The Pennimore country place, Sound View, lies within a half mile of the school buildings and adjoins the school property on the west. Taking the path across The Prospect, as the terrace of lawn in front of Oxford Hall was called, descending a flight of steps, crossing the curving drive and continuing the path again beyond, you come to a rustic bridge which surmounts a twenty-foot cut. Through this the railroad runs almost due east and west, in the latter direction ultimately reaching, like so many of the boys who graduate in sight of the cut, the city of New Haven. Eastward, at a nearly corresponding distance, lies Newport. But Kendall was thinking of neither New Haven nor Newport, as, shortly after morning church the next day, he crossed the bridge and entered the woods. He was taking the shortest route to Sound View and he was wondering whether the suit of clothes he had put on in honor of the occasion really looked as well as it had seemed to him. He had brushed and rebrushed for a quarter of an hour, and had worked with soap and water and a corner of a towel for as much longer in an attempt to eradicate stains from the jacket. The latter effort had not been altogether successful, but he flattered himself that if you didn’t look very close you couldn’t see the obnoxious spots. At the dividing of the path he chose the right-hand way and in a minute or two came within sight of the high fence which divided the school grounds from Mr. Pennimore’s land. It was a warm but cloudy afternoon, with a little gusty breeze coming in off the Sound and lazily moving the leaves. Presently he reached a narrow gate set in the fence. There was a round hole in it and he put his hand through and lifted a latch on the further side. Then he stepped in, wound by a broad bed of shrubbery, following a well-trodden path, and found himself finally on the seaward side of the big stone house with a wide expanse of lawn and flower-beds and borders of shrubs near at hand, and the Sound, looking rather green and sullen to-day, stretching away into the distance beyond. A big white steam yacht swung idly at her moorings off the mouth of the river and near a long steel and granite wharf. A sudden barking of dogs brought Kendall’s gaze back to the direction of the house just in time for him to see Gerald vault over the low wall of the terrace and start to meet him. An instant later a wire-haired terrier rushed down the steps, frantic with excitement, followed more leisurely by a red setter.