something more than a freshman, and received the smiling suggestion that he master differential equations and vector analysis. This he proceeded to do with delight.

Time slipped along, and as a sophomore he took to reading mineralogy. Now iron, copper, silver, gold, lead, and tungsten are to be found in Connecticut, and on days of leisure Marvin took to roaming among their haunts.

Thus it happened that one afternoon in the spring of 1913 he found himself coming over the hill from Lotteryville to Wickford, and looking down on old orchards that seemed like petalite tipped with pink lithium-mica. The nearest one was just below him, and as he passed it on the way down he saw the gable end of an old mansion.

Also through a window he caught a glimpse of chemical apparatus, and somewhere out of doors he heard a girl practicing vocal scales. He guessed that the mansion had been converted into a school for girls. It was not colonial, but looked as if it had been lifted by magic from some British park and set down here in Connecticut.

Descending to the road which passed before the estate, he perceived that its great yard was filled with sweetbrier. Then he heard the singing voice burst into an aria from an opera that he knew by heart.

Differential equations in the head of a youth do not check his springtime impulses, and at the right moment he answered that impassioned caroling in kind. Straightway a maiden appeared at the gate in the high stone wall. She was a vivid creature, and her rare-ripe beauty surpassed anything he could recall.

“Hello, Carmen.”

“Hello, Escamillo. What are you doing so far from home?”

“Looking for trouble, I guess. Don’t they let you sing indoors?”

“No, we have wigwams.”

“May I come into your wigwam?”

“Too risky. Miss Coggeshall watches us as close as her great-great-something-or-other watched the Injuns when he was governor of Rhode Island.”

“What do you call your prison?”

“Eglantine. It was once a pigpen.”

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