fore he met the girl this afternoon. Somehow
that meeting had served to precipitate his decision. After all, Surface
had had both his chance and his warning.

That his sonship would make him detestable in Miss Weyland's sight was
highly probable, but he could not let the fear of that keep him silent.
His determination to tell her the essential facts had come now, at last,
as a kind of corollary to his instant necessity of straightening out the
reformatory situation. This latter necessity had dominated his thought
ever since the chance meeting in the post-office. And as his mind
explored the subject, it ramified, and grew more complicated and
oppressive with every step of the way.

It gradually became plain to him that, in clearing himself of
responsibility for the _Post's_ editorial, he would have to put West in
a very unpleasant position. He would have to convict him, not only of
having written the perfidious article, but of having left another man
under the reproach of having written it. But no; it could not be said
that he was putting West in this position. West had put himself there.
It was he who had written the article, and it was he who had kept silent
about it. Every man must accept the responsibility for his own acts, or
the world would soon be at sixes and sevens. In telling Miss Weyland the
truth about the matter, as far as that went, he would be putting himself
in an unpleasant position. Nobody liked to see one man "telling on"
another. He did not like it himself, as he remembered, for instance, in
the case of young Brown in the Blames College hazing affair.

Queed sat alone in the candle-lit dining-room, thinking things out. A
brilliant idea came to him. He would telephone to West, explain the
situation to him, and ask him to set it right immediately. West, of
course, would do so. At the worst, he had only temporized with the
issue--perhaps had lost sight of it altogether--and he would be shocked
to learn of the consequences of his procrastination. He himself could
postpone his call on Miss Weyland till to-morrow, leaving West to go
to-night. Of course, however, nothing his former chief could do now
would change the fact that Miss Weyland herself had doubted him.

Undoubtedly, the interview would be a painful one for West. How serious
an offense the girl considered the editorial had been plain in his own
brief conversation with her. And West would have to acknowledge,
further, that he had kept quiet abou