illwater.
They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might
inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.

So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to
supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts
of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he
choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly
and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized
that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How
could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out
of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join
in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior,
might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of
anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one
he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had
come to his pet college.

"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,"
exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I pay a hundred
thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty
dollars, but you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in
half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor
Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns
Hopkins or as Walter Camp does for Yale."

Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he
was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage
increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor
Gilman. The stone he had rejected had become the corner-stone of
Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming:
"Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall,"
in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up
by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was
on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to
subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features
of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a day
passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated,
was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced that he was to be the next
exchange pr