His face had lost its boyish freshness of complexion and his weak
mouth had settled into lines of sullen discontent. Even his dress
displayed the carelessness which is one of the outward marks of a
disordered mind, and his bright blue tie was loosely knotted in
unequal lengths.

"What's the trouble now?" demanded Christopher, coming from the
stall and hanging his lantern from a nail beside the ladder,
where the light fell full on Will's face. "Out with it and have
done. I thought yesterday that you had been driving a hard
bargain with the old man on my account."

"Oh, it's not you this time, thank heaven," returned Will. "It's
all about that confounded scrape I got into at the university. I
told him it would mean trouble if he sent me there, but he would
do it whether or no. He dragged me away from here, you remember,
and had me digging at my books with a scatter-brained tutor for a
good six months; then when I knew just about enough to start at
the university he hauled me there with his own hands and kept
watch over me for several weeks. I'm quick at most things like
that, so after he went away I thought I'd have a little fun and
trust luck to make it up to me at the end--but it all went
against me somehow, and then they stirred up that blamed rumpus
about the examinations."

Yawning more in disgust than in drowsiness, he struck a match on
the edge of the box and lighted a cigarette. His flippant manner
was touched with the conscious resentment which still lingered in
his eyes, and from the beginning to the end of his account he