e. It had
brought him the rifle. He snuggled down under it on cold winter
nights, tumbled out from under it on cold winter mornings, and went
his happy-go-lucky way, regardless of what it might have said to him
if he had had ears to hear. Then, when, worn and faded by many
washings, it outgrew its usefulness as he outgrew his boyhood, one
spring morning his mother packed it carefully away in folds of old
linen and lavender.

It was toward the middle of John Marshall's freshman year at college.
The boy "all wriggle and racket" was a strong, athletic young fellow
now, still with the same propensities of his restless boyhood. His
overflowing animal spirits made him a jolly companion, and he found
himself popular from the start. There was no need now for petty
economies in the Marshall homestead. Business had been prosperous
since that one hard winter when Johnny made patchwork to pay for his
gun, and he found himself now with as liberal an allowance as any one
in his class.

"I'm in for having a royal good time," he wrote to Rhoda, who was
home-keeper now, for it had been two years since her mother's death,
and Rhoda had done her best to fill the vacant place to them all. "And
you needn't preach to me, Sis," he wrote. "I'm all right, and I'm not
going to get into the trouble which you cheerfully predict. I shall
not get into any scrapes that I can't skin out of; but a fellow would
be a fool who didn't squeeze as much fun as possible out of his
college life."

As he was finishing this letter, three students, who were foremost in
all the fun going, came tumbling unceremoniously into his room. "Say,
you there, Marshall," cried the first one, "hustle up and get ready
for a lark to-night. You know that Sophomore Wilson, the long-faced
fellow the boys call Squills? He's rooming in the old Baptist
parsonage away out on the edge of town. It's vacant now, and they're
glad to let him have a room free for the sake of somebody to guard the
premises. We've found that he will be out to-night, sitting up with a
sick frat., so we've planned to borrow the parsonage in his absence to
give a swell dinner. Tingley and Jones will visit several hen-roosts
in our behalf, and we'll roast the fowls in the parsonage stove. If
you'll just set up the champagne, Jacky, my boy, we'll be 'Yours for
ever, little darling,' and we'll gamble on the green of the defunct
parson's study table 'till morning doth appear.'"

He took out a new deck of cards