for license and, above all, the heroic
struggle of the man to meet this new order of existence--these were the
things, the fine metals of a great soul, which life was hammering,
hammering into shape.

What this period meant to Jim no one but himself knew. The agony of
spirit and of body was intense. He had given his word to go through with
it and he did. But every instinct, every association of his old life led
his mind abroad. Every bird that flew to the roof or hopped on the lawn
was a strong attraction; every sound of a horse's hoof aroused his
wayward interest; and the sight of a horse sent him rushing
incontinently to the window. At the beginning, the football captain had
pounced on him as the very stuff he needed, and Jim responded as the
warhorse does to the bugle. He loved the game and he was an invaluable
addition to the team. And yet, helpful as such an outlet was for his
pent-up energy, his participation merely created new tortures, so that
the sight of a sweater crossing the lawn became maddening to him in the
hours of study. He had never liked books, and now as the weeks went by
he learned to loathe them.

It is greatly to be feared that in a fair, written examination with an
impartial jury, Jim Hartigan would have been badly plucked on his
college entrance. But great is the power of personality. The president's
wife behaved most uncollegiately. She interested herself in Jim; she had
interviews with the examiners; she discovered in advance questions to be
asked; she urged upon the authorities the absolute necessity of
accepting this promising student. The president himself was biased. He
hinted that the function of examiners was not so much to make absolute
measurement of scholastic attainments as to manifest a discretionary
view of possibilities, and to remember that examination papers were
often incapable of gauging the most important natural endowments of the
candidate; that sometimes when it was necessary to put a blood horse
over a five-barred gate, the wisest horseman laid the gate down flat.

The admonitions were heeded, the gate laid flat, and the thoroughbred
entered the pasture. But to Jim, caught up in the wearisome classroom
grind, the days held no glimmer of light. Of what possible value, he
asked himself again and again, could it be to know the history of
Nippur? Why should the cuneiforms have any bearing on the morals of a
backwoods Canadian? Would the grace of God be less effective if the