CHAPTER III

PIGEON PLACE

_Strange is the wind and the tide,
The heavens eternally wide;
Less fathomed, this life at my side_.
--W. H. SIMPSON

THE Sunrise rotunda was ringing with a chorus from three hundred throats
as three hundred students poured out of doors, and over-flowed the ridge
and spilled down the broad steps, making a babel of musical tongues;
while fitting itself to every catchy college air known to Sunrise came
the noisy refrain:


Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
_Rah!_ RAH! RAH!!!


Again it was repeated, swelling along the ridge and floating wide away
over the Walnut Valley. Nor was there a climax of exuberance until
the appearance of Dr. Lloyd Fenneben himself, with his tall figure and
striking presence outlined against the gray stone columns of the veranda.
All this because it was mid-October, a heaven-made autumn day in Kansas,
with its gracious warmth and bracing breath; with the Indian
summer haze in shimmering amethyst and gold overhanging the land;
and the Walnut Valley, gorgeous in the glow of the October frost-fires,