tudied the angles of the loosely hung limbs and the swinging body clad
in unobtrusive brown. For a moment I doubted. Then he spoke. I heard
his voice, and it seemed as though it were threaded with a sharp, shrill
note of bitterness. His eyes were not turned to us. Gladys Todd must
have thought them fixed on a spot in the ceiling, but to me they were
watching a flake of cloud hovering just above the tall pine across the
clearing. Gladys Todd must have thought me beside her, sitting upright
on the very edge of my seat, but I was back in the mountains; I could
feel Penelope's brown hand in mine and I could see her proud smile as she
looked up at me and said: "That's father; he's studying"; I could see her
father as he leaned on his hoe, beaten in his fight with the
ever-charging weeds; I could see him in the murky light of the cabin, a
trembling hazy figure in the gun smoke; and again, with the devils of
retribution at his heels, flying for the bush. Now the worthless,
shiftless man, after long years, stood before me, a professor in truth, a
professor of life, and perhaps he would give belated expression to what
was in his mind that day as he studied the flake of cloud.

Unrolling a portentous manuscript on the pulpit, the lecturer began to
read in a mechanical voice. The restless shuffling of feet and a volley
of dry coughs soon spoke the hostile attitude of the audience, a longing
for the coming of Valerian Harassan. The Professor did not heed them.
He read on, pompous phrases such as might have come from the lips of Mr.
Pound. He was unconscious of the increasing hostility of his hearers.
When he stopped suddenly, it was not because the feet in the rear of the
hall were shuffling a rising chorus of protest, despite the frantic
signals of Judge Bundy and Doctor Todd's upraised hand. What he saw in
his own manuscript checked him, for stepping back from the desk, he
frowned at it. The corners of his mouth twitched in a passing smile, and
pouncing upon his handiwork, he held it at arm's length, dangling before
the astonished eyes of the company.

"What rot!" he cried. "What utter rot!"

A shout from the rear of the room evidenced the approval of his younger
hearers. The elders glowered at what they thought a trick to catch their
attention. But trick or not, he did catch their attention, and he held
it; he ceased to be the utterer of pompous platitudes; dropping his paper
to show that he had done with it, he