a note or telephone her,--you didn't do either,
did you?"

Allen, silent and dejected, dropped his gloves and picked them up, the
color deepening in his cheeks.

"I just happened to meet her; that's all," he said, avoiding Dan's eyes.

"She wrote you a note or telephoned you?"

Silence.

"Humph," grunted Harwood.

"She's wonderfully beautiful and strong and so tremendously vivid! I
think those nice girls you read of in the Greek mythology must have been
like that," murmured Allen, sighing heavily.

"I dare say they were!" snapped Harwood, searching the youngster's
thin, sensitive face, and meeting for an instant his dreamy eyes. He was
touched anew by the pathos in the boy, whose nature was a light web of
finespun golden cords thrilling to any breath of fancy. The superb
health, the dash and daring of a school-girl that he had seen but once
or twice, had sent him climbing upon a frail ladder of romantic dreams.

Harwood struck his hands together sharply. If he owed a duty to Marian
and her family, not less he was bound to turn Allen's thoughts into safe
channels.

"Of course it wouldn't do--that sort of thing, you know, Allen. I didn't
mean to beat you into the dust. Let's go over to Pop June's and get some
oysters. I don't feel up to our usual boarding-house discussion of
Christian Science to-night."

At the first opportunity Dan suggested to Bassett, without mentioning
Marian's adventure with Allen, that the Whitcomb was no place for her,
and that her pursuit of knowledge under his own tutorship was the merest
farce; whereupon Bassett sent her back immediately to Miss Waring's.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PASSING OF ANDREW KELTON

Andrew Kelton died suddenly, near the end of May, in Sylvia's senior
year at college. The end came unexpectedly, of heart trouble. Harwood
read of it in the morning newspaper, and soon after he reached his
office Mrs. Owen called him on the telephone to say that she was going
to Montgomery at once, and asking him to meet Sylvia as she passed
through Indianapolis on her way home. Both of the morning papers printed
laudatory articles on Kelton; he had been held in high esteem by all the
friends of Madison College, and his name was known to educators
throughout the country.

On the same afternoon Bassett appeared in town on the heels of a letter
saying that Dan need not expect him until the following week.

"Thought I'd better see Fitch about some receiver business, so I came