ake you back to his school days, and then you
would encounter the causes.

He had gone to a preparatory school when he was twelve. It was eight years
before he got into the freshman class of the college that had been
selected as the one best qualified to give him a degree, and there is no
telling how long he might have remained there, faculty willing, had it not
been for the interfering "mustard girl." He could throw a hammer farther
and run the hundred faster than any youth in the freshman class, and he
could handle an oar with the best of them, but as he had spent nearly
eight years in acquiring this proficiency to the exclusion of anything
else it is not surprising that he excelled in these pursuits, nor is it
surprising that he possessed a decided aversion for the things that are
commonly taught in college by studious-looking gentlemen who do not even
belong to the athletic association and have forgotten their college yell.

George boasted, in his freshman year, that if the faculty would let him
alone he could easily get through the four years without flunking a single
thing in athletics. It was during the hockey season, just after the
Christmas holidays, that he married the pretty "mustard girl" and put an
abrupt end to what must now be regarded as a superficial education.

He carried his athletic vigour into the brokerage offices, however. No one
could accuse him of being lazy, and no one could say that he did not make
an effort. He possessed purpose and determination after a fashion, for he
was proud and resentful; but he lacked perspective, no matter which way he
looked for it. Behind him was a foggy recollection of the things he should
have learned, and ahead was the dark realisation that the world is made up
principally of men who cannot do the mile under thirty minutes but who
possess amazing powers of endurance when it comes to running circles
around the man who is trained to do the hundred yard dash in ten seconds
flat.

A few minutes after Braden Thorpe's departure from the Tresslyn drawing-
room, young George entered the house and stamped upstairs to his
combination bed-chamber and sitting-room on the top floor. He always went
upstairs three steps at a time, as if in a hurry to have it over with. He
had a room at the top of the house because he couldn't afford one lower
down. A delayed sense of compunction had ordered Mrs. Tresslyn to insist
upon George's paying his own way through life, now that he was