new visitors
generally notice and mention to Doctor Wells, its head.

But it is one thing to ride up to Ridgley School in an automobile from
the Hamilton Station with half a dozen other new Ridgleyites, some of
whom have already become your friends, and to get your first view of the
campus while cheerful voices are sounding in your ears, and quite
another thing to walk up the long winding road from the village alone
and to wonder as you come nearer and nearer to those neat white
buildings whether you will succeed in making any friends at all among
the fellows who have come up in the automobiles. Under those conditions
Ridgley School might seem cold and austere and full of unpleasant
possibilities.

That in fact was the situation of the newcomer who was walking swiftly
toward the white buildings one morning late in September. He was
entering upon an adventure that filled him with mingled excitement and
gloom--excitement because of the mystery of the new life opening before
him, gloom because of the necessity of giving up so much that had made
him happy in the past. He went directly to the office of the Head in the
building nearest the road and announced himself to Doctor Wells:

"I am Findley Holbrook."

Doctor Wells, whose face looked young in spite of the gray hair at his
temples, got up from his chair and shook hands gravely. "I'm glad to see
you, Findley," he said; "I hope you're going to like the school and that
the school will like you. We've assigned you to Gannett Hall; I'll have
one of the masters take you over and introduce you to the boys who've
already come. We don't do much to-day except get settled. Did you bring
your things?"

"My father is going to bring them up this noon," Findley replied. "I
thought I'd better come early to start in with the other fellows."

Doctor Wells put him in charge of Mr. Stevens, who took him over to
Gannett Hall, a three-story building with its ivy-covered front to the
campus and its back to the tennis courts. A dozen boys were standing on
the steps; they had been talking and laughing, but as the newcomer
approached them with the master, their voices died away and they paused
in their conversations. A black-haired boy, tall and heavily built,
immediately called out:

"Hello, Teeny-bits!"

The new boy recognized the one who had hailed him as Tracey Campbell,
who had been in the class above him in the public school at Greensboro.
"Teeny-bits" was the name by which Findl