“Can you direct me to Professor Gustav Langworth’s house?”

The student looked me over curiously.  But he was of the right sort.

“Certainly.  Come with me.  I’m going that way.  I’ll show you where it is....”

* * * * *

In silence we descended the hill....

“That house, in there a bit, under the trees ... that is where the professor lives.”

My knock set a dog barking inside ... the quick, insistent bark of a collie that romped against me, putting up its paws on me when the door was opened by a slim-bodied man of middle height.  The man was dressed in a grey suit ... he had a kindly, smooth-shaven face except for a close-cropped pepper-and-salt moustache ... and grey-blue, quizzical, but kindly eyes.

“Here, Laddie, come here!” called the voice of a frail, little woman whose hair was white like wool, and like wool in texture.  She sat crumpled up by an open gas fire of imitation logs.  She Was wry-backed, her right shoulder thrust out into a discernible hunch.

She flung her arm tenderly about the dog, when it came to her.  She was, I figured, the professor’s mother....  He held a hurried, whispered consultation with her—­after I had told him that studying his German book at Mt.  Hebron had impelled me to come to Laurel.  Which story I could see pleased and flattered him.

I was waiting in the storm porch.

He returned.  He thrust his hand into his pocket and fetched forth a two-dollar bill.

“Go downtown to one of the restaurants you will find on the main street.  You can get a square meal in one of them for a quarter or, at the most, fifty cents ... a bed for the same price ... climb the hill again in the morning, say about ten o’clock, and ask for me at the German Department ...  I am sorry I can’t invite you to stay here for the night ... but we have no room ...” and he glanced timidly at the woman whom I had taken to be his mother, but who, I afterward learned, was his wife.

* * * * *

I found a restaurant-hotel, as he had directed me, and procured my supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night ... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs thrown in for good measure.

In the morning, fried pork chops, pancakes and two cups of coffee—­and I set out for the hill.

The place buzzed with activity.  The fall term was already in full swing, and students poured in lines up and down both sides of the steep street that led to the college ... girls and boys both, for it was co-educational.  They were well dressed and jolly, as they moved in the keen windy sun of autumn.

I was not a part of this.  I felt like an outcast, but I bore myself with assumed independence and indifference.  I thought everybody was looking at me.  Most of them were.