Neil studied the football captain with some interest.  He saw a tall and fairly heavy youth, with well-set head and broad shoulders.  He looked quite as fast on his feet as rumor credited him with being, and his dark eyes, sharp and steady in their regard, suggested both courage and ability to lead.  His other features were strong, the nose a trifle heavy, the mouth usually unsmiling, the chin determined, and the forehead, set off by carefully brushed dark-brown hair, high and broad.  After the first few moments of conversation Devoe devoted his attention principally to Neil, questioning him regarding Gardiner’s coaching methods, about Neil’s experience on the gridiron, as to what studies he was taking up.  Occasionally he included Paul in the conversation, but that youth discovered, with surprise and chagrin, that he was apparently of much less interest to Devoe than was Neil.  After a while he dropped out of the talk altogether, save when directly appealed to, and sat silent with an expression of elaborate unconcern.  At the end of half an hour Devoe arose.

“I must be getting on,” he announced.  “I’m glad we’ve had this talk, and I hope you’ll both come over some evening and call on me; I’m in Morris, No. 8.  We’ve got our work cut out this fall, and I hope we’ll all pull together.”  He smiled across at Paul, evidently unaware of having neglected that young gentleman in his conversation.  “Good-night.  Four o’clock to-morrow is the hour.”

“I never met any one that could ask more questions than he can,” exclaimed Neil when Devoe was safely out of hearing.  “But I suppose that’s the way to learn, eh?”

Paul yawned loudly and shrugged his shoulders.

“Funny he should have come just when we were talking about him, wasn’t it?” Neil pursued.  “What do you think of him?”

“Well, if you ask me,” Paul answered, “I think he’s a conceited, stuck-up prig!”

CHAPTER IV

NEIL MAKES ACQUAINTANCES

Neil’s and Paul’s college life began early the next morning when, sitting side by side in the dim, hushed chapel, they heard white-haired Dr. Garrison ask for them divine aid and guidance.  Splashes and flecks of purple and rose and golden light rested here and there on bowed head and shoulders or lay in shafts across the aisles.  From where he sat Neil could look through an open window out into the morning world of greenery and sunlight.  On the swaying branch of an elm that almost brushed the casement a thrush sang sweet and clear a matin of his own.  Neil made several good resolutions that morning there in the chapel, some of which he profited by, all of which he sincerely meant.  And even Paul, far less impressionable than his friend, looked uncommonly thoughtful all the way back to their room, a way that led through the elm-arched nave of College Place and across the common with its broad expanses of sun-flecked sward and its simple granite shaft commemorating the heroes of the civil war.