to do the right thing by the government--"

"_ What_?" asked J.M. "I don't seem to catch his idea."

"Well, no more do I, sorra bit," confessed Mrs. McCartey serenely. "Not a
breath of what he meant got to me, but what he _said_ was that Ivan's
schoolin' had put queer ideas in his head to be an anarchist or somethin'
and he thought that maybe more schoolin' would drive out _thim_ ideas and
put in other ones yet. Hasn't it a foolish sound, now?" She appealed to
J .M. for a sympathy she did not get.

"It sounds like the most interesting case I ever heard of," he cried, with
a generous looseness of superlative new to him. "Is Ivan that tall, shy,
sad-looking boy who goes with his father to work?"

"That's _him_. An' plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your
body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His
father, he says _he_ don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad
devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to join the anarchists
in the fall and go to----"

J.M. rose to his feet and hurried down the porch toward the Petrofsky
wing of the house, addressing himself to the tall, grave-faced figure in
the doorway. "Oh, Mr. Petrofsky, may I have a few minutes' talk with you
about your son?" he said.

III

The registrar of Middletown College, being a newcomer, saw nothing unusual
in the fact that the librarian came to his office on matriculation day to
enroll as a freshman a shy, dark-eyed lad with a foreign name; but the
president and older professors were petrified into speechlessness by the
news that old J.M. had returned from parts unknown with a queer-looking
boy, who called the old man uncle. Their amazement rose to positive
incredulity when they heard that the fastidious, finical old bachelor had
actually installed a raw freshman in one of his precious tower-rooms,
always before inexorably guarded from the mildest and most passing
intrusion on their hallowed quiet.

The president made all haste to call on J.M. and see the phenomenon with
his own eyes. As discreetly as his raging curiosity would allow him, he
fell to questioning the former recluse. When he learned that J.M. had
spent six weeks in Woodville, no more explanation seemed needed. "Oh, of
course, your old home?"

"Yes," said J.M., "my old home."

"And you had a warm welcome there, I dare say?"

"Yes, indeed," said J.M.

"Found the old town in good condition?"

"Excellent!" this with em