op, and Mr. Phelps to the
station where he was to take the train for his home. Will accompanied
his father, but the subject that was uppermost in the mind of each was
not referred to for there are times when silence is golden.

In the days that followed, Will Phelps worked as he never had worked
before in all his brief life. His distaste for the Greek and dislike of
the professor were as strong as before, and at times it almost seemed to
him that he could no longer continue the struggle. His sole inspiration
was in the thought of his father and in his blind determination not to
be mastered.

An additional element of gloom in those days were the reports that came
from the infirmary of the condition of Peter John. All the other
patients appeared to be doing well, but the daily word from the watchers
by Peter John's bedside was that he was worse. A pall seemed to be
resting over the entire college. The noisy songs and boisterous shouts
were not heard in the dormitories nor upon the campus.

A part of the general anxiety was gone when as the days passed there
were no reports of new cases developed, but the fear of what was to be
the issue in the case of Peter John was in every heart--even with those
who had not exchanged a word with him since he had entered Winthrop.

Will Phelps found himself even wondering how it was that the "old
grads" when they returned always spoke in such enthusiastic terms of
their own college days. How they laughed and slapped one another on the
back as they recalled and recounted their exploits. It was Will's
conviction that those days must have been markedly different from those
through which he was passing, for he was finding only hard work and much
trouble, he dolefully assured himself. He was too inexperienced to
understand that one is never able to see clearly the exact condition of
present experiences. There is then no perspective, and the good and
evil, the large and small, are strangely confused. It is like the
figures in a Chinese picture wherein the background and foreground, the
little and the big, are much the same in their proportions. Only when a
man looks back and beholds the events of the bygone days in their true
perspective is he able to form a correct estimate of the relative
values. Even Will Phelps would not have believed that there might come a
day when the very struggle he was having in mastering his Greek would be
looked upon by him as not unpleasant in the larger light