on the
style of crossing adopted by chance wayfarers. The stakes were five
cents a corner. Frank backed the class who took the thing at one bound;
"Peg" laid his coin on those who went over on their tiptoes, trying not
to spring the plank into the water. For every one who did neither, but
walked around the puddle, five cents a corner went into the tobacco
fund. It was just as good as matching nickels and involved less
exertion.

There is a theory in the Hall that you can tell a man's habits by the
rooms he occupies there. The nearer he gets to the corner fronting on
the baseball field, the more sociable is his nature. Those who hold the
rooms at that corner or on the second or third floors, so as to be in
easy hail of anyone coming in at the back entrance, are Public
Characters. Their apartments are reception rooms in very truth. It has
never been explained why Encina does not sag at that end, like an
excursion steamer on the side toward a boat race. If, on the other hand,
you believe you have a Mission, or if you are a Dig, rooming in the Hall
because it is convenient to the Quad, then you dwell in "Faculty Row,"
away off to the east, where the early sun pulls you out in time to put
the finishing touches to your Latin, and where there is no trafficking
to and from the Quad to disturb your evening study.

It was said that Frank Lyman was the only man at the Quadrangle end of
the Hall who ever made much pretense of studying. By the same token the
keepers of the college tradition alleged that he alone of all the gang
stood high in the opinion of the Faculty. It was a way he had. He stood
well with everybody.

If they had taken the trouble to investigate, those who wondered at his
ability both to loaf much and to study much, at his scholarship dwelling
alongside of his popularity, they might have found that he kept the two
things in harmony by a marvelous system. The gang dwelt in his room,
made it their hang-out, but only just so long; when the hour arrived for
Lyman's study-time, they vanished away mysteriously, took the hint
conveyed in some fashion, no one ever knew how, and were gone.

To the under-classmen, Lyman was an object of healthy awe. Older than
the average senior, he had been already in the larger world. His opinion
of things had especial value even in his Junior year. After the football
season, when he had been acknowledged the keenest manager the college
had ever found, the under-classmen had a blind f