ing that
this action of my son's has made me very angry. Still, I don't deny that
it might have happened in any one of a dozen colleges in any part of the
country. A large part of my grievance was because it seemed to me and,
pardon me, seems yet, that the institution was to blame for keeping so
still about these things, and doing so little to create a different
moral Standard. But I'm not asking Burrton to take all the blame. My boy
has got to take his punishment, and I don't know of a better one than to
take him home."

"I hope you won't resort to that measure," said the president,
earnestly. "Your son has unusual talent. He holds the highest place in
the shops for original research. Give him another chance. It is my
opinion that he will not disappoint you again."

"Perhaps not," answered Paul as he rose to go. "But I have about made up
my mind."

"I hope you'll change it," said the president as Paul went away.

"Perhaps," answered Paul briefly.

He walked slowly back to Walter's room, asking many questions as he went
along. His talk with the president had given him another angle from
which to judge the boy's conduct. He could not hide from himself that
his heart was sore over the whole matter, because he had never dreamed
that his own boy would fall before a temptation which he had so often
heard his father condemn at home. Paul Douglas was humiliated, as a man
always is when his children begin to show the bad habits he has been
fond of criticising in other people's children. And he had not yet been
able to find any reasonable excuse for Walter.

When he went into the room he found Walter packing things up and
evidently with no purpose of remonstrating or trying to change his
father's decision.

"There's a letter from mother," he said briefly as Paul came up to the
table in the middle of the room.

"You want me to read it?"

"Yes."

Paul sat down to read and Walter went on with his packing.

"Dear Walter," Esther wrote, "I am so glad your father has this
opportunity to visit you and I presume he is at Burrton now. You will
have good times together and I am envying him the privilege. I have
missed you, boy, more than you can imagine. But then you will never know
how much your mother has depended on you here at home. You were always
so thoughtful and kind, how can I help missing my eldest.

"I have been thinking a good deal lately about the different standards
that prevail in different places and I have