exaggerated under the swollen rolls of his sweater, from which from time to time he dug out a chip, kept murmuring:

"Perfectly correct, sir; perfectly correct."

Ricketts, without lifting his head, arranged and rearranged his pile of chips, listening with one ear cocked, deriving meanwhile all the profit which could be gained from his companions' divided attention. Two things struck Stover particularly in the group ---the rough, unhewn personal exteriors, and the quick, awakened light of enthusiasm on their faces while listening to the expounding of an idea. Brockhurst himself was transformed. All the excessive self-consciousness which irritated and repelled was lost in the fervor of the thinker. He spoke, not as one who discussed, but as one who, consciously superior to his audience, announced his conclusions; and at times, when most interested, he seemed to be addressing himself.

"Now, what is the actual condition here?" He rose, stretching himself against the mantel, lighting a match which died out, as did a half-dozen others, unnoticed on his pipe. "I say our colleges to-day are business colleges --- Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result --- success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business.

"Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them --- coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines.

"The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale---what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.'

"Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count--- everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual."

"What would you do?" said Brown. "Abolish all organizations?"

"Absolutely," said Brockhurst, who never recoiled.

"What! Do you mean to say that the college of 1870 was a bigger thing than the college of to-day?"

"My dear Brown, it isn't even debatable," said Brockhurst, with a little contempt, for he did not understand nor like the man of flowing words. "What have we to-day that is bigger? Is it this organization of external activities? We have more bricks and stones, but have we the great figures in the teaching staff? I grant you, this is purely an economic failure---but at the bottom of the whole thing compare the spirit inside the campus now and then. Who were the leaders then? The men of brains. Then the college did reflect the country; then it was a vital hotbed of political thought. To-day everything that has been developed is outside the campus; and it's so in every college. This is the tendency ---development away from the campus at the expense of the campus. That's why, when you ask me would I wipe out our business athletics and our professional musical and traveling dramatic clubs, I say, yes, absolutely. I would have the limits of college to be the walls of the campus itself, and we'd see, when men cease to be drafted for one grind or another, whether they couldn't begin to meet to think and to converse. However, that brings up the whole pet problem of education, and, I'm through talking. Go on, Pike; tell us that we are, after all, only schools for character."

"Brocky, you certainly are a radical --- a terrific one," said Pike, shaking his head. Regan, smoking, said nothing.

"A sort of red-shirt, eh?" said Brockhurst, smiling.

"You always go off on a tangent."

"Well, there's a good deal in what Brocky says," said Regan, nodding slowly, "about bringing us all back into the campus and shutting out the world. It's the men here, all sorts and conditions, that, after all, are big things, the vital thing. I'm thinking over what you're saying, Brocky --- not that I follow you altogether, but I see what you're after - I get it."

Stover, on the contrary, was aware of only an antagonism, for his instinct was always to combat new ideas. There were things in what Brockhurst had said that touched him on the quick of his accepted loyalty. Then, he could not quite forget that in the matter of his sophomore society he had rejected him as being a little "queer." So he said rather acidly:

"Brockhurst, one question. If you feel as you do, why do you stay here?"

Brockhurst, who had withdrawn after his outburst, a little self-conscious again, flushed with anger at this question. But with an effort he controlled himself, saying:

"Stover has not perceived that I have been talking of general conditions all through the East; that I am not fool enough to believe one Eastern university is different in essentials from another. What I criticize here I criticize in American life. As to why I remain at Yale, I remain because I think, because, having the advantages of my own point of view, I can see clearer those who are still conventionalized."

"But you don't believe in working for Yale," persisted Stover, for he was angry at what he perceived had been his discourtesy.

"Work for Yale! Work for Princeton! Work for Harvard! Bah! Sublime poppycock!" exclaimed Brockhurst, in a sort of fury. "Of all drivel preached to young Americans, that is the worst. I came to Yale for an education. I pay for it---good pay. ask, first and last, what is Yale going to do for me? Work for Yale, go out and slave, give up my leisure and my independence ---to do what for Yale? To keep turning the wheels of some purely inconsequential machine, or strive like a gladiator. Is that doing anything for Yale, a seat of learning? If I'm true to myself, make the most of myself, go out and be something, stand for something after college, then ask the question if you want. Ridiculous! Hocus-pocus and flap-doodle! Lord! I don't know anything that enrages me more. Good night; I'm going. Heaven knows what I'll say if I stay!"

He clapped his hat on his head and broke out of the door. The chorus of exclamations in the room died down. Ricketts, still shifting his victorious pile, began to whistle softly to himself. Regan, languidly stretched out, with a twinkle in his eyes kept watching Stover, staring red and concentrated into the fire.

"Well?" he said at last.

Stover turned.

"Well?" said Regan, smiling.

