When he reached the white, dusty road, the fires of his ambition kept on kindling with every step, and his pace, even in the cool of the early morning, sent his hat to his hand, and plastered his long lank hair to his temples and the back of his sturdy sunburnt neck.  The sun was hardly star-pointing the horizon when he saw the luminous smoke-cloud over the town.  He quickened his step, and in his dark eyes those fires leaped into steady flames.  The town was wakening from sleep.  The driver of a milk-cart pointed a general direction for him across the roof-tops, but when he got into the wilderness of houses he lost that point of the compass and knew not which way to turn.  On a street corner he saw a man in a cap and a long coat with brass buttons on it, a black stick in his hand, and something bulging at his hip, and light dawned for Jason.

“Air you the constable?” he asked, and the policeman grinned kindly.

“I’m one of ’em,” he said.

“Well, how do I git to the college I’m goin’ to?”

The officer grinned good-naturedly again, and pointed with his stick.

“Follow that street, and hurry up or you’ll get a whippin’.”

“Thar now,” thought Jason, and started into a trot up the hill, and the officer, seeing the boy’s suddenly anxious face, called to him to take it easy, but Jason, finding the pavements rather uneven, took to the middle of the street, and without looking back sped on.  It was a long run, but Jason never stopped until he saw a man standing at the door of a long, low, brick building with the word “Tobacco” painted in huge letters above its closed doors, and he ran across the street to him.

“Whar’s the college?”

The man pointed across the street to an entrance between two gray stone pillars with pyramidal tops, and Jason trotted back, and trotted on through them, and up the smooth curve of the road.  Not a soul was in sight, and on the empty steps of the first building he came to Jason dropped, panting.

XVIII

The campus was thick with grass and full of trees, there were buildings of red brick everywhere, and all were deserted.  He began to feel that the constable had made game of him, and he was indignant.  Nobody in the mountains would treat a stranger that way; but he had reached his goal, and, no matter when “school took up,” he was there.

Still, he couldn’t help rising restlessly once, and then with a deep breath he patiently sat down again and waited, looking eagerly around meanwhile.  The trees about him were low and young—­ they looked like maples—­and multitudinous little gray birds were flitting and chattering around him, and these he did not know, for the English sparrow has not yet captured the mountains.  Above the closed doors of the long brick building opposite the stone-guarded gateway he could see the word “Tobacco” printed in huge letters, and farther away he could