Yardley Hall School ended its Fall Term that year on the twenty-first of December, after breakfast, and by nine o’clock the hill was deserted and the little station at Wissining presented a crowded and busy appearance as at least three-quarters of the school’s three hundred and odd students strove to purchase tickets, to check baggage and to obtain a vantage point near the edge of the platform from which to pile breathlessly into the express and so make certain of a seat for the ensuing two-hour journey to New York. A few of the fellows, who were to travel in the other direction, were absent, for the east-bound train left nearly an hour later, but they weren’t missed from that seething, noisy crowd. Of course much the same thing happened three times each year, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the hopeless, helpless manner in which the station officials strove to meet the requirements of the situation. Long after the express, making a special stop at Wissining, whistled warningly down the track, boys were still clamoring at the ticket window and clutching at the frantic baggage master. How every one got onto the train, and how all the luggage, piled on four big trucks, was tossed into the baggage car in something under eighty seconds was a marvel. From the windows of the parlor cars and day coaches wondering countenances peered out at the unusual scene, and as the first inrush of boys invaded the good car _Hyacinth_ a nervous old lady seized her reticule and sat on it, closed her eyes, folded her hands and awaited the worst! Toby Tucker, a rather more presentable citizen than the one who had received Orson Crowell in Number 22 Whitson last evening, was one of the first to claim sanctuary in the _Hyacinth_. This was not due to his own enterprise so much as to the fact that a slightly bigger youth had taken him by the shoulders and, using him as a battering-ram, had cleaved a path from platform to vestibule. Toby did not ordinarily travel in parlor cars, but this morning his objections had been overruled, and presently he found himself, somewhat dishevelled and out of breath, seated in a revolving chair upholstered in uncomfortably scratchy velvet with an ancient yellow valise on his knees. “Put that thing down,” laughed the occupant of the next chair, pushing his own more modern suit-case out of the aisle. “Gee, that was a riot, wasn’t it? Here we go!” The train started and Toby, not a little excited, saw the station move past the broad window, caught a final fleeting glimpse of the village and then found the river beneath them. A minute later the express roared disdainfully through Greenburg and set off in earnest for New Haven and New York. “Two whole weeks of freedom!” exulted his companion. “No more Latin, no more math, no more English comp――”