e had voluntarily included in his course. Whatever on earth
he had done it for he could not now tell. The old doctor who held the
chair in that department had thirty years before earned the name of Crab.
And slowly in the succeeding years he had grown crabbier, crustier, so
student rumor had it. Ken had rather liked the dry old fellow, and had
been much absorbed in his complex lectures, but he had never been near
him, and now the prospect changed color. Foolishly Ken asked a sophomore
in what light old Crab might regard a student who was ambitious to pass
his exams early. The picture painted by that sophomore would have made
a flaming-mouthed dragon appear tame. Nerving himself to the ordeal, Ken
took his card and presented himself one evening at the doctor's house.

A maid ushered him into the presence of a venerable old man who did not
look at all, even in Ken's distorted sight, like a crab or a dragon. His
ponderous brow seemed as if it had all the thought in the world behind
it. He looked over huge spectacles at Ken's card and then spoke in a dry,
quavering voice.

"Um-m. Sit down, Mr. Ward."

Ken found his breath and strangely lost his fear and trembling. The doctor
dryly asked him why he thought he knew more than the other students, who
were satisfied to wait months longer before examination. Ken hastened to
explain that it was no desire of his; that, although he had studied hard
and had not missed many lectures, he knew he was unprepared. Then he went
on to tell about the baseball situation and why he had been sent up.

"Um-m." The professor held a glass paperweight up before Ken and asked
a question about it. Next he held out a ruler and asked something about
that, and also a bottle of ink. Following this he put a few queries
about specific gravity, atomic weight, and the like. Then he sat
thrumming his desk and appeared far away in thought. After a while
he turned to Ken with a smile that made his withered, parchment-like
face vastly different.

"Where do you play?" he asked.

"S-sir?" stammered Ken.

"In baseball, I mean. What place do you play? Catch? Thrower? I don't
know the names much."

Ken replied eagerly, and then it seemed he was telling this stern old
man all about baseball. He wanted to know what fouls were, and how to
steal bases, and he was nonplussed by such terms as "hit-and-run." Ken
discoursed eloquently on his favorite sport, and it was like a kind of
dream to be there. Strange things