tress as frugal substitute for a
tailor's pressboard. To be sure, upon that latter count Scott took him
with unforeseen literalness; and, in his zeal to carry out his teacher's
dictum, subjected his coat to the mattress treatment, as well as his
more simply-outlined nether garments. Moreover, it should be set down
as distinctly to Opdyke's credit that he suppressed his merriment, the
next time he saw the coat upon Scott Brenton's shoulders.

Just at this epoch, some waggish member of the eating club employed his
camera at their expense. The resultant film, in after weeks, became one
of the most popular assets of the class. True, the needful haste had
caused the camera to tip a little. None the less, what the picture
lacked in composition, it made up in clearness and in vitality. Taken
solely as a study of contrasting types, it was of no small sociological
value, since it proved past all gainsaying that the absolute democracy
of a great college can bring into close relationship the most
impossibly divergent natures.

Scott, at this time, was thin and lean. His shoulders were bowed a
little with the strain of unceasing work and worry; in his more
self-conscious moments, he shambled when he walked. Only moderately
tall, clothed in ill-cut garments which he wore as uneasily as
possible, his immature young figure was not one to call out much
admiration on the score of its virility. Indeed, the one really virile
thing about Scott Brenton was his hair, which sprang out strongly from
his scalp, fine, but thick and just a little wavy where it lay across
his crown. His head was well-shaped, only that it was a bit too high
above the ears, the brow a bit too salient; the eyes alone, though, at
that time, redeemed from hopeless mediocrity his worn, ill-nourished
face. Beside his hips, his hands dangled limply, showing a stretch of
unclothed wrist sticking out below the shrunken coat sleeves.

Beside him in the picture, Reed Opdyke strode lightly, still, to all
seeming, the "puffic' fibbous" that his nurse had dubbed him. Six feet
tall, lean and supple as a deerhound and as totally unconscious of his
long, slim body, it was impossible to fancy him as ever being betrayed
into an awkward motion. Above his straight, slim shoulders, his curly
brown head rose proudly, his thin lips smiled a greeting to all the
world around him, his brown eyes looked straight and true into the eyes
of every man he chanced to meet. Only his sense of humou