he thought he would be willing to spend his days and nights searching for him.  There was neither justice nor fairness in it.  He had improved steadily, even Splinter acknowledged that he had, and had passed the required exam, and yet for the sake of the professor’s pettiness and the red tape of the college rules he must take another, and then if he should pass that he would be all right.  Bah!  Greek was bad enough, but Splinter was worse.  What kind of a man was he to put in charge of a lot of fellows with live blood in their veins, he’d like to know.  For his part he wished he was out of it.  Such things might do for kids, but it was too contemptible to think of for college students.

Foster wisely waited till the outburst had been ended and then said, “Well, Will, you’re up against it, whatever you say.  What are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it?  I’m going to pass that exam.  There isn’t any other way out.  I’ve got to do it! but that doesn’t make it any nicer for me, does it?”

“Splinter’s here and is likely to stay.  And if you and I are going to stay too, I suppose we’ll have to come to his tune.”

“I fancy—­you should hear Splinter say that.”

“Say what?”

“‘Fancy,’ only he calls it ‘fawncy’.  I ‘fawncy’ my father is dead right when he says that I’ll find a splinter everywhere and just as long as I live; but I don’t believe I’ll ever find one as bad as this one is.”

“He may be worse.  Don’t you remember that little bit of Eugene Field’s verse where he tells how when he was a boy he was sliding down hill with some other little chaps in front of the deacon’s house?  And how their yelling annoyed the deacon till at last he came out and sprinkled ashes on the path?  Well, Eugene said he always had found since that there was some one standing ready to throw ashes on his path, it didn’t seem to make any difference where he was.”

“I don’t remember, but it’s like my father’s words about finding splinters everywhere.  Oh, no, I’m mad about it, but I’m not running away.  I’m going to do it if that’s the thing to be done.”

And when a month had gone by Will had passed the examination, and was facing his work without the drag of work undone to hinder him.

The final influence had come one Sunday in the college chapel where the pulpit from week to week was occupied ("filled” was a word also occasionally used) by men of eminence, who were invited for the purpose of speaking to the college boys.  Some of these visitors by words, presence, and message were a great inspiration to the young men, and others were correspondingly deficient, for in the vocabulary of Winthrop there was no word by which to express the comparative degree.