ter if you had," Ernest said gravely.

"It was a bribe," father protested; and Ernest nodded.

"Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and so
forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious a
character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university tone
and dignity. Not that he personally objected--oh, no; but that there was
talk and that I would understand."

Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said, and his
face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in it:

"There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody has
put pressure on President Wilcox."

"Do you think so?" father asked, and his face showed that he was
interested rather than frightened.

"I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming in my
own mind," Ernest said. "Never in the history of the world was society
in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in our
industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious,
political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is
taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One can only dimly
feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day. One can feel
the loom of them--things vast, vague, and terrible. My mind recoils from
contemplation of what they may crystallize into. You heard Wickson talk
the other night. Behind what he said were the same nameless, formless
things that I feel. He spoke out of a superconscious apprehension of
them."

"You mean . . . ?" father began, then paused.

"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that
even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an
oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What
its nature may be I refuse to imagine.* But what I wanted to say was
this: You are in a perilous position--a peril that my own fear enhances
because I am not able even to measure it. Take my advice and accept the
vacation."

* Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of
it, there were men, even before his time, who caught
glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has
risen up in the government greater than the people
themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful
interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the
cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that