"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is too
popular." The president looked out of his study window across the common,
surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian lads
played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from the
tall pine staff. The green was covered now with students of a conquering
race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory baseball
game. "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from your son,
most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad
expedition that came into his mind."

Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton. It meant
nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.

"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader. If he had
inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary. Another result
was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
not a trustee. Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company. More
of him later. He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more lumber
than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
receptacle of all the vices.

Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
compels me to add. Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please his
father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years. At the end of
that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him