If one chanced to examine the catalogues of Kingsbridge College for the past hundred years it would be found that in most of them is recorded the name of some dead and gone Deering—a name famous in the annals of the South—who came up from Louisiana, “marched through the four long happy years of college,” as the old song has it, with an arts degree to his credit; or, perchance, marched out at the end of one or two of them with nothing to his credit at all. Kingsbridge was a tradition in the Deering family, southern though it was—a tradition that was hardly broken, even when in 1861 Victor Deering and a hundred other chivalrous youths threw their text-books out of the windows and enlisted in the armies of the Confederacy. Victor’s father, Basil, too, was in the war, and laid down his arms at Appomattox as a brigadier-general—brevetted for gallantry on the field of action. For a while it seemed that no Deerings would go to Kingsbridge, but time at length healed the old antagonisms, and when it became a question where young Anthony, Victor’s boy, should go to college, there was no longer any question that Kingsbridge should be the place. Preparing for Kingsbridge, before the war, had meant going first for three or four years to Deal School, another Cæsarean seat of learning, almost as well known as the college itself. The warm-hearted old general had as fond memories of the school-topped, wind-swept hill above the rocks of Deal, as he had of the meadows and hills about Kingsbridge. There were a great many family counsels held in the old house on the bayou; some prejudices pocketed; some feminine qualms appeased and tears dried; and a great deal of correspondence was exchanged between the Head Master of Deal and the old General, who ruled his family to the third and fourth generation. And so at length on a bright crisp September morning, when he was about fifteen years old, Anthony Deering found himself getting out of the little way-train that runs from Coventry to Monday Port across the Cæsarean flats, and enquiring diligently for a hack to drive him out to Deal School. He had made the journey up from New Orleans alone, without a quaver until he came to his journey’s end. He was a day late for the opening of school, so that he was the only passenger to alight at Monday Port. A vociferous cabman offered him the services of a dilapidated fly and a bony horse. He looked about for better, but not finding them, he pulled his belt a trifle tighter, swallowed the lump in his throat, and quieted the man by thrusting his bag into his hand. Then he jumped into the crazy vehicle, and shouted in a high voice, “Deal School!”