The warm red bricks of the college buildings are well-nigh hidden by ivy, which, too, is an ardent expansionist.

And where neither grass nor ivy can subjugate, soft, velvety moss reigns humbly.
In the year 1901, which is the period of this story, the enrolment in all departments at Erskine was close to six hundred students.

The freshman class, as had been the case for many years past, was the largest in the history of the college.

It numbered 180; but of this number we are at present chiefly interested in only two; and these two, at the moment when this chapter begins--which, to be exact, is eight o'clock of the evening of the twenty-fourth day of September in the year above mentioned--were busily at work in a first-floor study in the boarding-house of Mrs.Curtis on Elm Street.
It were perhaps more truthful to say that one was busily at work and the other was busily advising and directing.

Neil Fletcher stood on a small table, which swayed perilously from side to side at his every movement, and drove nails into an already much mutilated wall.