ming
eyes, knew that he heard the truth from Surface at last. The revelation
broke upon him in a stunning flash. He sprang away from the old man with
a movement of loathing unspeakable.

"Father!" he said, in a dull curious whisper. "_O God! Father!_"

Surface gazed at him, his upper lip drawn up into his old purring sneer.

"So that is how you feel about it, my son?" he inquired suavely, and
suddenly crumpled down upon the floor.

* * * * *

The young man shook him by the shoulder, but he did not stir. Henderson
came running at the sound of the fall, and together they bore the old
man, breathing, but inert as the dead, to his room. In an hour, the
doctor had come and gone. In two hours, a trained nurse was sitting by
the bed as though she had been there always. The doctor called it a
"stroke," superinduced by a "shock." He said that Professor Nicolovius
might live for a week, or a year, but was hardly likely to speak again
on this side the dark river that runs round the world.

XXVII

_Sharlee Weyland reads the Morning Post; of Rev. Mr. Dayne's Fight
at Ephesus and the Telephone Message that never came; of the
Editor's Comment upon the Assistant Editor's Resignation, which
perhaps lacked Clarity; and of how Eight Men elect a Mayor._

Next morning, in the first moment she had, Sharlee Weyland read the
Post's editorial on the reformatory. And as she read she felt as though
the skies had fallen, and the friendly earth suddenly risen up and
smitten her.

It was a rainy morning, the steady downpour of the night before turned
into a fine drizzle; and Sharlee, who nearly always walked, took the car
downtown. She was late this morning; there had been but flying minutes
she could give to breakfast; not a second to give to anything else; and
therefore she took the Post with her to read on the ride to "the"
office. And, seating herself, she turned immediately to the editorial
page, in which the State Department of Charities felt an especial
interest this morning.

Both the name and the position of the editorial were immediately
disappointing to her. It was not in the leading place, and its caption
was simply "As to the Reformatory," which seemed to her too colorless
and weak. Subconsciously, she passed the same judgment upon the opening
sentences of the text, which somehow failed to ring out that challenge
to the obstructionists she had confidently expected. A