that was displeasing to both the boys, though there threadbare. There
was something in his bearing was a certain indefinable something about
him that was not altogether unpleasant. His language, his bearing, and
his general appearance all betokened a certain coarseness of fibre that
somehow grated upon the feelings of Will and his room-mate, though they
could not have explained even to themselves just what it was. He was
such a marked man in college, however, and was looked up to by so many
that there was a certain pleasure in his personal attention and both
Will and Foster felt in a measure the flattery of his evident favor.

The college work had now begun to settle into its regular grooves and
when another week had elapsed, Will and Foster began to feel that the
spirit of their surroundings had to an extent been received by them and
that they were indeed a part of the life. There were moments now that
came to Will, when do what he might he could not banish from his mind
the thought of the home in Sterling of which practically he was no
longer a part. The vision of his father seated in his easy-chair in the
library of an evening, before the fire that glowed upon the hearth, his
paper in his hands and the very manner in which he occasionally glanced
up and read to his mother something he had noticed seemed to be one that
Will could not shake off. The pictures on the walls, the very rugs on
the floor, and the chairs in the room could all be distinctly seen, and
somehow the sight never failed to bring a certain depression with it.
Will Phelps would indignantly have denied that he was homesick, but as
the days came and went his manner became somewhat subdued and when he
rose from his bed in the early morning and peered forth from his
bedroom window at the towering hills that were all aglow with the glory
of the rising sun, somehow their very beauty and grandeur seemed to
deepen his feeling that he was "a good way off," as he expressed it,
though just what it was that was so far away he could only have vaguely