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.

Will Phelps had regularly attended the services, not only because such
attendance was required by the college authorities but also from the
habit and inclination of his own life. With his fellows he had enjoyed
some speakers and had disliked others in his thoughtless manner, and in
the preceding week had laughed as heartily as any one over the
unconscious escapade of Mott. The preacher for the day had been
unusually prosy, having length without much breadth or thickness as
Foster had dryly described the discourse, and in the midst of the hour,
Mott had fallen asleep in his pew. Short and stout in figure, doubtless
doubly wearied by the late hours he had kept the preceding night, in the
midst of his slumbers he had begun to snore. From low and peaceful
intonations he had passed on to long, prolonged, and sonorous notes that
could be heard throughout the college chapel. Nor would any one of his
fellows disturb his slumbers, and when at last with an unusually loud
and agonizing gasp Mott was awakened and suddenly sat erect and stared
stupidly about him, the good-hearted, but boyishly irreverent audience,
it is safe to affirm, was decidedly more interested in the slumbering
sophomore than in the soporific speaker, though few doubtless thought
them related as cause and effect.

On the following Sunday Will was thinking of Mott's experience and
wondering if he would give another exhibition. This thought was even in
his mind when the