"What train?"

"The two-seventeen."

"Then we've no time to waste. Is he afraid he'll be lost?"

"He's afraid, all right."

"What's he afraid of?"

"Everything and everybody, I guess. Poor chap."

Will Phelps laughed good-naturedly as he spoke, and it was evident that
his sympathy for "Peter John" was genuine. His friend and room-mate,
Foster Bennett, was as sympathetic as he, though his manner was more
quiet and his words were fewer; their fears for their friend were
evidently based upon their own personal knowledge.

For four years the three young men had been classmates in the Sterling
High School, and in the preceding June had graduated from its course of
study, and all three had decided to enter Winthrop College. The entrance
examinations had been successfully passed, and at the time when this
story opens all had been duly registered as students in the incoming
class of the college.

Foster Bennett and Will Phelps were to be room-mates, and for several
days previous to the September day on which the conversation already
recorded had taken place they had been in the little college town,
arranging their various belongings in the room in Perry Hall, one of the
best of all the dormitory buildings. The first assembling of the college