It was the beginning of the college year, and Old Sheddon was settling into its stride. On the campus, between classes, two first-year men were heading for their rooms and a study period. Wally Dixon, the bigger of the two, was the one who asked the disgusted question about Larry Donovan. “Larry’s a good old scout,” said Dick Maxwell, dodging a small problem that he himself was unable to answer. “He’s a regular fellow, all right, when you come to know him.” “Know him?” roared Dixon; “I’d like for you to tell me how anybody ever gets to know him! Look at the way he acted after you, or somebody, got him out for the class scrap at the bridge. He was a pink winner that night, with the neat little Indian-fighter trick that he pulled, and everybody on the job knew it. But when some of us went to him the next day to find out which of the class offices he’d like to have handed him, he bluffed us cold!” “Don’t you go and lay that up against him,” Dick urged. “It’s――it’s just his way, you know.” “Well, if anybody should ask me often enough, I’d say it’s a mighty queer way. Acts as if he had a grouch against the world.” Dickie Maxwell, loyalest of chums, hardly knew what to say. Dixon was the son of a wealthy Kansas City packer, and Dick felt that it would be next to impossible to make him understand Larry’s attitude. For that matter, he, Dick, couldn’t understand it himself. Beginning with workmanlike contempt for what he called the “boys’-play” side of college life, Larry’s grouch, or indifference, or whatever it was, was developing into something a good bit like antagonism toward everything but the daily study grind, and what he could get out of that. “I’ll say he’s heading in to be a worm,” Dixon went on; “worm” being Sheddon slang for a fellow who scamps the college “activities” and lives and moves and has his being in the classrooms and study periods. “He’s ripping material for the athletic squad, and if he had even a whiff of college spirit he’d be showing up in the try-outs. You ought to labor with him, Maxie; he’s needing it.” The two parted at the campus gate, and when Dick reached his room at Mrs. Grant’s, he found Larry scowling over a problem in his trigonometry. “Chuck the grind and talk to me a few minutes,” was Dick’s greeting as he came in. Then: “You’re cutting all the athletic try-outs, Larry. What for?” Larry’s frown deepened. “I don’t see why I can’t make you understand,” he broke out half impatiently. “You, and most of the other fellows, I’d say, are here mostly to have a good time――or that’s the way it looks to me. I’m not. I’m here on borrowed money――no, hold on,” he protested, when Dick would have interrupted, “I know your father doesn’t look at it that way, but I do. And because it is borrowed money, I want to get the worth of it.”