It is the pleasant summer time, and on the college green groups of people hurry to and fro, some seeking their own pleasure beneath the grateful shade of the majestic elms, others wending their way to the hotel, while others still are hastening to the Center Church to hear the valedictory, which rumor says will be all the better received for the noble, manly beauty of the speaker chosen to this honor. Flushed with excitement, he stands before the people, his clear hazel eye wandering uneasily over the sea of upturned faces, as if in quest of one from whose presence he had hoped to catch his inspiration. But he looked in vain. Two figures alone met his view,—one a bent and gray-haired old man leaning on his staff, the other a mustached, stylish-looking youth of nearly his own age, who occupied a front seat, and with his glass coolly inspected the young orator. With a calm, dignified mien, Walter returned the gaze, wondering where he had seen that face before. Suddenly it flashed upon him, and with a feeling of gratified pride that it was thus they met again, he glanced a second time at the calm, benignant expression of the old man, who had come many miles to hear the speech his boy was to make. In the looks of the latter there was that which kindled a thrill of enthusiasm in Walter’s frame, and when at last he opened his lips, and the tide of eloquence burst forth, the audience hung upon his words with breathless interest, greeting him at the close with shouts of applause which shook the solid walls and brought the old man to his feet. Then the tumult ceased, and amid the throng the hero of the hour was seen piloting his aged grandfather across the green to the hotel. "I wish your father was here to-day," the deacon said, as they reached the public parlor; but before Walter could reply he saw approaching them the stranger who had so leisurely inspected him with his quizzing-glass, and who now came forward, offering his hand and saying, laughingly: "Allow me to congratulate you upon having become yourself a _lion_." It did not need this speech to tell Walter that his visitor was William Bellenger, and he answered in the same light strain: "Yes, I’m not afraid of the lion now;" "nor of the baboon, either," was his mental rejoinder, as he saw the wondrous amount of hair his cousin had brought back from Europe, where for the last two years he had been traveling.