sounded with the cries of baseball candidates.

Much to his surprise, Dink found at the end of the strenuous day no
impelling desire to plunge into fast life. Still the conviction
remained for a long time that his soul had been surrendered, that not
only was he destined for the gallows in this world, but that only the
prayers of his mother might save him from being irrevocably damned in
the next. It was a terrific thought, and yet it brought a certain
pleasure. He was different from the rest. He was a man of the world.
He had known--LIFE!

The episode ended as episodes in the young days end--in a laugh.

"I say, Dink," said the Tennessee Shad one afternoon in April, as,
gloriously reveling on the warm turf, they watched the 'Varsity nine.

"Say it."

"In your dead-game sporting days did you ever, by chance, paint your
nicotine fingers with iodine?"

"How in blazes did you know?"

"Used to do it myself," said the Shad reminiscently. Then he added:
"Thought yourself a lost soul?"

Stover began to laugh.

"All alone in a cold, cold world--wicked, very wicked?"

"Perhaps."

"And it was rather a nice feeling, too, wasn't it?"

"I didn't know, you----" said Dink, blushing to find himself back in
the common herd.

"Me, too," said the Tennessee Shad, sucking a straw. "Good old
sporting days!" Presently he began mischievously:

"_Then stand by your glasses steady,
This world is a----_"

But here Dink, rising up, tumbled him over.

XX

With the complete arrival of the spring came also a lessening of
Dink's requested appearances at Faculty meetings, his little evening
chats in The Roman's study on matters of disciplinary interpretation
and the occasional summons through the gates of Avernus to quail
before the all-seeing eye.

It was not that the spirit of Spartacus was faint, or that his enmity
had weakened toward The Roman--who, of course, without the slightest
doubt, was always the persecutor responsible for his summons before
the courts of injustice. The truth was, Stover had suddenly begun to
age and to desire to put from himself youthful things. This
extraordinary phenomenon that somehow does happen was in some measure
a reflex action.

Ever since the stormy afternoon on which he had decided against his
own eleven, he had slowly come to realize that he had won a peculiar
place in the estimation of the school--somewhat of the dignity of the
incorruptible judges that existed in former day