A few days later David was walking across the fields on his way
home: it was past the middle of the afternoon.

At early candle-light that morning, the huge red stage-coach,
leaving town for his distant part of the country, had rolled,
creaking and rattling, to the dormitory entrance, the same stage
that had conveyed him thither. Throwing up his window he had looked
out at the curling white breath of the horses and at the driver,
who, buried in coats and rugs, and holding the lash of his whip in
his mittened fist, peered up and called out with no uncertain
temper.

The lad was ready. He hastily carried down the family umbrella and
the Brussels carpet valise with its copious pink roses, looking
strangely out of season amid all that hoar frost. Then he leaped
back upstairs for something which had been added to his worldly
goods since he entered college--a small, cheap trunk, containing a
few garments and the priceless books. These things the driver
stored in the boot of the stage, bespattered with mud now frozen.
Then, running back once more, the lad seized his coat and hat, cast
one troubled glance around the meaningless room which had been the
theatre of such a drama in his life, went over to the little table,
and blew out his Bible Student's lamp forever; and hurrying down
with a cordial "all ready," climbed to the seat beside the driver
and was whirled away.

He turned as he passed from the campus to take a last look at
Morrison College, standing back there on the hill, venerable,
majestical, tight-closed, its fires put out. As he crossed the city
(for there were passengers to be picked up and the mail-bag to be