When, above the sound of a tinkling piano, a young voice answered, "I'm coming!" she returned to her room, without expecting, however, that Richard would keep his promise at once. Walton College, on whose campus Mrs. Lister lived, of which her husband was president, and from which her only son was being graduated to-day, had not yet dreamed of being a "greater Walton." Satisfied with its own modest aims, it had not opened its eyes to that "wider vision" of religion and education and "service" which was to be loudly proclaimed by the next generation. Even games with other colleges were as yet unheard of; the students were still kept at their books and it was expected of them that they learn their lessons. Each was required to deliver an oration on Commencement Day, the first speaker saluting in old-fashioned English pronunciation _Auditores_, _Curatores_, _Professores_, and _Comites_, and making humorous allusions to _puellæ_. Only in admitting the daughters of the professors, and once an ambitious girl from the village, was the college a little ahead of its own times. Waltonville, like its college, belonged to an order which was elsewhere passing. Lying a little north of Mason and Dixon's line, it resembled in many pleasant ways a Southern town. The broad streets were quiet and thickly shaded and the houses were plainly built of red brick with noble white pillars. The young people gathered in the twilight and talked and sang; occasionally a group of students lifted their voices in _Integer Vitæ_ or "There's Music in the Air"; and those citizens who lived near the campus could hear a chanted "bonus-a-um" or "amo-amas-amat" from the room of the Latin professor, who was a stern drillmaster. Otherwise the village was as quiet as the country. The Civil War was still the chief topic of discussion among the older men. Dr. Lister, Dr. Scott, who was the teacher of English--Waltonville was careful about titles--and Dr. Green, the village physician, met many times in the long vacation and talked about Grant and Sherman and Lee. Dr. Lister had served a brief term at the end of the war; Dr. Scott had been too young to enlist, but had lost father and brothers; Dr. Green, who was still younger, had had no personal experience of war, nor, so far as any one knew, of its losses.