I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population and convulsed the other half.  Austen went to the college which his father had attended,—­a college of splendid American traditions,—­and his career there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance and catholicity.  Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more than once to talk the matter over with the president, who had been his classmate there.

“I love that boy, Hilary,” the president had said at length, when pressed for a frank opinion,—­“there isn’t a soul in the place, I believe, that doesn’t,—­undergraduates and faculty,—­but he has given me more anxious thought than any scholar I have ever had.”

“Trouble,” corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.

“Well, yes, trouble,” answered the president, smiling, “but upon my soul, I think it is all animal spirits.”

“A euphemism for the devil,” said Hilary, grimly; “he is the animal part of us, I have been brought up to believe.”

The president was a wise man, and took another tack.

“He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it.  Every once in a while he takes your breath away—­but he has to become interested.  A few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me about a discussion of Austen’s in constitutional law.  Hays, you know, is not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain as he has come across in his experience.  But since then, I am bound to admit,” added the president, sadly, “Austen seems not to have looked at a lesson.”

“‘Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,’” replied Hilary.

“He’ll sober down,” said the president, stretching his conviction a little, “he has two great handicaps:  he learns too easily, and he is too popular.”  The president looked out of his study window across the common, surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian lads played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from the tall pine staff.  The green was covered now with students of a conquering race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory baseball game.  “I verily believe,” said the president, “at a word from your son, most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad expedition that came into his mind.”

Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton.  It meant nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.

“The mad expedition” came at length in the shape of a fight with the townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader.  If he had inherited his mother’s eccentricities, he had height and physique from the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary.  Another result was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were not a trustee.  Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company.  More of him later.  He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more lumber than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the receptacle of all the vices.