[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind Read Online Free Page B

outstanding, and within twelve months had founded a two-year community college which, for its time and ambition, proved singularly more than adequate for the training of dedicated teachers and shrewd mid-level businessmen.
    It wasn't until the end of the Second World War, however, that it became evident to Hawksted that not only was two years insufficient for the contemporary world, but also the students themselves were increas ingly reluctant to transfer to other institutions. The mark of Oxrun had taken firm hold of one arm, while the other was in the grip of their unquestionably remarkable education.
    On his deathbed the old man suggested two years double to four, and when he finally died in 1953 no one complained publicly when the school's name was changed —especially in light of the trust he had established to maintain the facilities independent of the va garies of economic and enrollment flux. The only conditions were two: that all the trustees be natives of the Station, and none of them be graduates of Harvard or Yale.
    The two-hundred-acre campus was two miles east of the last street on Chancellor Avenue, a stretch of road on the way to the depot bordered by thick woodland on the right and barriers of the Station's estates on the left. Pat paid little more than automatic heed to the blur of brown as she drove. She concentrated instead on the slight damage to her station wagon, on the upcoming meeting, on the work she needed to begin with her classes. Her radio was tuned to a classical-music sta tion, and the passages of strings, the lilt of muted horns, lulled her, calmed her, and when she turned right between a pair of massive stone pillars topped by flar ing eagles she was almost ready to face it all without shrieking. Her grip loosened on the wheel, her spine grew less rigid, and as the road canted upward to a gentle incline she rolled down the window to catch the sharp scent of pines that lined the narrow blacktop.
    A mile, and Hawksted broke from the forest.
    And there was so much ground-snow her eyes began to water before she had time to squint.
    The campus' main plant had been constructed on a deep step in the hillside. The central building was a three-sided rectangle whose base was well over a hun dred yards long, its quadrangle reaching to the edge of the flatland and sweeping down through white-jacketed hickory and birch, elm and evergreen to the forest proper. It was of large-block brownstone with broad- silled casement windows, towers that split each of, the three sides into thirds and added a fourth story double-peaked and imposing. At the school's founding all the rooms had been used for classes; now they were dorms — front-to-back suites with a large room facing the quad and two bedrooms in back that held two students each. From the central tower east the rooms were occupied by women; west was reserved for Hawksted's men. There was also a belowground level marked by half-windows that never opened and a smothering view of sun-blotting shrubs. This was the home of several professorial of fices, and classrooms for courses in business, religion, philosophy and logic.
    Aside from the main structure, and connected to it by underground tunnels well-lighted and walnut-paneled, were four additional buildings raised just after the school had begun its four-year program. On the left as Pat approached were two immense brick-and-turreted squares three stores high, one behind the other. The nearer housed English, History, and eleven foreign languages; the one in back belonged to all the laboratory sciences. On the right beyond the western arm was the Student Union behind, the refurbished auditorium and Fine Arts directly in front. Upslope of the Union was a glass-and-marble library so architecturally uninspired it made the rest of the facilities seem almost grand.
    A chapel on the hillside overlooking the campus. White stone and Gothic, cloisters and thick oak.
    The playing fields to the east, behind a wall of