Dink rapped the ashes from his pipe, scratched his head, and said frankly:

"Of course I shouldn't have said what I did. I got well spanked for it, and I deserve it."

"What do you think of his ideas?" said Regan, nodding appreciatively at Stover's fair acknowledgment.,

"I don't know," said Stover, puzzled. "I guess I haven't used my old thinker enough lately to be worth anything in a discussion. Still---"

"Still what?" said Regan, as Dink hesitated.

"Still, he has made me think," he admitted grudgingly. "I wish he didn't quite --- quite get on my nerves so."

"There's a great deal in what he said to-night," said Pike meditatively; "a great deal. Of course, he is always looking at things from the standpoint of the individual; still, just the same---"

"Brocky always states only one side of the proposition," said Brown, who rarely measured swords when Brockhurst was present in the flesh. "He takes for granted his premise, and argues for a conclusion that must follow."

"Well, what's your premise, Brown?" said Stover hopefully, for he wanted to be convinced.

"This is my premise," said Brown fluently. "The country has changed, the function of a college has changed. It is now the problem of educating masses and not individuals. To-day it is a question of perfecting a high average. That's what happens everywhere in college: we all tend toward the average; what some lose others gain. We go out, not as individuals, but as a type--- a Yale type, Harvard type, Princeton type, five hundred strong, proportionately more powerful in our influence on the country."

"Just what does our type take from here to the na-tion?" said Stover; and then he was surprised that he had asked the question that was vital.

"What? What does this type stand for? I'll tell you," said Brown readily, with the debater's trick of repeating the question to gain time. "First, a pretty fine type of gentleman, with good, clear, honest standards; second, a spirit of ambition and a determination not to be beaten; third, the belief in democracy."

"All of which means," said Regan, "that we are simply schools for character."

"Well, why not?" said Pike. "Isn't that a pretty big thing?"

"You're wrong on the democracy, Brown," said Regan, with a snap of his jaws.

"I mean the feeling of man to man."

"Perhaps."

Stover at that moment was not so certain that he would have answered the same. The discussion had so profoundly interested him that he forgot a certain timidity.

"What would Brockhurst answer to the school-for-character idea?" he said.

"I calculate he'd have a lovely time with it," said Ricketts, with a laugh, "a regular dog-and-slipper time of it."

"In all which," said Swazey's quick voice, "there is no question about our learning a little bit."

A laugh broke out.

"Lord, no!"

"That doesn't count?"

"Why the curriculum?"

"That," said Regan, rising, "brings up the subject of education, which is deferred until another time. Ladies and gentlemen, good night. Who's winning? Ricketts. That's because he's said nothing. Good night, everybody."

Stover went with him.

"Tom," he said, when they came toward the campus, "do you know what I've learned to-night? I've learned what a complete ignoramus I am."

"How did you happen in?" said Regan.

Stover related the incident without mincing words.

"You're a lucky boy," said Regan, at the conclusion. "I'm glad you're waking up."

"You know I know absolutely nothing. I haven't thought on a single subject, and as for politics, and what you men talk about, I don't know the slightest thing. I say, Tom, I'd like to come around and talk with you."

"Come," said Regan; "I've had the door on the latch for a long while, old rooster."

THE next afternoon Stover passed Brockhurst going to dinner.

"Hello," he said, with a cordial wave of the hand.

' Hello," said Brockhurst, with a little avoidance, for he had a certain physical timidity, which always shrank at the consequences of his mental insurgency.

"I was a chump and a fool last night," said Stover directly, "and here's my apology."

"Oh, all right."

"Drop in on me. 'Talk things over. You've started me thinking. Drop in --- I mean it."

"Thanks, awfully."

Brockhurst, ill at ease, moved away, pursued always by a shackling self-consciousness in the presence of those to whom he consciously felt he was mentally superior.

One direct result came to Stover from the visit to Swazey's rooms. Despite the protests and arguments, he did not report for the competition for the crew.

"Stay in for a couple of months," said Le Baron.

"We want the moral effect of every one's coming out."

"Sorry; I've made up my mind," said Dink.

"Why?"

"Want time to myself. I've never had it, and now I'm going to get it."

Le Baron of the machine did not understand him, and he did not explain. Stover was essentially a man of action and not a thinker. He did not reason things out for himself, but when he became convinced he acted. So, when he had thought over Brockhurst's theories and admitted that he was not independent, he determined at once to be so. He began zealously, turning his back on his own society crowd, to seek out the members of his class whom he did not know, resolved that his horizon should be of the freest. For the first time he began to reason on what others said to him. He went often to Swazey's rooms, and Regan's, which were centers of discussion. Some of the types that drifted in were incongruous, bizarre, flotsam and jetsam of the class; but in each, patiently resolved, he found something to stir the imagination; and when, under Regan's quickening influence, he stopped to consider what life in the future would mean to them, he began to understand what his friend the invincible democrat, meant by the inspiring opportunity of college---the vision of a great country that lay on the lips of the men he had only to seek out.

