riendships, but in spite of the advice of
his cousin they were with the men who did not count. Samuel Miller was
an example. He was a big, stodgy fellow with a slow mind which arrived
at its convictions deliberately. But when he had made sure of them he
hung to his beliefs like a bulldog to a bone.

It was this quality that one day brought them together in the classroom.
An instructor tried to drive Miller into admitting he was wrong in an
opinion. The boy refused to budge, and the teacher became nettled.

"Mr. Miller will know more when he doesn't know so much," the instructor
snapped out.

Jeff's instinct for fair play was roused at once, all the more because
of the ripple of laughter that came from the class. He spoke up quietly.

"I can't see yet but that Mr. Miller is right, sir."

"The discussion is closed," was the tart retort.

After class the dissenters walked across to chapel together.

"Poke the animal up with a stick and hear him growl," Jeff laughed
airily.

"Page always thinks a fellow ought to take his say-so as gospel," Miller
commented.

Most of the students saw in Jeff Farnum only a tallish young man, thin
as a rail, not particularly well dressed, negligent as to collar and
tie. But Miller observed in the tanned face a tender, humorous mouth and
eager, friendly eyes that looked out upon the world with a suggestion
of inner mirth. In course of time he found out that his friend was an
unconquerable idealist.

Jeff made discoveries. One of them was a quality of brutal indifference
in some of his classmates to those less fortunate. These classy young
gentlemen could ignore him as easily as a hurrying business man can a
newsboy trying to sell him a paper. If he was forced upon their notice
they were perfectly courteous; otherwise he was not on the map for them.

Another point that did not escape his attention was the way in which the
institution catered to Merrill and Frome, because they were large donors
to the university. He had once heard Peter C. Frome say in a speech to
the students that he contributed to the support of Verden University
because it was a "safe and conservative citadel which never had yielded
to demagogic assaults." At the time he had wondered just what the
president of the Verden Union Water Company had meant. He was slowly
puzzling his way to an answer.

Chancellor Bland referred often to the "largehearted Christian gentlemen
who gave of their substance to promote the mo