But there was something else that Kendall was yet more grateful for, and as he stood there at the top of the steps and let his gaze wander over the scene before him, he realized it anew. He was very grateful to his father, who, by more than one sacrifice, had found the money for Kendall’s second year at Yardley. There had been a time during the summer when the boy’s chances of returning to school had looked pretty slim. It had been a bad summer for potatoes, and up in Aroostook County, Maine, where the Burtis farm was, a failure of the potato crop spelled trouble. It had been not until almost a fortnight before the commencement of the Fall Term that Kendall had been quite certain of returning to Yardley, and he very well knew that back home more than one comfort would be dispensed with the coming Winter that he might keep on with his education. And he had made up his mind that none of the money spent on him should be wasted. He meant to study hard and learn all he could this year, for it might be his last. He had resolved to win a scholarship if hard work would do it. There was the Gordon Scholarship which rebated the entire tuition fee, or, failing that, there remained four Sidney Scholarships of eighty dollars. One of the five Kendall meant to win. From where he stood, Long Island Sound, blue and still, stretched east and west, visible over the tops of the trees which ran for nearly a half-mile between the school grounds and the shore. The buildings circled about the edge of a plateau down which a well-kept roadway dropped to the meadow lands below and wound westward to the little village of Wissining, to the river beyond, and, finally, to the small city of Greenburg beyond that. The river flowed down from behind the school property, a placid tidal stream which in fair weather was usually alive with boats and canoes. There were six school buildings, four of them, Clarke, Whitson, Dudley and Merle, dormitories, one of them, Oxford, given over to recitation rooms, library, assembly hall, the Office, the Principal’s living quarters and the rooms of the two school societies, Cambridge and Oxford. Beyond Merle Hall, the dormitory for the Preparatory Class boys, was the Kingdon Gymnasium, completing the line. Between the gymnasium and the river lay the athletic grounds. Here were the tennis courts, the baseball and football fields, the hockey rink in winter, the quarter-mile cinder track and the boathouse and floats. The golf links began nearby and wandered away along the curving stream, uphill and down.