father's house. The foliage on the hillsides now had assumed its
gorgeous autumn dress and wherever he looked the forests seemed to be
clad as if they were all on dress parade. The sight was beautiful and
one which in after years was ever present with him; but in those early
days of his freshman year in Winthrop, it seemed somehow to impress him
as a great barrier between his home and the place where he then was.

However, he never referred to his feeling to any one, not even to
Foster, and strove manfully to bear it all. He was working well, but in
his Greek he was finding increasing difficulty. This he acknowledged in
part was due to his own neglect in the earlier years of his preparatory
course, but boy-like he attributed most of his lack of success in that
department to "Splinter," for whom he came to cherish a steadily
increasing dislike. The man's personality was exceedingly irritating to
the young freshman and his dislike for the professor was becoming
intense--a marked contrast to his feeling for his teacher in mathematics
for whom he entertained a regard that was but little short of adoration.
His knowledge evidently was so great, and his inspiring personality in
the classroom was so enjoyable that Will soon found himself working in
that department as he never before had worked in his brief life.
Already, the boys were referring to him as a "shark," and the praise of
his classmates was sweet. But in Greek--that was an altogether different
affair, he declared. Splinter was so cold-blooded, so unsympathetic, and
sarcastic, he appeared to be so fond of "letting a fellow make a fool of
himself in recitation," as Will expressed it, that he found but little
pleasure in his work. And Will had already suffered from the keen shafts
of the teacher's merciless ridicule. One day, when in fact he had spent
an additional hour in the preparation of his lesson in Greek, though the
results he had achieved left him still troubled as he thought of the
recitation, he had been called upon to translate and make comments upon