. The need
of holding the next man fast would tighten his grip upon himself. After
all, it was grip he needed; else, he would be a futile frazzle of
humanity, like Prather.

With an inconsequential snap, poor Reed's brain was off again, and on a
fresh and open stretch of road. Then suddenly it came against another
obstacle. Only the very afternoon before, Prather had broken off his
babble to advise a wife, as spiritual plaster for all of this world's
woe. A wife! And for him! That any man in his position and with his
outlook could harbour for an instant an idea so selfish! And even
Olive--

However, this time, Ramsdell did not hear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Doctor Keltridge smoked for a while in silence. Then,--

"Opdyke is hunting for a new assistant," he said.

Brenton, who had been sitting with his eyes fastened to the rug before
him, looked up at the doctor. Looking, his gray eyes were heavy, their
light temporarily extinct. Indeed, the old doctor, watching him
intently from above his pipe, wondered a little if that light would
ever come again. He was quite well aware that it burns only in eyes
bent hopefully upon a remote, receding, yet conquerable ideal. Once
extinguished, it is well-nigh impossible to kindle it again.

"What is that for?" Brenton queried, with the utter listlessness of a
man whose sole absorption is in himself.

"A variety of reasons, I suspect. To be sure, he himself only declares
one: the insistent professional calls on his time from outside: books,
magazine articles, lectures, and all that. It is wonderfully good for
the college to have a man of his calibre on its list. As a trustee, it
is my notion that they'd much better give him anything he happens to
want, for fear, if they refuse, he'll go out altogether."

"He wouldn't," Brenton said quickly.

"You never know, in a case like that of Opdyke. He has done grand work;
his record here is made and done with. He has outside calls enough to
fill up his time to the limit of his strength; he has enough money to
carry him in comparative luxury to the end of all things, even if he
never--"

"Professor Opdyke is no pot-boiler," Brenton interrupted. "It's not
money that he counts; it's the thing itself he's after."

"What thing?" the doctor asked, with seeming carelessness.

Brenton flashed into sudden fire.

"The finishing out his work. The trying to add one little bit to the
sum total of permanent knowledge. The kind of thing