Dink was of too direct a nature and also too confident in the strength of his position to consider the effect of his sudden pilgrimage to what was called the "outsiders." Swazey and Pike, at his invitation, took to dropping into his room and working out their lessons with him. Quite unconsciously, he found himself constantly in public companionship with them and other newly discovered types who interested him.

About two weeks after this new life had begun, Le Baron stopped him one day, with a little solicitous frown, saying:

"Look here, Dink, aren't you cutting loose from your own crowd a good deal?"

"Why, yes, I guess I am," Dink announced, quite unconsciously.

"I wouldn't get identified too much with --- well, with some of the fellows you've taken up."

Stover smiled, and went his way undisturbed. For the first time he felt his superiority over Le Baron. Le Baron could not know what he knew ---that it was just these new acquaintances who had waked him up out of his torpor and made a thinking being of him. Others in his class, mistaking his motives, began to twit him:

"I say, Dink, what are you out for?" Running for something?" Getting into politics?"

"Junior Prom, eh?"

He turned the jests aside with jests as ready, quite unaware that in his own crowd he was arousing a little antagonism; for he was developing in such deep lines that he did not perceive vexing details.

All at once he remembered that it had been over a fortnight since he had called at the Storys' and he ran over one afternoon about four o'clock, expecting to stay for dinner; for the judge kept open house to the friends of his son, and Stover had readily availed himself of the privilege to become intimate.

Although Bob Story was bound to him by the closest social ties, Dink felt, nor was he altogether at fault in the feeling, that the brother was still on the defensive with him, due to a natural resentment perhaps at Dink's too evident interest in his sister.

When he arrived at the old colonial house set back among the elms, Eliza, the maid, informed him that no one was at home. Miss Jean was out riding. But immediately she corrected herself, and, going upstairs to make sure, returned with the welcome information that Miss Story had just returned and begged him to wait.

He took the request as a meager evidence of her interest, and entered the drawing-room. Waiting there for her to come tripping down the stairs, he began to think of the new horizon that had opened to him, and the new feeling of maturity; and, feeling this with an acute realization, he was impatient for her to come, that he might tell her.

It was a good ten minutes before he turned suddenly at a rustling on the stairs, and saw her, fresh and flushed from the ride.

"It's awfully good of you to wait," she called to him. "I did my best to rush."

Arrived on the landing, she gave him her hand, look.ing at him a little earnestly.

"How are you? You're a terrible stranger."

"Have I been very bad?" he said, holding her hand.

"Indeed you have. Even Bob said he hardly saw you. What have you been doing?"

She withdrew her hand gently, but stood before him, looking into his face with her frank, inquiring eyes. Stover wondered if she thought he'd been a trifle wild; and, as there was no justification, he was immensely flattered, and a little tempted dramatically to assume an attitude that would call for reform. He smiled and said:

"I've been on a voyage of discovery, that's all. You'll be interested."

They sat down, and he began directly to talk, halting in broken phrases at first, gradually finding his words as he entered his subject.

"By George! I've had a wonderful two weeks ---a. revelation-just as though---just as though I'd begun my college course; that's really what it means. All I've done before doesn't count. And to think, if it hadn't been for an accident, I might have gone on without ever waking up."

He recounted his visit to Swazey's rooms, drawing a picture of his self-satisfied self descending en prince to bestow a favor; and, warming out of his stiffness, drew a word picture of Swazey's telling his story before the fire, and the rough sentiment with which he brought forth the odd, common little tintypes.

"By George! the fellow had told a great story and he didn't know it; but I knew it, and it settled me," he added with earnestness, always aware of her heightened attention. "It was a regular knockout blow to the conceited, top-heavy, prancing little ass who had gone there. By Jove, it gave me a jar. I went out ashamed."

"It is a very wonderful life --- simple, wonderful," she said slowly, thinking more of the relator than of the story. "I understand all you felt."

"You know life's real to those fellows," he continued, with more animation. "They're after something in this world; they believe in something; they're fighting for something. There's nothing real in me ---that is, there wasn't. By George, these two weeks that I've gone about, looking for the men in the class, have opened up everything to me. I never knew my own country before. It's a wonderful country! It's the simple lives that are so wonderful."

She had in her hand a piece of embroidery, but she did not embroider. Her eyes never left his face. For the first time, the roles were reversed: it was he who talked and she who listened. From time to time she nodded, satisfied at the decision and direction in his character, which had answered the first awakening suggestion.

"Who is Pike?" she asked.

