The boy was slender and scarcely looked the eighteen years to which he
laid claim. He had curly sandy hair, a freckled face and penetrating
blue eyes. His clothes were new, but of rather poor material and ill-
fitting, scarcely protecting him from the cutting wind. Because of his
short legs and arms, his coat sleeves and trousers, cut for the
average boy, were too long for him and were much wrinkled.

He had climbed the last and steepest hill lying between the town and
his grandfather's farm--the ancestral home of the Williams family,
which was now, for a time at least, to be his home. Since early
morning he had bumped over the rough frozen roads between his home in
a distant village and the county seat, which was situated some two
miles to the west, and from which he had just walked.

He had expected to find his grandfather or his Uncle Joe waiting for
him; in this he was disappointed, and as the sun was getting along
toward mid-afternoon, he had picked up his worn suitcase and set off
through the town by a route that he knew would bring him to a short-
cut over the hills.

Despite the wind, he sat for some minutes, cap in hand, while he
looked out over the familiar scenes. There was not one foot of ground
in the one hundred and sixty acre farm that spread out fan-shape
before him which was not familiar. Here he had spent many happy
vacations in summers past. The last two years he had attended the
State College, taking the course in agriculture, and had worked in a
grocery store in the village during the summer vacations, but this
work had been distasteful to him--he missed the freedom of outdoor
life, especially the birds and animals so plentiful on the farm. So
this year, as his father could not afford to have him complete the