ccordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history
certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which
he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with
malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked "five."

Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.
In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but
they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single
point higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five
completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter
was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private
college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the
new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and
the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim
hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window cast upon his
nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter
wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won,
but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to
be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
followed made Stillwater history.

"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.
And I'll send my money where I send Peter."

In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the
son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had
failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say
that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college
president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a
conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
lowered his voice.

"There has been contemptible work here," he