"Pike is a little fellow from a little life in some country town in Indiana; the only one in a family of eight children that's amounted to anything -father's a pretty even sort, I guess; so are the rest of them. But this fellow has a dogged persistence---not so quick at thinking things out, but, Lord! how he listens; nothing gets away from him. I can see him growing right under my eyes. He's interested in politics, same as Regan; wants to go back and get a newspaper some day. He'll do it, too. Why, that fellow has been racing ahead ever since he came here, and I've been standing still. Ricketts is an odd character, a sort of Yankee genius, shrewd, and some of his observations are as sharp as a knife. Brockhurst has the brains of us all; he can out-think us every one. But he's a spectator; he's outside looking on. I can't quite get used to him. Regan's the fellow I want for a friend. He's like an old Roman. When he makes up his mind --- it takes him a long while --- when he does, he's right."

He recounted Regan's ideas on politics---his enthusiasm, and his ideal of a college life that would reflect the thought of the nation.

Then, talking to himself, he began to walk up and down, flinging out quick, stiff gestures:

"Brockhurst states a thing in such a slap-bang way ---no compromise --- that it hits you at first like a blow. But when you think it over he has generally got to the point. Where he's wrong is, he thinks the society system here keeps a man wrapped in cotton, smothering him and separating him from the class. Now, I'm an example to the contrary. It's all a question of the individual. I thought it wasn't at one moment, but now I know that it is. You can do just what you want --find what you want.

"But we do get so interested in outside things that we forget the real; that's true. Brockhurst says we ought to bring the college back to the campus, and the more I think of it the more I see what he means. The best weeks, the biggest in my life, are those when I've realized I had an imagination and could use it." Suddenly he halted, gave a quick glance at her, and said:

"Here I'm talking like a runaway horse. I got started."

"Thank you for talking to me so," she said eagerly.

He had never seen in her eyes so much of genuine impulse toward him, and, suddenly recalled, in this moment of exhilaration, to the personal self, he was' thrilled with a strange thrill at what he saw.

"You remember," he said, with 'a certain new boldness, "how impudent you used to be to me, and how furious I was when you told me I was not awake."

"I remember."

"Now I understand what you meant," he said, "but then I didn't."

She rose to order tea, and then turned impulsively, smiling up to him.

"I think --- I'm sure I felt it would come to you; only I was a little impatient."

And with a happy look she offered him her hand.

"I'm very glad to be your friend," she said, to make amends; "and I hope you'll come and talk over with me all that you are thinking. Will you?"

He did not answer. At the touch of her hand, which he held in his, at the new sound in her voice, suddenly something surged up in him, something blinding, intoxicating, that left him hot and cold, rash and silent. She tried to release her hand, but his grip was not to be denied.

Then, seeing him standing head down boyishly unable to speak or act, she understood.

"Oh, please!" she said, with a sudden weakness, again trying to release her fingers.

"I can't help it," he said, blurting out the words. "Jean, you know as well as I what it is. I love you."

The moment the words were out, he had a cold horror of what had been said. He didn't love her, not as he had said it. Why had he said it?

She remained motionless a moment, gathering her strength against the shock.

"Please let go my hand," she said quietly.

This time he obeyed. His mind was a vacuum; every little sound came to him distinctly, with the terror of the blunder he had made.

She went to the window and stood, her face half turned from him, trying to think; and, misreading her thoughts, a little warm blood came back to him, and he tried to think what he would say if she came back with a light in her eyes.

"Mr. Stover."

He looked up abruptly-he had scarcely moved. She was before him, her large eyes seeming larger than ever, her face a little frightened, but serious with the seriousness of the woman looking out.

"You have done a very wrong thing," she said slowly, and you have placed me in a very difficult position. I do not want to lose you as a friend." She made a rapid movement of her fingers to check his exclamation. "If what you said were true, and you are too young to have said such solemn words, may I ask what right you had to say them to me?"

"What right?" he said stupidly.

"Yes, what right," she repeated, looking at him steadily with a certain wistfulness. "Are you in a position to ask me to be your wife?"

"Let me think a moment," he said, drawing a breath. He walked away to the table, leaning his weight on it, while, without moving, she followed with a steady gaze, in which was a little pity.

"Let me help you," she said at last.

He turned and looked up for the first time, a look of wretchedness.

"It would be too bad that one moment should spoil all our friendship," she said, "and because that would hurt me I don't want it so. You are a boy, and I am not yet a woman. I have always respected you, no more so than to-day, before---before you forgot your respect toward me. I want always to keep the respect I had for you."

"Don't say any more," he said suddenly, with a lump in his throat. "I don't know why --- what --- why I forgot myself. Please don't take away from me your friendship. I will keep it very precious."

"It is very hard to know what to do," she said. Then she added, with a little heightening of her color: "My friendship means a great deal."

He put out his hand and gently took the end of a scarf which she wore about her shoulders, and raised it to his lips. It was a boyish, impulsive fantasy, and he inclined his head before her. Then he went out hurriedly, without speaking or turning, while the girl, pale and without moving, continued to stare at the curtain which still moved with his passing.