lls. Storm doors could not yet be dispensed with,
and here and there some practical soul--doubtless connected with the
Physics Department--had by means of a railing insured himself against
the painful mortification of an icy step. Walking is never good in
Tutors' Lane during the winter. Cement walks are not laid, and temporary
boards smack a little too much of a makeshift. Arctics are the
invariable rule, but even so the going is not easy, and it is
particularly bad at this time of year, for now it is that arctics, which
never seem able to last through a winter, suddenly give out at the heel
and fill with mud and slush.

Tom walked on until he came to the Dean's driveway, and then he turned
into it. During his college days he had spent a considerable amount of
time at the Dean's house, and now, in the first year of his
Instructorship, he was there more than ever. His own home in Ephesus,
New York, being at the present time occupied by a stepmother for whom he
had no particular affection and a father whose interests were in the
drygoods rather than the scholastic line, he scarcely thought of himself
as having a home other than that made for him by the Dean's wife. It was
true that there was an older sister whose husband was a lawyer in
Omaha, but she had never approved of his bringing up, and, since she was
convinced that he had been spoiled beyond repair, their separation was
merciful. At Christmas the family exchanged cheques, and Tom dutifully
sent what the Telegraph Company called a "Yule Tide Message," tastefully
decorated free of charge. But there family ties ended.

They had really ended sixteen years ago when the nine-year-old Tom had
been led up to take a terrified look at his mother's dead face and had
then been allowed to escape to the rear of the house for a season of
uncontrollable weeping. From that time on until five years later when he
came in contact with Mr. Hilton, Instructor in English at the High
School, he had led the life of a "queer" boy. Devoted to reading and
content, in default of other youth who interested him, to stay by
himself, he was a hopeless enigma to his father, whose memories of
youth, strengthened by contemporary examination of his "cash boys," were
of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School
and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's
death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous,
he noticed important thi