the Hendricks family were coming back to the Ridge to live,--the general to look after his neglected property, and Dolan to start a livery-stable,--John heard the news with a throb of great joy. When a letter from Bob confirmed the news, John began to count the days. For the love of boys is the most unselfish thing in a selfish world. They met awkwardly and sheepishly at the stage, and greeted each other with grunts, and became inseparable. Bob came back tall, lanky, grinny, and rather dumb, and he found John undersized, wiry, masterful, and rather mooney, but strong and purposeful, for a boy. But each accepted the other as perfect in every detail. Nothing Bob did changed John's attitude, and nothing John did made Bob waver in his faith in John. Did the boys come to John with a sickening story that Bob's sister made him bring a towel to the swimming hole, John glared at them a moment and then waved them aside with, "Well, you big brutes,--didn't you know what it was for?" When they reported to John that Bob's father was making him tip his hat to the girls, they got, instead of the outbreak of scorn they expected, "Well--did the girls tip back?" And when Bob's sister said that the Barclay boy--barefooted, curly-headed, dusty, and sunburned--looked like something the old cat had dragged into the house, the boy-was impudent to his sister and took a whipping from his father. That fall the children of Sycamore Ridge assembled for the first time in their new seven-room stone schoolhouse, and the two boys were in the high school. The board hired General Philemon Ward to teach the twenty high school pupils, and it was then he first began to wear the white neckties which he never afterwards abandoned. Ward's first clash with John Barclay occurred when Ward organized a military company. John's limp kept him out of it, so he broke up the company and organized a literary society, of which he was president and Ellen Culpepper secretary, and a constitution was adopted exempting the president and secretary from work in the society. It was natural enough that Bob Hendricks should be made treasurer, and that these three officers should be the programme committee, and then a long line of vice-presidents and assistant secretaries and treasurers and monitors was elected by the society. So John became the social leader of the group of boys and girls who were just coming out of kissing games into dances at one another's homes in the town. John decided who should be in the "crowd" and who might be invited only when a mixed crowd was expected. Fathers desiring trade, and mothers faithful to church ties, protested; but John Barclay had his way. It was his crowd. They called themselves the "Spring Chickens," and as John had money saved to spend as he pleased, he dictated many things; but he did not spend his money, he lent it, and his barn was stored with, skates and sleds and broken guns and scrap-iron held as security, while his pockets bulged with knives taken as interest. As the winter waned and the Spring Chickens waxed fat in social