to look out from a mind packed with knowledge, and the firmly set
mouth to hold in check a voice of marvellous power for eloquence.

In high spirits I went one evening to hear this eastern philosopher. It
was cold and raining, but in those days the worst of weather could cast
no shadow over me. It was a pleasure even to battle with the elements
with no other weapon than an umbrella, and multiplied a hundred-fold was
that pleasure when with that weapon I was battling also for Gladys Todd.
Though as yet I had said nothing to her of my cherished hope, I know that
when we stepped out together into the night, we both believed that we
should face many another storm under the same umbrella. I was conscious
that she clung more closely than usual to my arm, and, with spirits keyed
high with the sense of protecting her, my feet hardly touched the
dripping pavement which led from the doctor's house to the college
building and the chapel. We said little on the way. We had long since
passed the point where idle chatter is needed in communing. I remember
that I did ruminate pleasantly on my good fortune in having found this
sympathetic spirit to share with me the intellectual pleasure of a
scholarly discourse, whose heart could beat quicker in time with mine at
the inspiration of some fine thought. I remember that she broke the
current of these meditations to ask if I had decided to make Harlansburg
my home after my approaching graduation. She asked it with a tone of
deep personal interest. At that moment I should have proposed to Gladys
Todd had not the wind been tugging at the umbrella, and had we not come
from the shadow of the trees into the glare of the college lights. So I
answered affirmatively. Of course I should remain in Harlansburg. At
that moment my resolution was fixed unalterably, if only for the sake of
Gladys Todd; and if I had settled in my mind that I should walk in the
way of Judge Bundy till, like him, I dominated the town and the county
and my name was known in the farthest corners of the State, that, too,
would be for the sake of this gentle, clinging girl whose nearness to me
made my umbrella seem like the sheltering roof of home. But in this
calculation I left out of my equation one important element--the throat
of the Reverend Valerian Harassan.

The source of the Armenian's flowing eloquence would have seemed as far
from affecting my life as the source and flow of the sacred Ganges, and
yet it w