Away up in his green copper crusted tower in Memorial Hall the Vagabond stirred uneasily on his crumby couch and dug his knuckles into smarting eyes to shut out the light. He yawned painfully, stretched his cramped limbs, and turned over.

But there is something in the air that will not let him sleep. There are voices high and low. They seem to swim up through the shimmering heat like the sounds of a diver talking through a sea of molasses. How stupid all this was! Just last night, or was it last night? he had been dancing with the most beautiful women in all the world. Their faces still floated around him, and he could remember the faint scent of sachet. A Junior Usher can muscle in on almost everything. They had spoken to him like dream women wrapping him in an aura of honeyed words. He could feel the pulse of the orchestra and see the colored revolving spot ferret out the sparkle in some darling eye or sprinkle gold on some wisp of hair. And he had felt deliciously sad about himself and these tall willowy dancing girls who would soon be frowsy and decrepit. These fine lads going out late into the world to be broken slowly on the wheel of fortune. Thank God he had another year. He felt so sad for the whole world he could have cried. And suddenly he didn't care and wandered away inconsolable into the dark night. He haunted all the buildings where he had lived, and went into the Yard and touched the worn hollows in the steps of Sever where almost three generations of Harvard men had stepped. A hair of a new moon cradled in the branch of a dark pine over the white blur of University Hall. A cold wind suddenly rose. He cried to himself and plodded upstairs to the dusky loft.