ustees, president, dean, and faculty for thirty years, and
then passed to his reward, leaving three thousand acres, his library of
five hundred books, mostly sermons, Sanford Hall, and a charter that
opened the gates of Sanford to all men so that they might "find the true
light of God and the glory of Jesus in the halls of this most liberal
college."

More than a century had passed since Hezekiah was laid to rest in
Haydensville's cemetery. The college had grown miraculously and changed
even more miraculously. Only the hill and its beautiful surroundings
remained the same. Indian Lake, on the south of the campus, still
sparkled in the sunlight; on the east the woods were as virgin as they
had been a hundred and fifty years before. Haydensville, still only a
village, surrounded the college on the west and north.

Hezekiah's successors had done strange things to his campus. There were
dozens of buildings now surrounding Sanford Hall, and they revealed all
the types of architecture popular since Hezekiah had thundered his last
defiance at Satan. There were fine old colonial buildings, their windows
outlined by English ivy; ponderous Romanesque buildings made of stone,
grotesque and hideous; a pseudo-Gothic chapel with a tower of
surpassing loveliness; and four laboratories of the purest factory
design. But despite the conglomerate and sometimes absurd
architecture--a Doric temple neighbored a Byzantine mosque--the campus
was beautiful. Lawns, often terraced, stretched everywhere, and the
great elms lent a dignity to Sanford College that no architect, however
stupid, could quite efface.

This first day of the new college year was glorious in the golden haze
of Indian summer. The lake was silver blue, the long reflections of the
trees twisting and bending as a soft breeze ruffled the surface into
tiny waves. The hills already brilliant with color--scarlet, burnt
orange, mauve, and purple--flamed up to meet the clear blue sky; the
elms softly rustled their drying leaves; the white houses of the village
retreated coyly behind maples and firs and elms: everywhere there was
peace, the peace that comes with strength that has been stronger than
time.

As Hugh Carver hastened up the hill from the station, his two suit-cases
banged his legs and tripped him. He could hardly wait to reach the
campus. The journey had been intolerably long--Haydensville was more
than three hundred miles from Merrytown, his home--and he was wild to