my fine feathers to the storm. She feigned not to notice my
changed demeanor and tried to talk pleasantly, but I answered only in
monosyllables, and brusquely, I fear. The interminable journey ended.
From the steps of the president's house, with all the graciousness she
could command, she asked me not to hurry away when we had so many things
to talk over. My answer was a quick "good-night," and I ran as I had run
years before to the mountains, with my heart in every stride.

When I entered the doctor's study I found him alone. Mr. Henderson, he
explained, had gone to Judge Bundy's. Judge Bundy always entertained the
lecturer, and he was too generous a man to make an exception even in this
case. In speaking of the lecturer the doctor made a wry face. He could
not understand how a man of Valerian Harassan's reputation ever allowed
such a mountebank to take his place. At McGraw we believed in life; we
believed in ambition, and it was terrible--terrible, sir, to have to sit
in silence and hear our dearest traditions assailed by one who admitted
that he was a failure. Did Mr. Malcolm hear the brutal cut at Judge
Bundy? Judge Bundy, sir, was----

I did not stop to hear the eulogy, nor did I consider how I might be
prejudicing myself with the president by so rudely breaking from him.
But the Professor had come back to me. I cleared the college steps with
a bound, and ran over the campus and down the hill into the town. I ran
with all a boy's reckless waste of strength, so that when I had covered
my half-mile course I had to lean for support against the iron fence
which guarded the Bundy home. The great stone pile, with many turrets
and a dominating cupola, with wide-spreading verandas and marble lions on
the lawn, in the daylight comported itself with dignified aloofness, and
now, when night exaggerated its size and a single lonely light flickered
in all its vast front, it was forbidding. With something of that forced
boldness with which years before I had braved the dark mountains, I made
the gate ring a proper notice of my approach and groped my way about the
door until I found the bell. The answer came from over my head.
Stepping back and looking up, I saw framed in a lighted window a white
figure, coatless and collarless, not the distinguished jurist, but a
portly man who had been interrupted in the act of preparing for bed.
Clothes go a long way toward making a man, and the lack of them brought
the judge do