trouble? It was a bad day
for Philip Holiday and a worse night.

But the morning brought a letter from his nephew, mailed ominously enough
from a railway post office in northern Vermont. The doctor tore it open
with hands that trembled a little. One thing at least he was certain of.
However bad the story the lad had to tell it would be the truth. He could
count on that.

"Dear Uncle Phil--" it ran. "By the time you get this I shall be over the
border and enlisted, I hope, with the Canadians. I am horribly sorry to
knife you like this and go off without saying good-by and leaving such a
mess behind but truly it is the best thing I could do for the rest of
you as well as myself.

"They will write you from college and tell you I am fired--for gambling.
But they won't tell you the whole story because they don't know it. I
couldn't tell them. It concerned somebody else besides myself. But you
have a right to know everything and I am going to tell it to you and
there won't be anything shaved off or tacked on to save my face either.
It will be straight stuff on my honor as a Holiday which means as much to
me as it does to you and Larry whether you believe it or not."

Then followed a straightforward account of events from the first
ill-judged pick-up on the train and the all but fatal joy ride to the
equally ill-judged kisses in Cousin Emma's garden.

"I hate like the mischief to put such things down on paper," wrote the
boy, "but I said I'd tell the whole thing and I will, even if it does
come out hard, so you will know it isn't any worse than it is. It is bad
enough I'll admit, I hadn't any business to make fool love to her when I
really didn't care a picayune. And I hadn't any business to be there in
Holyoke at all when you thought I was at Hal's. I did go to Hal's but I
only stayed two days. The rest of the time I was with Madeline and knew I
was going to be when I left the Hill. That part can't look any worse to
you than it does to me. It was a low-down trick to play on you when you
had been so white about the car and everything. But I did it and I can't
undo it. I can only say I am sorry. I did try afterward to make up a
little bit by keeping my word about the studying. Maybe you'll let that
count a little on the other side of the ledger. Lord knows I need
anything I can get there. It is little enough, more shame to me!"

Then followed the events of the immediately preceding months from
Madeline Taylor's arrival i