atan's
ways into our peaceful midst," and against Charley Braddock with his
"ante-room to Sheol"--the Reverend Sweetser had just learned the
distinction between Sheol and Hades. The Presbyterian preacher
wrestled spiritually with Will Cauldwell and so wrought upon his
depression that he gave out a solemn statement of confession, remorse
and reform. In painting himself in dark colors he painted Jack Dumont
jet black.

Pauline had known that Dumont was "lively"--he was far too proud of his
wild oats wholly to conceal them from her. And she had all the
tolerance and fascinated admiration of feminine youth for the
friskiness of masculine freedom. Thus, though she did not precisely
approve what he and his friends had done, she took no such serious view
of it as did her parents and his. The most she could do with her
father was to persuade him to suspend sentence pending the conclusion
of an investigation into Jack's doings at the University of Michigan
and in Detroit. Colonel Gardiner was not so narrow or so severe as
Jack said or as Pauline thought. He loved his daughter; so he inquired
thoroughly. He knew that his daughter loved Dumont; so he judged
liberally. When he had done he ordered the engagement broken and
forbade Dumont the house.

"He is not wild merely; he is--worse than you can imagine," said the
colonel to his wife, in concluding his account of his discoveries and
of Dumont's evasive and reluctant admissions--an account so carefully
expurgated that it completely misled her. "Tell Pauline as much as you
can--enough to convince her."

This, when Mrs. Gardiner was not herself convinced. She regarded the
colonel as too high-minded to be a fit judge of human frailty; and his
over-caution in explanation had given her the feeling that he had a
standard for a husband for their daughter which only another such rare
man as himself could live up to. Further, she had always been extremely
reserved in mother-and-daughter talk with Pauline, and thus could not
now give her a clear idea of what little she had been able to gather
from Colonel Gardiner's half-truths. This typical enacting of a
familiar domestic comedy-tragedy had the usual result: the girl was
confirmed in her original opinion and stand.

"Jack's been a little too lively," was her unexpressed conclusion from
her mother's dilution of her father's dilution of the ugly truth.
"He's sorry and won't do it again, and--well, I'd hate a milksop.
Father