Ever since he could read he had been told that youth was the happiest time in life, and he had come to the conclusion that it must be so. He did not like the idea of giving it up. He had become well settled where he was, and had just gotten rid of a persistent siege of kid-pessimism--of which he was now very much ashamed--and was just beginning to realize what a big, beautiful, real thing friendship was, and now--Jack and Timber and Billy and Red, where would they all be in three days' time? It seemed pretty sudden, this thing of breaking up. And there was very little comfort to him in the thought of coming back next year. What would the old place be without the old class. He did not like to think about it. It struck the class as a pretty joke for Jimmie Linton to bob up and win a fellowship. "How did you happen to do it?" said Tucker, on the way out of church. "I didn't know you had any brains." "Didn't you?" said Linton; "I've quite a lot of them. And I worked like a good little boy for that fellowship; but nobody will give me any credit for it. They all know that if Dougal hadn't been too busy with other things, I would have had no show." He was quite right. There was nothing modest in this. Dougal Davis had about as good powers of acquisition as anyone graduated since the time of Aaron Burr. Political science was not strictly in Linton's line. He wrote things for the Lit., and elected all the English courses. He was a great browser in Elizabethan literature, and when he dabbled in verse this was evident. One of the exchanges once called him a nineteenth century Herrick. Linton felt right pleased, and wrote something nice about the University of Virginia man that said it in the next Lit., and also made it an excuse to give one of his famous spreads. You would have expected him to go in for an English fellowship, if for any. But he did not go in for any deliberately. He was not in the habit of studying his courses more than enough to get through the examinations, except when he ran across something he was interested in, or a professor he liked. There are many excuses for laziness. In Political Economy, and such subjects, he liked the lecturer very much, and he found himself becoming interested in the primitive man, and the origin of society, and all that. The farther he went in the course, the more interested he became. He went to the library, and often walked past the Elizabethan alcove. Next he began buying the books, because he liked to feel that he owned them, and rub them up against his cheek, and he soon had a shelf full of Bagehot and big, thick Sir Henry Maine and others. Then because he had never done anything serious during his course, and because he knew it would please his people and amuse the fellows, he announced his intention of trying for the Political Science fellowship. There was no one else in for it.