Barry didn’t wait for the conductor’s announcement. He was at the car door before the little Connecticut village came into sight. There was a glimpse of South Street, shaded, asleep in the afternoon sunshine, and then the freight-shed interposed a blank yellow countenance. Barry shifted the light overcoat on his arm――he had wanted to put it in the trunk, but his mother, suspicious of September in the hills, had overruled him――and picked up his suit-case just as the conductor bawled past him, into the hot, dusty interior: “Wessex! Wessex! Change for Sanborn Mills, Mount Sippick, and Alden! _We-e-essex!_” The station threw a welcome shadow and the train stopped. Barry descended, his brown eyes alight, a smile, slightly shy, already curving his lips. Others, crowding about him, sent him deeper into the shade of the platform, his gaze still questing. At least a score of boys had alighted, and these, mingling with almost as many previous occupants of the platform, made for sound and confusion. Friends parted since June sighted one another with loud hails and plowed determinedly toward a reunion, heedless of all between. No one, however, took notice of the fifteen-year-old boy who, puzzled and disappointed, still viewed the fast thinning throng. He was worth notice, too. Very straight he was, and rather slender; although the slenderness suggested the process of development rather than the lack of it. He had brown hair, and eyes that may have been intended to match it but didn’t because they were very much warmer in tone. Rather arresting eyes they were, and perhaps the best feature of a countenance which, while in no way suggesting the classic beauty of Apollo, was undeniably attractive. The nose was a perfectly good nose, but you had to stop there; and the mouth was all right, too, and had a nice smile; and there was the usual chin and forehead, and a coating of tan, and――well, that’s about all there is to tell――and I haven’t made you see John Barry Locke as he really looked, after all. I fancy it was Barry’s expression rather than his features that made folks warm to him and want to know him and do nice things for him, and expressions are difficult to portray in print. Perhaps the simplest way to describe him is to say that Barry looked, in his boyishly eager yet shy fashion, as though he were ready to like everybody else! Yes, I think that was the secret of his attraction――just friendliness. And yet there was something beyond that, too; something promised in those deep-brown eyes that looked at one so straightly. Maybe it was loyalty.