opening to the east on a sweep of field and woodland over which the sun rose
with a daily message from the unseen mountains far beyond and toward which
Chad had sent Jack trotting home. It was a proud day for Chad when Caleb
Hazel took him to "matriculate"--leading him from one to another of the
professors, who awed the lad with their preternatural dignity, but it was a
sad blow when he was told that in everything but mathematics he must go to
the preparatory department until the second session of the term--the
"kitchen," as it was called by the students. He bore it bravely, though, and
the school-master took him down the shady streets to the busy thoroughfare,
where the official book-store was, and where Chad, with pure ecstasy, caught
his first new books under one arm and trudged back, bending his head now and
then to catch the delicious smell of the fresh leaves and print. It was while
he was standing with his treasures under the big elm at the turnstile,
looking across the campus at the sundown that two boys came down the gravel
path. He knew them both at once as Dan and Harry Dean. Both looked at him
curiously, as he thought, but he saw that neither knew him and no one spoke.
The sound of wheels came up the street behind him just then, and a carriage
halted at the turnstile to take them in. Turning, Chad saw a slender girl
with dark hair and eyes and heard her call brightly to the boys. He almost
caught his breath at the sound of her voice, but he kept sturdily on his way,
and the girl's laugh rang in his ears as it rang the first time he heard it,
was ringing when he reached his room, ringing when he went to bed that night,
and lay sleepless, looking through his window at the quiet stars.

For some time, indeed, no one recognized him, and Chad was glad. Once he met
Richard Hunt riding with Margaret, and the piercing dark eyes that the boy
remembered so well turned again to look at him. Chad colored and bravely met
them with his own, but there was no recognition. And he saw John
Morgan--Captain John Morgan--at the head of the "Lexington Rifles," which he
had just formed from the best blood of the town, as though in long