als and the
welfare of the misguided young woman."

Professor Mackail protested furiously, but his advocacy only embittered
Litton--for Mackail was the leader of the faction that had tried for
years to place Webster University in line with others by removing Latin
and Greek from the position of required studies.

Mackail and his crew pretended that French and German, or science, were
appropriate substitutes for the classic languages in the case of those
whose tastes were not scholastic; but to Litton it was a religion that
no man should be allowed to spend four years in college without at
least rubbing up against Homer, AEschylos, Vergil, and Horace.

As Litton put it: "No man has a right to an Alma Mater who doesn't know
what the words mean; and nobody has a right to graduate without knowing
at least enough Latin to read his own diploma."

This old war had been fought with all the bitterness and professional
jealousies of scholarship, which rival those of religion and exceed
those of the stage. For yet a while Litton and his followers had
vanquished opposition. He little dreamed what he was preparing for
himself in punishing Teed.

Teed accepted his banishment with poor grace, but a magnificent
determination to come back and graduate. The effect of his punishment
was shown when, after six months of rustic meditation, he set out for
the university, leaving behind him his Fannie, who had been too timid to
return to the scene of her discomfiture. Teed's good-by words ran
something like this:

"Bess its ickle heartums! Don't se care! Soonie as Teedle-weedle gets
graduated he'll get fine job and marry his Fansy-pansy very first sing."
Then he kissed her "Goo'byjums"--and went back with the face of a
Regulus returning to be tortured by the enemy.

II

Teed had a splendid mind for everything material and modern, but he
could not and would not master the languages he called dead. His
mistranslations of the classics were themselves classics. They sent the
other students into uproars; but Litton saw nothing funny in them. When
he received Teed's examination papers he marked them with a pitiless
exactitude.

Teed reached the end of his junior year with a heap of conditions in the
classics. Litton insisted that he should not be allowed to graduate
until he cleaned them up. This meant that Teed must tutor all through
his last vacation or carry double work throughout his senior year--when
he expected to play some patri