d
appeared to be.

But on his return from his first summer spent at home there was a marked
change in him, due, so thought Doctor Tollivar, to his association with
the rougher class of workmen in the iron mills. It was as if he had
suddenly grown older and harder, and the discipline of the school,
admirable as the Reverend Silas knew it to be, was not severe enough to
reform him.

"It grieves me more than I can tell you, my dear brother, to be obliged
to confess that we can do nothing more for him here," was the concluding
paragraph of the principal's letter, "and to add that his continued
presence with us is a menace to the morals of the school. When I say
that the offense for which he is expelled is by no means the first, and
that it is the double one of gambling and keeping intoxicating liquors
in his room, you will understand that the good repute of Beersheba was
at stake, and there was no other course open to us."

It was as well, perhaps, for what remained of Tom's peace of mind that
he knew nothing of this letter at the time of its writing. The long day
had been sufficiently soul-harrowing and humiliating. Since the morning
exercises, when he had been publicly degraded by having his sentence
read out to the entire school, he had spent the time in his room,
watched, if not guarded, by some one of the assistants. And now he was
to be shipped off on the night train like a criminal, with no chance for
a word of leave-taking, however much he might desire it.

He was tramping up and down with his hands in his pockets, the Gordon
scowl making him look like a young thunder-cloud, when one of the
preceptors came to drive with him to the railroad station. It was the
final indignity, and he resented it bitterly.

"I can make out to find my way down to the train without troubling you,
Mr. Martin," he burst out in boyish anger.

"Doubtless," said the preceptor, quite unmoved. "But we are still
responsible for you. Doctor Tollivar wishes me to see you safely aboard
your train, and I shall certainly do so. Take the side stairway down, if
you please."

The principal's buggy was waiting at the gate, and the preceptor drove.
Tom sat back under the hood with his overcoat across his knees. The
evening was freezing cold, with an edged wind, and the drive to the
station was a hilly mile. If it had been ten miles he would not have
moved or opened his lips.

As it chanced, there were no other passengers for the train, which wa