tional institution when the teachers know
everything except the moral needs of the students.

"Can't your friend, Bauer, help you? You say you have never talked with
him. Try it. From one or two talks I had with him while he was with us I
gained the impression that he was deeply religious. Affectionately, your
father,

"PAUL DOUGLAS."

Both of these letters reached Walter about the same time and he read and
reread them and received vast help from them, more than he himself knew
at the time. But he could not throw off the feeling of depression and
fear that seemed to haunt his spirit. He longed to talk the thing over
with someone and the day after his father's letter came, he resolved to
take Bauer into his confidence. He had never talked with him on any
serious questions except when Bauer had confided in him about his home
troubles, and the occasions were rare and only occurred at times when
Bauer was so tortured with lonesomeness that he could not endure it any
longer and fled to Walter as he did that night in the shop, when he
first appealed to him for his friendship.

They had gone up to Walter's room together; and had just finished a
discussion over Bauer's incubator and the arrangement for the thermostat
when Walter said suddenly:

"Felix, I can't talk this stuff any longer. I want to take up something
else, if you don't mind. Of course, you've noticed I've not been up to
the mark lately, haven't you?"

"Yes." Bauer blushed as he said it. He had noted Walter's condition, but
if truth be told his own state of hopeless feeling towards Helen had
absorbed him to such an extent that he had not paid the attention to
Walter's feelings that he otherwise might. No one quite so egotistic as
your hopeless lover. The world of Bauer revolved around the star of
Helen, and the rest of the universe, including Walter, was for the time
being not counted as there. With Walter's trouble now made more apparent
to him, Bauer's mind at once waked up and stood ready alert to listen to
him.

"I might as well confess that Dr. Powers's address two weeks ago knocked
the props out from under me. What he said cut under me like a great
engine that destroyed my faith."

"You mean your faith in God?" asked Bauer in a tone almost of horror.

"Well, no, not that exactly. I don't think anyone could reason me out of
a belief in a God. But when Dr. Powers got through I felt as if all the
God he believed in was