As the silkworm draws its exquisite stuff from dowdy leaves, so youth finds beauty and mystery in stupid days. Carl went out unreservedly to practise with the football squad; he had a joy of martyrdom in tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bjorken, the coach, a former University of Minnesota star, told him that he might actually "make" the team in a year or two; that he had twice as much chance as Ray Cowles, who--while Carl was thinking only of helping the scrub team to win--was too engrossed in his own dignity as a high-school notable to get into the scrimmage. At the games, among the Gang on the bleachers, Carl went mad with fervor. He kept shooting to his feet, and believed that he was saving his country every time he yelled in obedience to the St. Vitus gestures of the cheer-leader, or sang "On the Goal-line of Plato" to the tune of "On the Sidewalks of New York." Tears of a real patriotism came when, at the critical moment of a losing game against the Minnesota Military Institute, with sunset forlorn behind bare trees, the veteran cheer-leader flung the hoarse Plato rooters into another defiant yell. It was the never-say-die of men who rose, with clenched hands and arms outstretched, to the despairing need of their college, and then--Lord! They hurled up to their feet in frenzy as Pete Madlund got away with the ball for a long run and victory.... The next week, when the University of Keokuk whipped them, 40 to 10, Carl stood weeping and cheering the defeated Plato team till his throat burned. He loved the laughter of the Turk, Mae Thurston's welcome, experiments in the physics laboratory. And he was sure that he was progressing toward the state of grace in which he might aspire to marry Gertie Cowles. He did not think of her every day, but she was always somewhere in his thoughts, and the heroines of magazine stories recalled some of her virtues to his mind, invariably. The dentist who had loved her had moved away. She was bored. She occasionally wrote to Carl. But she was still superior--tried to "influence him for good" and advised him to "cultivate nice people." He was convinced that he was going to become a lawyer, for her sake, but he knew that some day he would be tempted by the desire to become a civil or a mechanical engineer. * * * * * A January thaw. Carl was tramping miles out into the hilly country north of Plato. He hadn't been able to persuade any of the Gang to leave their smoky loafing-place in the Turk's room, but his own lungs demanded the open. With his heavy boots swashing through icy pools, calling to an imaginary dog and victoriously running Olympic races before millions of spectators, he defied the chill of the day and reached Hiawatha Mound, a hill eight miles north of Plato.