ote back that he was keeping out of
the whole mess.

It came, therefore, as a fearful shock, the letters and newspapers'
account of the expelling of James King of Los Angeles, 'Varsity Captain
and prominent in college theatricals, from Stanford University for
marching in a parade of protest against the curtailing of drinking! She
was alone in her room when she opened her mail and she sat very still
for minutes with her eyes shut, her fingers gripping the tiny clasped
hands on her ring. At last, "_I'll never stop believing in you_," she
said, almost aloud.

Then she read Jimsy's own version of it. She always kept his letter for
the last, childishly, on the nursery theorem of "First the worst, second
the same, last the best of all the game."

"Skipper dearest," he wrote, in a hasty and stumbling scrawl, "I'm
so mad I can hardly see to write. I'd have killed that prof if it
hadn't been for Carter. This is how it happened. I'd been keeping
out of the whole mess as I told you I would. That night I was
digging out something at the Library and on my way back to the
House I saw a gang of fellows in a sort of parade, and some one at
the end caught hold of me and dragged me in. I asked him what the
big idea was and he said he didn't know, and I was sleepy and when
we came to the House I dropped out and went in. I wasn't in it ten
minutes and I didn't even know what it was about. But when they
called for every one who was in the parade next day I had to show
up, of course. Well, they asked me about it and I told them just
how it happened, and they said all right, then, I could go. I was
surprised and thankful, I can tell you, because they'd been
chopping off heads right and left, some of the best men in college.
Well, just as I was going out through the door the old prof called
me back and said he had one more thing to ask me. Did I consider
that his committee was absolutely right and justified in everything
they'd done? Well, Skipper, what could I say? I said just what
you'd have said and what you'd have wanted me to say--that I did
think they had been too severe and in some cases unjust and they
canned me for it."

There was a letter from Stephen Lorimer, grave and distressed,
substantiating everything that Jimsy had written. (He had taken the
first train north and gone into the matter thoroughly with the men at