To one at least of the audience the mass meeting had been an event of momentous interest. Kendall Burtis, squeezed into a seat in the very last row of settees, had followed the course of events with rapt attention. To Kendall it was wonderful, even miraculous, for of all the sixty-odd boys who had entered Yardley Hall School that day none, I think, was as proud and happy as he. Kendall was a boy whose dream had come true. There had been a time, only four years ago, when Kendall’s ambition, so far as schooling was concerned, extended no further than graduation at the Roanoke High School. Even that had seemed a good deal to hope for, for Kendall’s folks were not very well off and there were times in the spring and fall when his services on the farm were badly needed and when tramping into Roanoke to school savored of desertion. Had it not been for his mother Kendall would have missed far more school than he did. Mrs. Burtis wanted him to have what she called “a real education,” and many a time Kendall would have remained at home to drop potatoes or swing along behind a cultivator had she not interfered. Then had come a year when all through the Aroostook Country of Maine the potato crop had been an almost total failure. That failure had spelled ruin to more than one grower, and while Farmer Burtis had been in shape to weather the storm, it had proved a hard blow to him financially, and when Mrs. Burtis, casting about for some way in which to add to the slender account at the Roanoke Bank, had suggested taking summer boarders, Kendall’s father had, after a good deal of hesitation, acquiesced. The result was a small advertisement in a Boston paper, an advertisement that bore fruit in the shape of four healthy, hungry, brown-skinned college boys. That had been a wonderful summer for Kendall. He had been only “going on twelve” then, but he was large for his age, and old, too, and the collegians had made a good deal of him and he had had the best time of his life. He had acted as guide on fishing and tramping excursions, had driven them to and from Roanoke, two miles away, and had listened in wondering and delighted awe to their happy-go-lucky talk and banter. “Where are you going to school, kid?” they had asked him one day. And Kendall had told them that he hoped to finish at the high school if he wasn’t wanted too badly on the farm. “High school!” they had scoffed. “That will never do! Go to a boarding school, Kid; that’s what you want to do.” But when it came to a question of which boarding school, they couldn’t agree. Two of them said Yardley Hall and two of them said Hillton. But when it came to college they were quite agreed. There was nothing to it but Yale. “No matter where you go to school,” declared the biggest one, whose name was Dana, “come to Yale. There may be more than one prep school, kid, but there’s only one college, and Yale’s it!”