tion of his surpassingly shrewd life had been his
voluntary retirement from the Senate and from political activities at
the first low murmur heralding the muck-raking cyclone which was to
devastate public life as men of his type understood it. But every
inhabitant of the State, including his enemies, took an odd pride in
his fiercely debonair defiance to old age, in his grandiloquent, too
fluent public addresses, and in the manner in which, despite his
dubious private reputation, he held open to him, by sheer will-power,
sanctimonious doors which were closed to other less robust bad
examples to youth.

This typical specimen of an American class now passing away, had sent
his son to the State University instead of to an expensive Eastern
college because of his carefully avowed attitude of bluff acceptance
of a place among the plain people of the region. The presence of
Jermain, Jr., in the classrooms of the State University had been
capital for many a swelling phrase on his father's part--"What's good
enough for the farmers' boys of my State is good enough for my boy,"
etc., etc.

As far as the young man in question was concerned, he certainly showed
no signs whatever of feeling himself sacrificed for his father's
advantage, and apparently considered that a leisurely sojourn for
seven years (he took both the B.A. and the three-year Law course) in a
city the size of La Chance was by no means a hardship for a young man
in the best of health, provided with ample funds, and never questioned
as to the disposition of his time. He had had at first a reputation
for dissipation which, together with his prowess on the football
field, had made him as much talked of on the campus as his father in
the State; but during his later years, those spent in the Law School,
he had, as the college phrase ran, "taken it out in being swagger,"
had discarded his former shady associates, had two rooms in the finest
frat house on the campus, and was the only student of the University
to drive two horses tandem to a high, red-wheeled dog-cart. His fine
physique and reputation for quick assertion of his rights saved him
from the occasional taunt of dandyism which would have been flung at
any other student indulging in so unusual a freak of fashion.

During Sylvia's Freshman year there usually sat beside him, on the
lofty seat of this equipage, a sweet-faced, gentle-browed young
lady, the lovely flower blooming out of the little girl who had so
i