Hayward had forgotten he was a lackey, had forgotten he was a negro, had forgotten he was anything save a Harvard man proud of his college, proclaiming her fair record with love and joy, confident in himself as one of her sons.... "As a man thinketh. so is he." ... The occasion was trivial, but the transforming power of thought, its triumph over circumstance, was strikingly evidenced in the footman’s face. Helen noted that his bearing had lost every trace of conventional or conscious servility, that he looked easily and confidently _a man_, calling no man master. After harrying Captain Jimmie enough to pay off all old scores they gave him good-bye with a final yell for the crimson, and turned the launch for home. In the run back Helen had her first opportunity to notice the pennant. It was not hers. "Hayward, whose flag is this?" "Mine, Miss Helen. I could not find your mother quickly, and I brought that to save time." She looked from the flag to the negro. A nebulous idea floated through her mind, and she tried to fix it, but it was too elusive. She put Nell and Nancy off at their landings, and tried to grasp the intangible explanation that was hovering about her brain. It was characteristic of her to prefer working out her own answers to looking at them in the back of the book. Finally, however, she decided she did not have a full statement of the problem. "When did you go to Harvard, Hayward?" she ventured. "Class of 191-, Miss Helen." "191-. Then you did not finish. The battle of Valencia was—" "No, Miss Helen, I did not finish: but I understand two others of my class who volunteered were passed on the spring term’s work and graduated by a special resolution of the Overseers. I think I will apply for my diploma sometime—if I need it." Hayward spoke lightly, but his last words brought to Helen the same question which had occurred to her so often in the last year since she had discovered in him her father’s rescuer. They only made the question more insistent. He was a Harvard man,—to Helen’s mind a title of all excellence and dignity. That explained much. His intelligence, even his physical grace and soldierly courage, seemed to fit naturally into that character. But why a flunkey?—shirking higher duties and the honours that pertained to his degree, careless of the evidence of his scholarly merit, putting aside the rewards of his soldierly heroism. "Do you care nothing for everything, Hayward?—except this flag? You seem to have valued it." "It is the one possession dearest to my heart," he answered in simple truth, and then showed the first faint trace of embarrassment she had ever seen him exhibit. "Yes, you have loved the Harvard pennant but concealed your Harvard lineage. You champion Harvard’s name enthusiastically against Jimmie Radwine’s gibes, but you affect to be careless of Harvard’s diploma. You carry the Harvard culture, and yet—you choose to be a footman."