onately on the back, and asked fifty questions in as many
minutes. And all his mother could do was to gaze at him in reverent
admiration and sigh, over and over:

"Land sakes, Joel March, how you do grow!"

It must not be thought that West was neglected. Farmer March, in
especial, showed the greatest pleasure at meeting him again, and shook
hands with him four times before the street was reached and the car that
was to carry them to the college town gained. The boys conducted the
visitors to their room, and made lunch for them on a gas stove, Outfield
drawing generously on his private larder, situated under the foot of his
bed. Then the four hunted up a pleasant room in one of the student
boarding houses, and afterward showed the old people through
the college.

There was a good deal to see and many questions to answer, since Joel's
father was not a man to leave an object of interest until he had learned
all there was to be told about it. The elms in the yard were fast losing
their yellow leaves, but the grass yet retained much of its verdancy,
and as for the sky, it was as sweetly blue as on the fairest day in
spring. Up one side of the yard and down the other went the sightseers,
poking into dark hallways, reading tablets and inscriptions, the latter
translated by West into the most startling English, pausing before the
bulletins to have the numerous announcements of society and club
meetings explained, drinking from the old pump in the corner, and so
completing the circuit and storming the gymnasium, where at last Joel's
powers of reply were exhausted and Outfield promptly sprang into the
breech, explaining gravely that the mattresses on the floor were used by
Doctor Major, the director of the gymnasium, who invariably took a
cat-nap during the afternoon, that the suspended rings were used to
elevate sophomores while corporeal punishment was administered by
freshmen, and that the queer little weights in the boxes around the
walls were reserve paper weights.

Then the line of march was taken up toward Sailors' Field, where they
arrived just in time to see the beginning of the practice game between
the Varsity and the scrub. Joel had been excused from attendance that
day, and so he took his seat beside the others on the grand stand and
strove to elucidate the philosophy of football.

"You see the scrubs have the ball. They must get it past the Varsity
down to the end of the field, where they can either put it down