f all doubts, doubt of himself, kept the young man
tossing on his pillow for at least an hour.

But he woke with a clear-cut decision singing in his mind and gladdening
his morning. He would take Jones back. He would generously reinstate the
youth, on the ground that the public mortification already put upon him
was a sufficient punishment for his sins and abundant warning for others
like-minded. This would settle all difficulties at one stroke and
definitely lay the ghost of a disagreeable occurrence. The solution was
so simple that he marvelled that he had not thought of it before.

His morning's mail, containing one or two very unpleasant letters, only
strengthened his determination. He lost no time in carrying it out. By
special messenger he dispatched a carefully written and kindly letter to
Jones, Senior. Jones, Senior, tore it across the middle and returned it
by the same messenger. He then informed the _Chronicle_ what he had
done. The _Chronicle_ that afternoon shrieked it under a five-column
head, together with a ferocious statement from Jones, Senior, saying
that he would rather see his son breaking rocks in the road than a
student in such a college as Blaines was, under the present regime. The
editor, instead of seeing in West's letter a spontaneous act of
magnanimity in the interest of the academic uplift, maliciously twisted
it into a grudging confession of error, "unrelieved by the grace of
manly retraction and apology." So ran the editorial, which was
offensively headed "West's Fatal Flop." Some of the State papers, it
seemed from excerpts printed in another column, were foolishly following
the _Chronicle's_ lead; Republican cracker-box orators were trying
somehow to make capital of the thing; and altogether there was a very
unpleasant little mess, which showed signs of developing rapidly into
what is known as an "issue."

That afternoon, when the tempest in the collegiate teapot was storming
at its merriest, West, being downtown on private business, chanced to
drop in at the Post office, according to his frequent habit. He found
the sanctum under the guard of the young assistant editor. The Colonel,
in fact, had been sick in bed for four days, and in his absence, Queed
was acting-editor and sole contributor of the leaded minion. The two
young men greeted each other pleasantly.

"I'm reading you every day," said West, presently, "and, flattery and
all that aside, I've been both surprised and delighted