herent weakness the outcome was inevitable. At no time overfond of
study, he regarded residence in college as a most desirable emancipation
from the restraint of home life. The love of books he considered a pose
and he scoffed at the men who took their reading seriously. The
university attracted him mostly by its most undesirable features, its
sports, its secret societies, its petty cliques, and its rowdyism. The
broad spirit and the dignity of the _alma mater_ he ignored completely.
Directly he went to Yale he started in to enjoy himself and with the
sophisticated Underwood as guide, went to the devil faster than any man
before him in the entire history of the university.

Reading, attendance at lectures, became only a convenient cloak to
conceal his turpitudes. Poker playing, automobile joy rides, hard
drinking became the daily curriculum. In town rows and orgies of every
description he was soon a recognized leader. Scandal followed scandal
until he was threatened with expulsion. Then his father heard of it and
there was a terrible scene. Jeffries, Sr., went immediately to New
Haven and there followed a stormy interview in which Howard promised to
reform, but once the parent's back was turned things went on pretty much
as before. There were fresh scandals, the smoke of which reached as far
as New York. This time Mr. Jeffries tried the plan of cutting down the
money supply and Howard found himself financially embarrassed. But this
had not quite the effect desired by the father, for, rendered desperate
by his inability to secure funds with which to carry on his sprees, the
young man started in to gamble heavily, giving notes for his losses and
pocketing the ready money when he won.

Then came the supreme scandal which turned his father's heart to steel.
Jeffries, Sr., could forgive much in a young man. He had been young
himself once. None knew better than he how difficult it is when the
blood is rich and red to keep oneself in control. But there was one
offence which a man proud of his descent could not condone. He would
never forgive the staining of the family name by a degrading marriage.
The news came to the unhappy father like a thunder-clap. Howard,
probably in a drunken spree, had married secretly a waitress employed in
one of the "sporty" restaurants in New Haven, and to make the
mesalliance worse, the girl was not even of respectable parents. Her
father, Billy Delmore, the pool-room king, was a notorious gambler