ration, it would be decidedly awkward
henceforward, to have to offer salt to Mrs. Brown at dinner, as he had
done only last week, with the hand that had ruined her son's career.
Much more important, it seemed clear enough to West that the boy had
only been weak, and had been tempted into misbehavior by his older and
more wilful comrade. West had never liked young Jones. He was a
rawboned, unkempt sprig of the masses, who had not been included in any
of the student suppers at the president's house. Jones's refusal to
speak out fully on all the details of the affair pointed strongly, so
West argued, to consciousness of damning guilt. The path of
administrative duty appeared plain. West, to say truth, had not at
first expected to apply the drastic penalty of expulsion at all, but it
was clear that this was what the city expected of him. The universal cry
was for unshrinking firmness. Well, he would show them that he was firm,
and shrank from no unpleasantness where his duty was concerned. Brown he
ordered before him for a severe reprimand, and Jones he summarily
dismissed from old Blaines College.

These decrees went into effect at noon. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon
the war-dogs broke their leashes. Four was the hour when the "night"
edition of the _Evening Chronicle_ came smoking hot from the presses. It
appeared that young Jones was the son, not merely of a plumber, but of a
plumber who was decidedly prominent in lodge circles and the smaller
areas of politics. His case was therefore precisely the kind that the
young men of the Chronicle loved to espouse. The three-column scare-head
over their bitterly partisan "story" ran thus:

POOR BOY KICKED OUT
BY PRESIDENT WEST

Close beside this, lest the reader should fail to grasp the full meaning
of the boldface, was a three-column cartoon, crudely drawn but adroit
enough. It represented West, unpleasantly caricatured, garbed in a
swallow-tail coat and enormous white gloves, with a gardenia in his
buttonhole, engaged in booting a lad of singular nobility of countenance
out of an open door. A tag around the lad's neck described him as "The
Workingman's Son." Under the devilish drawing ran a line which said,
succinctly, "His Policies." On page four was a double column,
double-leaded editorial, liberal with capitals and entitled: "Justice in
Silk Stockings."

But this was only a beginning. Next morning's _Post_, which West had
counted on to come to his assistance w