When they were back at school Joe proceeded enthusiastically with his skating education. Fortunately there was cold weather from New Year’s Day on and plenty of hard ice. Confidence begets confidence, and Joe progressed, but he would never have thought of trying for hockey if Hal hadn’t suggested it. Hal was on the school team, and so was Bert Madden, and although Bert was rather less insistent than Hal, between them they finally persuaded Joe to try for the position of goal tend with the second team. Joe won the position after a bare fortnight of competition with Mac Torrey. In February he ousted Hendricks from in front of the first team’s cage, for, although Joe was still far from a really good skater, he could keep his feet under him remarkably when defending goal, had an almost miraculous ability to judge shots and stop them and could, and did, fight like a wildcat when his net was assailed. In the first game against Munson he did his share toward keeping the score as low as it was, and, although Holman’s returned to Warrensburg defeated, it was generally acknowledged that Munson’s 14 points might well have been 20 had a less able goal tend than Joe been on the job. And the final Munson contest found Joe working even better under more trying circumstances. Joe, though, was not the real hero of that strange game. The real hero was――but let Alonzo Jones speak. * * * * * To be quite frank, I was not pleased when, on returning to Holman’s in September, I found that faculty had put Pender in with me in Number 19 Puffer. Arthur Pugsby and I had arranged, as we believed, for Pug to move down from 32, where he wasn’t quite contented for the reason that the fellow he roomed with, Pete Swanson, wasn’t at all Pug’s sort. Swanson was absolutely all right, you understand, but he and Pug had very little in common, Swanson being rather a sporting chap and Pug caring for the scholarly side of life. Pug and I were extremely sympathetic, sharing many enthusiasms in common, such as Shelley and Keats and Walter Pater; also chess and anagrams. We even had similar tastes in food and drink, both being very fond of pastry and both preferring grape nuts to chopped walnuts on our sundaes. So, of course, we were both disappointed when we found that our plan had fallen through, and that Pug had to remain with an alien spirit like Swanson and that I was doomed to companionship with a stranger, which, of course, Pender then was. But life is filled with disappointments which, however, may frequently be made less poignant by a cheerful fortitude.