There was something in it. A great deal more teaching than he or any of the others knew was in the flag, the starry flag of freedom, that was carried at the head of the parade-ground battalion; that was displayed in the larger rooms of the House; that hung over the principal’s platform in the schoolroom; and that so finely ornamented the handsome lecture room in the main building. It had something to do with the other teachings and with some of the traditions that passed around among the boys. How some had gone out from that place to be sailors in the navy; others to be soldiers and even officers in the army; and how that and everything else, to them and all other boys, depended on good behavior. Jim was thinking about it, now, but his uppermost thought was that sailors went all over the world, into far off seas, into foreign lands, in freedom; and that soldiers, especially cavalry soldiers, rode across the plains and among the mountains, seeing and doing wonderful things, in freedom. O, how he longed for something wild and dashing and adventurous,--something like the very dash for freedom that he was even now looking forward to and trying to plan! He naturally supposed that his undertaking, if he should make it, would have to do with the various kinds of persons near him, and would as soon have thought of China, as of a boy and girl who were looking at a goat, in a second story window, over in the city. He was not in their thoughts either, and Millie’s next remark was: “Mother says you can go through our house as much as you want to. She won’t look the back door----” “I’ll come right over and see her, soon as I’ve got Billy down,” said Rodney. “I want to find out how he got into my room.” “I’ll wait,” said Millie. “Mother said she wanted to see you--” but he had already darted into the house. In a moment more the door of his bedroom was opened and out sprang Billy. Without stopping to explain how he got in, or in what freak of goat-mind he butted that door shut, he showed Rod that he could at least go downstairs. Rod followed him out and Millie shouted: “There he goes!--Now you come right along with me!” She was a short, thin, dark haired girl, with eyes and a face that seemed all one flush and sparkle of go and energy. Her very voice had in it something peremptory and Rod stepped off as obediently as if she had been a school-teacher. He knew the way through the gap in the fence and through the Kirby back-yard, and he knew that they had a hall running through the house to the street door. That opened on an old avenue that was all built up and almost all the lower stories of the houses were used for business purposes. Mr. Kirby was a printer and his ground floor was his shop, with a steam engine in the rear room. There were two stories above for the family to live in and the hall went all the way through.