e on his way.

"Hoddy--Hoddy has gone, boys!"

Then quickly, silently, the three hundred men arose and stood. After
a time they heard Delano say: "Sit down, boys."

He waited till they were seated. "There's a lot that I might tell,
men--terrible things--that I won't tell, for it's all over. Just
this--and I suppose you're about through now and breaking up. It was
the poor old Prof. of ours--shattered, deathly white, a lot older.
But will you believe it, the same dear old smile, or almost a smile,
on his face! Unconscious, but babbling. And about what? The
college--Alma Mater! Those were just the words--Alma Mater! The
college that gave him the half pay and forgot him on the very night
when we are trying to raise a miserable two million, that things like
this sha'n't happen again!"

"And boys, when we bent over him and whispered our names, he seemed
after a while to understand that we were there--but in the classroom,
the old Number 3 in Holmes Hall! And fellows, he called on--on me to
recite----"

Merciless Martin Delano couldn't go on. Finally he spoke.

"And so, Mr. President, I wish, sir, as a slight token of my
appreciation of what that simple great man has done for Huntington
College to give to our Alma Mater--our Alma Mater, sir--the sum of
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be used for the erection
of a suitable building, for whatever purpose is most necessary, and
that building to be called after Horace Irving.

"And sir, I also desire to give to the fund for properly providing
for the salaries of our professors and other teachers, the sum of
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars--those men who teach in our
Alma Mater.

"And I ask one word more: I have arranged that Professor Irving is
to be buried from my house. If you will permit me, I will leave now."

The alumni of Huntington College were silent. There was no sound,
save the occasional pushing of a chair, or the click of a plate or a
glass upon the table, as Martin Delano passed from the room.

It was after one o'clock. Martin Delano was in his library, his arms
flung across the table, his face between them.

In the opaque blur of swirling rain, his car had passed the corner
of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street at precisely half-past four that
afternoon. He had happened to take out his watch at the moment the
Metropolitan clock struck the second quarter.

He would never know whether it had been his car or another!

SLOW POISON