that the skeleton man
limped.

"Because I'd like to see if the atrophying of your brain has furnished
any compensations."

George grinned. The portrait in the window seemed friendly. He obeyed.

Bailly ran his hand over George's muscles. His young eyes widened.

"Ever play football?"

George shook his head doubtfully.

"Not what you would call really playing. Why? Would football help?"

"Provided one's the right stuff otherwise, would being a god help one
climb Olympus?" Bailly wanted to know.

He indicated the framed likeness in the window.

"That's Bill Gregory."

"Seems to me I've seen his name in the papers," George said.

Bailly stared.

"Without doubt, if you read the public prints at all. He exerted much
useful cunning and strength in the Harvard and Yale games last fall. He
was on everybody's All-American eleven. I got him into college and
man-handled him through. Hence this scanty hair, these premature
furrows; for although he had plenty of good common-sense, and was one of
the finest boys I've ever known, he didn't possess, speaking relatively,
when it came to iron-bound text-books, the brains of a dinosaur; but he
had the brute force of one."

"Why did you do it?" George asked. "Because he was rich?"

"Young man," Bailly answered, "I am a product of this seat of learning.
With all its faults--and you may learn their number for yourself some
day--its success is pleasing to me, particularly at football. I am very
fond of football, perhaps because it approximates in our puling, modern
fashion, the classic public games of ruddier days. In other words, I was
actuated by a formless emotion called Princeton spirit. Don't ask me
what that is. I don't know. One receives it according to one's concept.
But when I saw in Bill something finer and more determined than most men
possess, I made up my mind Princeton was going to be proud of him, on
the campus, on the football field, and afterward out in the world."

The hollow, wrinkled face flushed.

"When Bill made a run I could think of it as my run. When he made a
touchdown I could say, 'there's one score that wouldn't have been made
if I hadn't booted Bill into college, and kept him from flunking out by
sheer brute mentality!' Pardon me, Mr. Morton. I love the silly game."

George smiled, sensing his way, if only he could make this fellow feel
he would be the right kind of Princeton man!

"I was going to say," he offered, "that while I had never ha