proximity to the college grounds had caused the bishop to view it with
disfavour, and already a fine ivy, planted at his suggestion, covered
part of the bare brick walls. The bishop would fain have recalled the
days that antedated electric roads, before the company had driven this
peg at the corner of his academe and stretched therefrom another
gleaming thread of its intricate web of trolley lines. Those were the
golden days when one drove up to the Hall in a comfortable carriage,
when the richer students went horseback riding along the country roads,
when the _chug, chug_ of the motor-car and its attendant smell of
gasoline were unknown.

Though Leigh was far from sharing the bishop's whimsical indignation at
this change, even he felt the chill unloveliness of the long reaches of
the barn filled with lifeless cars, where an occasional electric bulb
burned like an _ignis fatuus_ in the misty gloom. How much more
attractive a railroad roundhouse, with iron monsters on its converging
tracks, each with his cyclopean eye of fire, each panting deeply with
slow jets of steam!

The place was comparatively deserted. Far back in the barn dim figures
moved, and from the workhouse in the rear came the clang of metal. One
or two passengers were waiting for the next car, and Leigh spied a
conductor coming to his work, finishing the last few puffs of his
morning pipe. He was an elderly man, with a sweeping grey moustache
and a gait that suggested the sea. Behind him two small boys came
racing with a cart.

"Hello!" cried the conductor, stepping aside with agility. "What 's
this? A Japanese torpedo boat?" He turned to Leigh genially. "I 'll
have to spread a net before my bows. These youngsters take me for a