taken, of the hundred
smiling adventures we had shared, of all the glad things he had taught
me--and then, of the girl--and of the tragic face of her--as I had seen
it last.

And I wished that he had lived only a few minutes longer so that I might
have pleaded with him and shown him where he was wrong. And, perhaps, in
those few minutes he would have reached out his hand to me, and begged
forgiveness for having called me what he did--perhaps he might have done
so--and oh, I wanted with all my heart to forgive him and tell him it
did not matter--and to wish him God-speed.

But in a few days, when I summoned enough courage to go up the hilly
road in search of the little old store, I found it closed. The cracked
shades were down before the windows, and a "For Sale" sign was on the
door. The father and daughter had moved away, I heard in the town; but
no one knew where--or why.

But when I was back in the dormitory, I took the book of "David
Copperfield" from under my pillow, and put it back in the library, and
did not attempt to read further in it, then.

VII

FRESHMAN YEAR

New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant
the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions--and seemed to me an
opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of
real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty,
whose breadth of mind unfailing.

It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college
entrance examinations. I had taken the "preliminaries" the year before,
and I entered upon these "finals" low in spirit, disinterested, very
much aware of how poor a training for them this last year at military
school had given me.

Nevertheless, I managed to pass them. Not brilliantly, to be sure, but
by a small margin which left no doubt but that I should be accepted in
the freshman class of the city's university.

I have not called my alma mater by any other name than this: I do not
wish, out of a sense of loyalty, to define it more closely. You will
say, before I am through, that I am perverse in that loyalty; perhaps
so--but I do not wish to transgress upon it. Suffice it then, that my
college days were spent at one of the two universities which New York
has within its borders.

I shall never forget how my heart bounded when I received, through the
mail, that little leather covered book which college men know as the
"Freshman Bible." It is the dir