“I don’t want any interest,” declared Peter John in all seriousness.  “I’ll be satisfied if I’m paid back without that.”

“You’ll get it, though,” laughed Will; and as his two companions also joined in his laugh Peter John said no more, except that he “couldn’t see anything very funny in that.”

The boys, however, did not longer delay where they were but quietly returned to their rooms, nor were they again disturbed that night.  Indeed, for several days the quiet of the college life was not ruffled and both Will Phelps and his room-mate began to hope that their troubles were at an end.  Mott, whom they saw on the following morning when they were departing from chapel, laughed good-naturedly as he greeted them and indeed his friendship for them seemed to be increased by the recent experiences through which he had passed.  Several times he came to the room of Will and Foster and remained until his welcome was decidedly that was displeasing to both the boys, though there threadbare.  There was something in his bearing was a certain indefinable something about him that was not altogether unpleasant.  His language, his bearing, and his general appearance all betokened a certain coarseness of fibre that somehow grated upon the feelings of Will and his room-mate, though they could not have explained even to themselves just what it was.  He was such a marked man in college, however, and was looked up to by so many that there was a certain pleasure in his personal attention and both Will and Foster felt in a measure the flattery of his evident favor.

The college work had now begun to settle into its regular grooves and when another week had elapsed, Will and Foster began to feel that the spirit of their surroundings had to an extent been received by them and that they were indeed a part of the life.  There were moments now that came to Will, when do what he might he could not banish from his mind the thought of the home in Sterling of which practically he was no longer a part.  The vision of his father seated in his easy-chair in the library of an evening, before the fire that glowed upon the hearth, his paper in his hands and the very manner in which he occasionally glanced up and read to his mother something he had noticed seemed to be one that Will could not shake off.  The pictures on the walls, the very rugs on the floor, and the chairs in the room could all be distinctly seen, and somehow the sight never failed to bring a certain depression with it.  Will Phelps would indignantly have denied that he was homesick, but as the days came and went his manner became somewhat subdued and when he rose from his bed in the early morning and peered forth from his bedroom window at the towering hills that were all aglow with the glory of the rising sun, somehow their very beauty and grandeur seemed to deepen his feeling that he was “a good way off,” as he expressed it, though just what it was that was so far away he could only have vaguely expressed or defined.  Doubtless his room-mate could have explained to him that it was the little city of Sterling that now seemed to be so remote, for he too was suffering slightly from the same malady that troubled his friend.