“Well,” Joe said, “I admire the faith of you.  And I want to join.  You know, although I’m a mighty green hand at religious work, I’ve got to go at it hard.  There’s a reason.  So please count me in on everything where I’m likely to fit at all.  I didn’t tell you, did I, that I’m headed for medicine?—­going to be a missionary doctor, if they’ll take me when I’m ready.  Maybe your Foundation can do something with me.”

Barnard thought it could, and the next two years justified his confidence.  Joe Carbrook, as downright in his new purpose as he had been in his old scornful refusal to look at life seriously, quickly found a place for himself in the church and the other activities of the Foundation.  It saved him from his first heedless resolution to study an impossible number of hours a day, and from the certain crash which would have followed.  It gave him not a few friends, and he was soon deep in the affairs of the League and the church.  Besides, it made possible some special friendships among the faculty, which were to be of immense value in later days.

While Joe Carbrook was fitting himself into the life of the University and the Wesley Foundation, the chums at Cartwright were quite as busy making themselves a part of their new world.  As always, they made a good team, so much so that people began to think of them not as individuals, but as necessarily related, like a pair of shoes, or collar and tie, or pork and beans.  And, though the old differences of temperament and interest had not lessened, the two had reached a fine contentment over each other’s purposes.  J.W. was happy in Marty’s preacher-plans, and Marty believed implicitly in the wisdom of J.W.’s understood purpose to be a forthright Christian layman.

But it was not all plain sailing for J.W.  Nobody bothered Marty; he was going into the ministry, and that settled that.  Among the students who went in for religious work were several who could not quite share Marty’s complacence over J.W.’s program.  They thought it strange that so active a Christian, with the right stuff in him, as everybody recognized, should not declare himself for some religious vocation.

And from time to time men came to college—­bishops, secretaries, specialists—­to talk to the students about this very thing.  There was a student volunteer band, in which were enrolled all the students looking to foreign mission work.  The prospective preachers had a club of their own, and there was even a little organized group of boys and girls who thought seriously of social service in some form or another as a career.

Now, J.W., before the end of sophomore year, had come to know all, or nearly all, of these young enthusiasts.  Some of them developed into staunch and satisfying friends.  If he had run with the sport crowd, which was always looking for recruits, or if he had been merely a hard student, working for Phi Beta Kappa, he might have been let alone.  But, without being able to wear an identifying label, he yet belonged with those who had come to college with a definite life purpose.