Long before his day of departure came he had
dusted out his old hair trunk--there were other and
more modern trunks to be had, but Oliver loved this
one because it had been his father's--gathered his
painting materials together -- his easel, brushes,
leather case, and old slouch hat that he wore to fish
in at home--and spent his time counting the days
and hours when he could leave the world behind him
and, as he wrote Fred, "begin to live."

He was not alone in this planning for a summer
exodus. The other students had indeed all cut their
tether-strings and disappeared long before his own
freedom came. Jack Bedford had gone to the coast
to live with a fisherman and paint the surf, and Fred
was with his people away up near the lakes. As for
the lithographers, sign-painters, and beginners, they
were spending their evenings somewhere else than in
the old room under the shaded gas-jets. Even Margaret,
so Mother Mulligan told him, was up "wid her
folks, somewheres."

"And she was that broken-hearted," she added,
"whin they shut up the school--bad cess to 'em!
Oh, ye would a-nigh kilt yerself wid grief to a-seen
her, poor darlint."

"Where is her home?" asked Oliver, ignoring the
tribute to his sympathetic tendencies. He had no