All of a sudden it dawned on the slow-thinking young Norwegian just how much this freedom to grow and expand meant to him, and he turned from the window. From below, the shouts of "Thor! Thor! Thor!" drifted, stirring his blood, as he looked at Hicks, Butch, Beef, Monty and Deacon.
"'All's well that ends well,' you say. Hicks," he spoke slowly, his face joyous. "That's true; but I'm just starting, fellows. I'm just _beginning_ to live my college years, not for myself, but for old Bannister, for my Alma Mater, for I am awake, and _free_!"
Big Butch Brewster, a life-sized picture of despair, roosted dejectedly on the Senior Fence, between the Gym and the Administration Building. It was quite cold, and also the beginning of the last study-period before Butch's final and most difficult recitation of the day, Chemistry. Yet instead of boning in his warm room, the behemoth Senior perched on the fence and stared gloomily into space.
As he sat, enveloped in a penumbra of gloom, the campus entrance door of Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm., opened suddenly, and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., that happy-go-lucky youth, came out cautiously, after the fashion of a second-story artist, emerging from his crib with a bundle of swag, the last item being represented by a football tucked under Hicks' left arm. Beholding Butch Brewster on the Senior Fence, the sunny-souled Senior exhibited a perturbation of spirit seeming undecided whether to beat a retreat or to advance.
"Now what's ailin' _you_?" demanded Butch wrathily, believing the pestersome Hicks to be acting in that burglarious manner for effect. "Why should _you_ sneak out of a dorm., bearing a football like it was an auk's egg? Why, you resemble a nigger, making his get-away after robbing a hen-roost! Don't torment me, you accident-somewhere-on-its-way-to-happen. I feel about as joyous as a traveling salesman who has made a town and gotten nary a order!"
"It's _awful_!" soliloquized T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., perching beside the despondent Butch on the Senior Fence. "I am not a fatalist, old man, but it _does_ seem that fate hasn't destined Thor to play football for old Bannister this season! Here, after he won the Ham game, and we expected him to waltz off with Ballard's scalp and the Championship, he has to tumble downstairs! Oh, it's tough luck!"