Clem returned to school the day before the beginning of the Fall term to find Alton looking sun-smitten and feeling exceedingly hot. The air, after the fresh, sweet breezes of the Berkshires, seemed stale and stifling, although when the cab had borne him past the business section of the town and residences surrounded by lawns and gardens and shaded by trees had taken the place of brick blocks there was a perceptible change for the better. It had been a dry summer and the campus showed it as Clem was hurried up Meadow street. The trees looked droopy and the grass parched. The buildings lined across the brow of the campus had a deserted appearance, with only here and there a window open to the faint stir of air. He almost wished he had waited until to-morrow. The cab swerved to the right, proceeded a short distance along the gravel and stopped with a sudden setting of squeaking brakes in front of the first building. Clem helped the driver upstairs with the trunk, their feet echoing hollowly in the empty corridors. Number 15 was hot and close, and Clem sent the two windows banging up even before he paid the cabman. When the latter had gone clattering down again Clem removed his jacket and looked speculatively about him. The old room looked sort of homelike, after all, he concluded. He was glad that Mart had decided to leave his furnishings and pictures for the present. Jim Todd’s possessions up in Number 29, as Clem recalled them, were few and more useful than ornamental! Of course, Clem could have spread his own pictures and things about a bit more, but they’d probably have looked sort of thin. He opened the door of Mart’s closet and the drawers of his chiffonier and sighed as he saw what a deal of truck there was to be packed. However, he had the rest of the afternoon and most of the morning for his task. He routed a packing-case of Mart’s from the basement store-room, tugged it up to the room and started to work. At five o’clock he had made the disconcerting discovery that Mart’s clothing and books and small possessions, which had seemed to bulk so large before, wouldn’t fill the big box more than three-quarters full, and had thrown himself into a chair to consider the fact and cool off when footsteps sounded below the window and then came nearer up the stairs. Then a voice sounded. “You up there, Clem?” “Yes! Come on up!” “Saw your window open,” panted Lowell Woodruff as he came in, looking very warm, “and thought you must be up here. How are you?” The two shook hands, and Lowell subsided on the window-seat. “What’s brought you back so early?” Clem pointed to the packing-case. “Mart’s not coming back this fall, and I’ve got the job of getting his stuff packed up and shipped home to him.” “Oh! Yes, I heard he was off to the Continong, lucky brute! What price a winter on the Riviera, eh? Some guys get it soft! Who’s coming in here with you?” “A chap named Todd. You know him, I guess. He’s in our class.”