“I want to know just what to do with that land o’ mine.  I ain’t forgot what you told me—­to go away and git an education—­and when I come back what that land ’ud be worth.”

“Yes, but—­”

The lad’s face had paled and his mouth had set.

“I’m goin’ to git it back.”

Behind them the door had opened, and Gray’s spirited, smiling face was thrust in.

“Good morning, professor,” he cried, and then, seeing Jason, he came swiftly in with his hand outstretched.

“Why, how are you, Jason?  Mavis told me yesterday you were here.  I’ve been looking for you.  Glad to see you.”

Watching both, John Burnham saw the look of surprise in Gray’s face when the mountain boy’s whole frame stiffened into the rigidity of steel, saw the haughty uplifting of the Blue-grass boy’s chin, as he wheeled to go, and like Gray, he, too, thought Jason had never forgotten the old feud between them.  For a moment he was tempted to caution Jason about the folly of it all, but as suddenly he changed his mind.  Outside a bugle blew.

“Go on down, Jason,” he said instead, “and follow the crowd—­ that’s chapel—­prayer-meeting,” he explained.

At the foot of the stairs the boy mingled with the youthful stream pouring through the wide doors of the chapel hall.  He turned to the left and was met by the smiling eyes of his new acquaintance, Burns, who waved him good-humoredly away: 

“This is the sophomore corner—­I reckon you belong in there.”

And toward the centre Jason went among the green, the countrified, the uneasy, and the unkempt.  The other half of the hall was banked with the faces of young girls—­fresh as flowers—­and everywhere were youth and eagerness, eagerness and youth.  The members of the faculty were climbing the steps to a platform and ranging themselves about the old gentleman with the crutches.  John Burnham entered, and the vault above rocked with the same barbaric yells that Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a mighty foot-ball player in his college days.  The old president rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in the race for which they were about to be let loose.  And that was just what the tense uplifted faces suggested to John Burnham—­he felt in them the spirit of the thoroughbred at the post, the young hound straining at the leash, the falcon unhooded for flight, when, at the president’s nod, he rose to his feet to speak to the host the welcome of the faculty within these college walls and the welcome of the Blue-grass to the strangers from the confines of the State—­particularly to those who had journeyed from their mountain homes.  “These young people from the hills,” he said, “for their own encouragement and for all patience in their own struggle, must always remember,