they had taken on the Midas touch of gold, for all green and gold that world of blue-grass was—­all green and gold, except for the shaggy unkempt fields where the king of weeds had tented the year before and turned them over to his camp followers—­ragweed, dockweed, white-top, and cockle-burr.  But the resentment against such an agricultural outrage that the boy had caught from John Burnham was no longer so deep, for that tobacco had kept his mother and himself alive and the father of his best friend must look to it now to save himself from destruction.  All the way Jason, walking leisurely, confidently, proudly, and with the fires of his ambition no less keen, thought of the green mountain boy who had torn across those fields at sunrise, that when “school took up” he might not be late—­thought of him with much humor and with no little sympathy.  When he saw the smoke cloud over the town he took to the white turnpike and quickened his pace.  Again the campus of the rival old Transylvania was dotted with students moving to and fro.  Again the same policeman stood on the same corner, but now he shook hands with Jason and called him by name.  When he passed between the two gray stone pillars with pyramidal tops and swung along the driveway between the maple-trees and chattering sparrows, there were the same boys with caps pushed back and trousers turned up, the same girls with hair up and hair down, but what a difference now for him!  Even while he looked around there was a shout from a crowd around John Burnham’s doorway; several darted from that crowd toward him and the crowd followed.  A dozen of them were trying to catch his hand at once, and the welcome he had seen Gray Pendleton once get he got now for himself, for again a pair of hands went high, a series of barbaric yells were barked out, and the air was rent with the name of Jason Hawn.  Among them Jason stood flushed, shy, grateful.  A moment later he saw John Burnham in the doorway—­ looking no less pleased and waiting for him.  Even the old president paused on his crutches for a handshake and a word of welcome.  The boy found himself wishing that Marjorie—­and Mavis—­ were there, and, as he walked up the steps, from out behind John Burnham Marjorie stepped—­proud for him and radiant.

And so, through that autumn, the rectangular, diametric little comedy went on between Marjorie and Jason in the Blue-grass and between Gray and Mavis in the hills.  No Saturday passed that Jason did not spend at his mother’s home or with John Burnham, and to the mother and Steve and to Burnham his motive was plain—­for most of the boy’s time was spent with Marjorie Pendleton.  Somehow Marjorie seemed always driving to town or coming home when Jason was on his way home or going to town, and somehow he was always afoot and Marjorie was always giving him a kindly lift one or the other way.  Moreover, horses were plentiful as barn-yard fowls on Morton Sanders’ farm, and the manager, John Burnham’s brother, who