When it was ready for mailing he walked to the window and looked out. It really was clearing! Even as he looked, the sun broke through for a moment and shone weakly on the damp field and the running track beyond. He felt a good deal better now and he wished he had gone to Banning with the others. Well, he hadn’t, and rather than moon around in that chilly room he would slip on an old suit and take a walk. Possibly he would meet the crowd coming back later. He changed from his Sunday attire to an old pair of knickerbockers, a sweater, golf stockings, old shoes and a cap and set forth, proceeding first to the mail box in front of Academy Hall and getting rid of his letter. Stacey Ross hailed him from a third-story window of Lykes as he made his way past toward the athletic field, and he stopped and exchanged badinage for a moment, declining Stacey’s invitations, the first of which was to “Come on up,” and the second to “Go to the dickens!” He knew that the river lay somewhere to the west and not more than a mile distant, and he set out to find it. His way led him across the athletic field and over the stone wall that bounded it and so into a meadow that descended gradually to a winding fringe of woods a quarter of a mile away. Whether the woods hid the river he didn’t know. It didn’t seem likely, however, for he had a notion that the stream was quite a considerable one: in fact, it must be if the railroad was building a large and expensive bridge across it some two miles further inland! Before he reached the woods he had thrice been ankle-deep in water, but it was only marsh water and the trees, he found, hid only a narrow and shallow brook. By this time the sun was really out, although not very brightly, and the woods and the stream, with its mossy stones and bordering ferns, looked very pretty. He wondered if there were any trout there, and pursued it for some little distance looking for likely holes. When he had satisfied himself that no respectable trout would deign to live in such a brook he made his way across it by jumping from stone to stone, only once missing, and went on through an alder growth on the other side. When he emerged he was at the foot of a second meadow interspersed with outcropping ledges and clumps of white birches and maples and wild cherry trees. Afar at the left, near where the road presumably wound, was a farm with a white dwelling and a red barn and many comical haycocks that looked golden in the sunlight. Ahead of him a stone wall crossed the summit of the field, pricked out at intervals with spindling cedars whose somber foliage stood darkly against the clearing sky. The September sun, freeing itself from the clouds, shone warmly in Willard’s face as he went on up the rise. When he reached the wall he saw the river below him, a broad, curving ribbon of blue. But it was a good half-mile away yet, and he sat himself on the wall to rest before going on.