d the gymnasium from basement to trophy room and, finally, had
loitered across the athletic field to the grand-stand, where, for the
better part of an hour, he had been sitting in the sun, getting lonelier
every minute.

Clint--everyone had always called him Clint and we might as well fall in
line--had never been farther north than Baltimore; and today he felt
himself not only a long way from home but in a country somehow strangely
and uncomfortably alien. The few persons he had encountered had been
quite civil to him, to be sure; and the sunlight was the same sunlight
that shone down on Cedar Run, but for all of that it seemed as if no one
much cared where he was or what happened to him, and the air felt
differently and the country looked different, and--and, well, he rather
wished himself back in Virginia!

He had never been enthusiastic about going North to school. It had been
his mother's idea. Mr. Thayer was willing that Clint should prepare for
college in his native state, but Clint's mother had other ideas. Mr.
Thayer had graduated from Princeton and it had long been settled that
Clint was to be educated there too; and Clint's mother insisted that
since he was to attend a Northern college it would be better for him to
go to a Northern preparatory school. Clint himself had not felt strongly
enough about it to object. Several of his chums had gone or were going
to Virginia Military College; and Clint would have liked to go there
too, although the military feature didn't especially appeal to him.
Brimfield Academy, at Brimfield, New York, had finally been selected,
principally because a cousin of Clint's on his father's side had once
attended the school. The fact that the cousin in question had never
amounted to much and was now clerking in a shoe store in Norfolk was not
held against the school.

So far the boy had liked what he had seen of Brimfield well enough. The
thirty-mile journey from New York on the train had been through an
attractive country, with now and then a fleeting glimpse of water to add
variety to the landscape; and the woods and fields around the Academy
were pretty. From where he sat at the east end of the athletic field he
could look along the backs of the buildings, which ran in a row straight
along the edge of a plateau. Nearest at hand was the gymnasium. Then
came Wendell and Torrence, the latter having the honour of being
Clint's abode for the ensuing nine months. Next was Main Hall,
con