behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures she
had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and that now
climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty room.

Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest
elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer
succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the
heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had
flunked especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
for thirty years in the class room had served the college there were
no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best
reason to remember him. But this recollection Peter had no rancor or
bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser,
he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
celebration was at its height and just before train was due to carry
him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage
say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as
half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which opened
upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and
wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other,
the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate,
well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward
unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.

Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The
idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never
entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was
something so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,
avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour
later the entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and
with "He's a jolly good fellow" and "He's off to Philippopolis in the
morn--ing" ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car
and gazed at the lights of Stillwater d