dging house where the
dead girl resided came to me with a letter addressed to your nephew. It
seems Miss Taylor had given the girl the letter to mail the previous
evening and had indeed made a considerable point of its being mailed.
Nevertheless the girl had forgotten to do so and the next day was too
frightened to do it fearing the thing might have some connection with
the suicide. She meant to give it to Ted in person but finding him out
decided at the last moment to deliver it to me instead. I am sending the
letter to you, as I received it, unopened, and have not and shall not
mention the incident to any one else. I should prefer and am sure that
you will also wish that your nephew's name shall not be associated in
any way with the dead girl's. Frankly I don't believe the thing contains
any dynamite whatever but I would rather you handled the thing instead
of myself.

"Believe me, my dear Holiday, I am heartily sick, and sorry over the
whole matter of Ted's expulsion. If we had not had his own word for it I
should not have believed him guilty. Even now I have a feeling that there
was more behind the thing than we got, something perhaps more to his
credit than he was willing to tell."

Philip Holiday picked up the enclosed letter addressed to Ted and looked
at it as dubiously as if indeed it might have contained dynamite. The
scrawling handwriting was painfully familiar. And the mention of
Florence as the dead girl's home was disagreeably corroborating evidence.
What indeed was behind it all?

Steeling his will he tore open the sealed envelope. Save for a folded
slip of paper it was quite empty. The folded slip was a check for three
hundred dollars made payable to Madeline Taylor and signed with Ted
Holiday's name.

Here was dynamite and to spare for Doctor Holiday. Beside the uneasy
questions this development conjured the catastrophe of the boy's
expulsion took second place. And yet he forced himself not to judge until
he had heard Ted's own story. What was love for if it could not find
faith in time of need?

He said nothing to any one, even his wife, of the president's letter and
that disconcerting check which evidently represented the results of the
boy's law breaking. All day he looked for a letter from Ted himself and
hoped against hope that he would appear in person. His anxiety grew as he
heard nothing. What had become of the boy? Where had he betaken himself
with his shame and trouble? How grave was his