as he thanked his lucky stars that it was
not the custom of the college girls to haunt their spiritual pilots as
insistently as some of them haunted their mental ones. Smiling still,
he doffed his hat before the dozen girls in the outer laboratory, while
he looked about him. Professor Opdyke was not there. After an instant's
hesitation, Brenton crossed the intervening strip of floor and tapped
upon the door leading to the private laboratory beyond.

"Come in."

The voice was more than a trifle husky; and the professor's chair was
carefully planted with its high back to the light. The professor was in
the chair, and bent above the table which, Brenton's quick eye noted,
was bare of anything that looked like work. As Brenton's face appeared
in the doorway, Professor Opdyke looked up at him in a vague
uncertainty which all at once changed to a guilty recognition.

"Brenton! I quite forgot. I'm very sorry," he said; but his voice
lacked all resonance. "The fact is, I've had news from Reed."

"Bad?" The curt monosyllable was kinder than many words.

The professor nodded.

"There's been an accident."

"He's not--" Brenton faltered at the grisly word, not so much in mercy
to the father, seated there before him, as because the old-time love
for that father's son seemed to rise up and catch him by the throat and
strangle him.

The Professor gave a long, shuddering sigh, the sigh of a woman verging
on hysterics.

"No; not that--yet. They'll wire again, to-night, they tell me."

"When did you hear?"

"Just now. An hour ago. His mother doesn't know it yet. Brenton, I've
got to tell her." And the professor turned a wan, appealing face up to
the younger man, as though in search of help.

"Yes." The single word fell heavily. "You must." But Brenton, even
while he was speaking, shut his teeth upon the thought. Then the priest
within him rallied to the need, although the latent man of science in
him forbade him to accompany the rallying with many words. "Can I be of
any help?"

"If you feel you could go to the house with me, Brenton. You knew
Reed."

Brenton's alert ear caught the unconscious change of tense. He
interrupted with a question.

"Just how bad is it?"

"I don't know. 'Badly hurt', the telegram says. 'Will wire again in a
few hours'. I suppose it's the same old story: an explosive and a
panic. Somebody probably tried to stir a fire with a stick of frozen
dynamite, or some such foolery as that." The scor