I learned about my father and the men with whom he
occasionally hunted and fished. They were all such fine men that I must
have grown up thinking that every man was very like them, but one day I
came in direct contact with the Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and
the thing I saw in his face put fear into my heart and it has been there
ever since. I have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because
he has said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be
wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there
are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if
I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he
wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought
to his studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen,
and fear what I know I fear, he might fail where I would give almost
anything to see him succeed; so I thought I would come to you and tell
you about it and ask you please to think it over, and to take extra care
of him, because I really believe that he may be in danger; and if he is
I never shall be able to rid myself of a sense of responsibility."

"I see," said Judge Whiting. "Now tell me, just as explicitly as you
have told me this, exactly what it is that you fear."

"Last Saturday," said Linda, "Donald told me that while standing at the
board beside Oka Sayye, demonstrating a theorem, he noticed that there
were gray hairs above the Jap's ears, and he bluntly asked him, before
the professor and the class, how old he was. In telling me, he said he
had the feeling that if the Jap could have done so in that instant, he
would have killed him. He said he was nineteen, but Donald says from the
matured lines of his body, from his hands and his face and his hair,
he is certain that he is thirty or more, and he thinks it very probable
that he may have graduated at home before he came here to get his
English for nothing from our public schools. I never before had the fact
called to my attention that this was being done, but Donald told me that
he had been in classes with matured men when he was less than ten years
of age. That is not fair, Judge Whiting; it is not right. There should
be an age specified above which people may not be allowed to attend
public school."

"I quite agree with you," said the Judge. "That has been done in the
grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under twenty in
comp