r
you say goes, Mr. Knight."

Patches smiled. "Friends, this is Mr. Joseph Parkhill, the only son of
the distinguished Professor Parkhill, whom you all know so well."

If Patches had planned to enjoy the surprise his words caused, he could
not have been disappointed.

Presently, when Joe had slipped away again, Patches told them how,
because of his interest in the young man, and because of the lad's
strange knowledge of Professor Parkhill, he had written east for the
distinguished scholar's history.

"The professor himself was not really so much to blame," said Patches.
"It seems that he was born to an intellectual life. The poor fellow
never had a chance. Even as a child he was exhibited as a prodigy--a
shining example of the possibilities of the race, you know. His father,
who was also a professor of some sort, died when he was a baby. His
mother, unfortunately, possessed an income sufficient to make it
unnecessary that Everard Charles should ever do a day's real work. At
the age of twenty, he was graduated from college; at the age of
twenty-one he was married to--or perhaps it would be more accurate to
say--he was married _by_--his landlady's daughter. Quite likely the
woman was ambitious to break into that higher life to which the
professor aspired, and caught her cultured opportunity in an unguarded
moment. The details are not clear. But when their only child, Joe, was
six years old, the mother ran away with a carpenter who had been at work
on the house for some six weeks. A maiden aunt of some fifty years, who
was a worshiper of the professor's cult, came to keep his house and to
train Joe in the way that good boys should go.

"But the lad proved rather too great a burden, and when he was thirteen
they sent him to a school out here in the West, ostensibly for the
benefit of the climate. The boy, it was said, being of abnormal
mentality, needed to pursue his studies under the most favorable
physical conditions. The professor, unhampered by his offspring,
continued to climb his aesthetic ladder to intellectual and cultured
glory. The boy in due time escaped from the school, and was educated by
the man Dryden and Nick Cambert."

"And what will become of him now?" asked the Dean.

Patches smiled. "Why, the lad is twenty-one now, and we have agreed that
it is about time that he began to make a man of himself--I can help him
a little, perhaps--I have been trying occasionally the past year. But
you see the condi