le as possible of their doings.

In the college Y.M.C.A. prayers were offered for Scarborough--his name
was not spoken, but every one understood. A delegation of the
religious among his faithful fellow barbs called upon him to pray and
to exhort. They came away more charmed than ever with their champion,
and convinced that he was the victim of slander and envy. Not that he
had deliberately deceived them, for he hadn't; he was simply courteous
and respectful of their sincerity.

"The fraternities are in this somewhere," the barbs decided. "They're
trying to destroy him by lying about him." And they liked it that
their leader was the brilliant, the talked-about, the sought-after
person in the college. When he stood up to speak in the assembly hall
or the Literary Society they always greeted him with several rounds of
applause.

To the chagrin of the faculty and the irritation of the fraternities a
jury of alumni selected him to represent Battle Field at the oratorical
contest among the colleges of the state. And he not only won there but
also at the interstate contest--a victory over the orators of the
colleges of seven western states in which public speaking was, and is,
an essential part of higher education. His oratory lacked style, they
thought at Battle Field. It was the same then, essentially, as it was
a few years later when the whole western country was discussing it. He
seemed to depend entirely upon the inherent carrying power of his ably
constructed sentences--like so many arrows, some flying gracefully,
others straight and swift, all reaching the mark at which they were
aimed. In those days, as afterward, he stood upon the platform almost
motionless; his voice was clear and sweet, never noisy, but subtly
penetrating and, when the sense demanded it, full of that mysterious
quality which makes the blood run more swiftly and the nerves tingle.
"Merely a talker, not an orator," declared the professor of elocution,
and few of those who saw him every day appreciated his genius then. It
was on the subject-matter of his oration, not on his "delivery," that
the judges decided for him--so they said and thought.

In February of this resplendent sophomore year there came in his mail a
letter postmarked Battle Field and addressed in printed handwriting.
The envelope contained only a newspaper cutting--from the St.
Christopher Republic:

At four o'clock yesterday afternoon a boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Joh