Outside, in the roadway, by the steps, waited a long, incongruous line of vehicles, scraped together from every stable in the countryside, forty-odd. A few buggies for nabobs in the Upper House, two-seated rigs (holding eight), country buckboards, excursion wagons to be filled according to capacity at twenty-five cents the trip, hacks from Trenton, and the regulation stage-coach--all piled high with bags and suitcases, waiting for the bell that would start them on the scramble for the Trenton station, five miles away. At the horses' heads the lazy negroes lolled, drawing languid puffs from their cigarettes, unconcerned. Suddenly the bell rang out, and the supine teamsters, galvanising into life, jumped to their seats. The next moment, down the steps, pell-mell, scrambling and scuffling, swarming over the carriages, with joyful clamour, the school arrived. In an instant the first buggies were off, with whips frantically plied, disputing at a gallop the race to Trenton. Then the air was filled with shouts. "Where's Butsey?" "Oh, you, Red Dog!" "Where's my bag?" "Jump in!" "Oh, we'll never get there!" "Drive on!" "Don't wait!" "Where's Jack?" "Hurry up, you loafer!" "Hurry up, you butter-fingers!" "Get in!" "Pile in!" "Haul him in!" "We're off!" "Hurrah!" Wagon after wagon, crammed with joyful boyhood, disappeared in a cloud of dust, while back returned a confused uproar of broken cheers, snatches of songs, with whoops and shrieks for more speed dominating the whole. The last load rollicked away to join the mad race, where far ahead a dozen buggies, with foam-flecked horses, vied with one another, their youthful jockeys waving their hats, hurling defiance back and forth, or shrieking with delight as each antagonist was caught and left behind. The sounds of striving died away, the campus grew still once more. The few who had elected to wait until after luncheon scattered hurriedly about the circle and disappeared in the houses, to fling last armfuls into the already bursting trunks. On top of Memorial steps the Great Big Man remained, solitary and marooned, gazing over the fields, down the road to Trenton, where still the rising dust-clouds showed the struggle toward vacation. He stood like a monument, gazing fixedly, struggling with all the might of his twelve years to conquer the awful feeling of homesickness that came to him. Homesickness--the very word was an anomaly: what home had he to go to? An orphan without ever having known his father, scarcely remembering his mother in the hazy reflections of years, little Joshua Tibbets had arrived at the school at the beginning of the winter term, to enter the shell,[1] and gradually pass through the forms in six or seven years. The boys of the Dickinson, after a glance at his funny little body and his plaintive, doglike face, had baptised him the "Great Big Man" (Big Man for short), and had elected him the child of the house.