" Aaron Wickersham went on
slowly, never taking his eyes from his son's face, "for I had discovered
that you did not care a button for my wishes; but I did think you would
do it for your mother. For she thought you were a god and worshipped
you. She has been talking for ten years of the time when she would go to
see you come out at the head of your class. She was going to Paris to
get the clothes to wear if you won, and you--" His voice broke--"you
won't even graduate! What will you think next summer when Mrs. Wentworth
is there to see her son, and all the other men and women I know who have
sons who graduate there, and your mother--?" The father's voice broke
completely, and he looked away. Even Ferdy for a moment seemed grave and
regretful. Then after a glance at his father he recovered his composure.

"I'm not to blame," he said surlily, "if she did. It was her fault."

Aaron Wickersham turned on him.

"Stop," he said in a quiet voice. "Not another word. One other word,
and, by God! I'll box your head off your shoulders. Say what you please
about me, but not one word against her. I will take you from college and
put you to sweeping the floor of this office at twenty dollars a month,
and make you live on your salary, too, or starve, if you say one
other word."

Ferdy's face blanched at the implacable anger that blazed in his
father's eyes, but even more at the coldness of the gleam. It made
him shiver.

A little later young Wickersham entered his father's office, and though
he was not much liked by the older clerks, it soon appeared that he had
found a congenial occupation and one for which he had a natural gift.
For the first time in his life he appeared inclined to work.

CHAPTER V

THE RIDGE COLLEGE

The school over which Gordon had undertaken to preside was not a very
advanced seminary of learning, and possibly the young teacher did not
impart to his pupils a great deal of erudition.

His predecessors in the schoolmaster's chair had been, like their
patrons, the product of a system hardly less conservative than that of
the Locrians. Any one who proposed an innovation would have done so with
a rope about his neck, and woe to him if it proved unsuccessful.

When Gordon reported first to the squire, the old man was manifestly
pleased.

"Why, you've growed considerable. I didn't have no idea you'd be so big
a man." He measured him with satisfaction. "You must be nigh as big
as your pa."

"I'm broad