A few days after the return of Larry and Ruth to the Hill Doctor Holiday found among his mail an official looking document bearing the seal of the college which Ted attended and which was also his own and Larry's alma mater. He opened it carelessly supposing it to be an alumni appeal of some sort but as his-eyes ran down the typed sheet his face grew grave and his lips set in a tight line. The communication was from the president and informed its recipient that his nephew Edward Holiday was expelled from the college on the confessed charge of gambling.

"We are particularly sorry to be obliged to take this action," wrote the president, "inasmuch as Edward has shown recently a marked improvement both in class-room work and general conduct which has gone far to eradicate the unfortunate impression made by the lawlessness of his earlier career. But we cannot overlook so flagrant an offense and are regretfully forced to make an example of the offender. As you know gambling is strictly against the rules of the institution and your nephew played deliberately for high stakes as he admits and made a considerable sum of money—three hundred dollars to be precise—which he disposed of immediately for what purpose he refuses to tell. Again regretting," et cetera, et cetera, the letter closed.

But there was also a hand written postscript and an enclosure.

The postscript ran as follows:

"As a personal friend and not as the president of the college I am sending on the enclosed which may or may not be of importance. A young girl, Madeline Taylor by name, of Florence, Massachusetts, who has until recently been employed in Berry's flower shop, was found dead this morning with the gas jet fully turned on, the inference being clearly suicide. A short time ago a servant from the lodging house where the dead girl resided came to me with a letter addressed to your nephew. It seems Miss Taylor had given the girl the letter to mail the previous evening and had indeed made a considerable point of its being mailed. Nevertheless the girl had forgotten to do so and the next day was too frightened to do it fearing the thing might have some connection with the suicide. She meant to give it to Ted in person but finding him out decided at the last moment to deliver it to me instead. I am sending the letter to you, as I received it, unopened, and have not and shall not mention the incident to any one else. I should prefer and am sure that you will also wish that your nephew's name shall not be associated in any way with the dead girl's. Frankly I don't believe the thing contains any dynamite whatever but I would rather you handled the thing instead of myself.

"Believe me, my dear Holiday, I am heartily sick, and sorry over the whole matter of Ted's expulsion. If we had not had his own word for it I should not have believed him guilty. Even now I have a feeling that there was more behind the thing than we got, something perhaps more to his credit than he was willing to tell."

Philip Holiday picked up the enclosed letter addressed to Ted and looked at it as dubiously as if indeed it might have contained dynamite. The scrawling handwriting was painfully familiar. And the mention of Florence as the dead girl's home was disagreeably corroborating evidence. What indeed was behind it all?

Steeling his will he tore open the sealed envelope. Save for a folded slip of paper it was quite empty. The folded slip was a check for three hundred dollars made payable to Madeline Taylor and signed with Ted Holiday's name.

Here was dynamite and to spare for Doctor Holiday. Beside the uneasy questions this development conjured the catastrophe of the boy's expulsion took second place. And yet he forced himself not to judge until he had heard Ted's own story. What was love for if it could not find faith in time of need?

He said nothing to any one, even his wife, of the president's letter and that disconcerting check which evidently represented the results of the boy's law breaking. All day he looked for a letter from Ted himself and hoped against hope that he would appear in person. His anxiety grew as he heard nothing. What had become of the boy? Where had he betaken himself with his shame and trouble? How grave was his trouble? It was a bad day for Philip Holiday and a worse night.

But the morning brought a letter from his nephew, mailed ominously enough from a railway post office in northern Vermont. The doctor tore it open with hands that trembled a little. One thing at least he was certain of. However bad the story the lad had to tell it would be the truth. He could count on that.

"Dear Uncle Phil—" it ran. "By the time you get this I shall be over the border and enlisted, I hope, with the Canadians. I am horribly sorry to knife you like this and go off without saying good-by and leaving such a mess behind but truly it is the best thing I could do for the rest of you as well as myself.

"They will write you from college and tell you I am fired—for gambling. But they won't tell you the whole story because they don't know it. I couldn't tell them. It concerned somebody else besides myself. But you have a right to know everything and I am going to tell it to you and there won't be anything shaved off or tacked on to save my face either. It will be straight stuff on my honor as a Holiday which means as much to me as it does to you and Larry whether you believe it or not."

Then followed a straightforward account of events from the first ill-judged pick-up on the train and the all but fatal joy ride to the equally ill-judged kisses in Cousin Emma's garden.

"I hate like the mischief to put such things down on paper," wrote the boy, "but I said I'd tell the whole thing and I will, even if it does come out hard, so you will know it isn't any worse than it is. It is bad enough I'll admit, I hadn't any business to make fool love to her when I really didn't care a picayune. And I hadn't any business to be there in Holyoke at all when you thought I was at Hal's. I did go to Hal's but I only stayed two days. The rest of the time I was with Madeline and knew I was going to be when I left the Hill. That part can't look any worse to you than it does to me. It was a low-down trick to play on you when you had been so white about the car and everything. But I did it and I can't undo it. I can only say I am sorry. I did try afterward to make up a little bit by keeping my word about the studying. Maybe you'll let that count a little on the other side of the ledger. Lord knows I need anything I can get there. It is little enough, more shame to me!"

Then followed the events of the immediately preceding months from Madeline Taylor's arrival in the college town on to the stunning revelation of old Doctor Hendricks' letter.

"You don't know how the thing made me feel. I couldn't help feeling more or less responsible. For after all I did start the thing and though Madeline was always too good a sport to blame me I knew and I am sure she knew that she wouldn't have taken up with Hubbard if I hadn't left her in the lurch just when she had gotten to care a whole lot too much for me. Besides I couldn't help thinking what it would have been like if Tony had been caught in a trap like that. It didn't seem to me I could stand off and let her go to smash alone though I could see Doc Hendricks had common sense on his side when he ordered me to keep out of the whole business.

"I had all this on my mind when I came home that last time when Granny was dying. I had it lodged in my head that it was up to me to straighten things out by marrying Madeline myself though I hated the idea like death and destruction and I knew it would about kill the rest of you. I wrote and asked her to marry me that night after Granny went. She wouldn't do it. It wasn't because she didn't love me either. I guess it was rather because she did that she wouldn't. She wouldn't pull me down in the quick sands with her. Whatever you may think of what she was and did you will have to admit that she was magnificent about this. She might have saved herself at my expense and she wouldn't. Remember that, Uncle Phil, and don't judge her about the rest."

Doctor Holiday ceased reading a moment and gazed into the fire. By the measure of his full realization of what such a marriage would have meant to his young nephew he paid homage to the girl in her fine courage in refusing to take advantage of a chivalrous boy's impulsive generosity even though it left her the terrible alternative which later she had taken. And he thought with a tender little smile that there was something also rather magnificent about a lad who would offer himself thus voluntarily and knowingly a living sacrifice for "dear Honor's sake." He went back to the letter.

"But I still felt I had to do something to help though she wouldn't accept the way I first offered. I knew she needed money badly as she wasn't able to work and I wanted to give her some of mine. I knew I had plenty or would have next spring when I came of age. But I was sure you wouldn't let me have any of it now without knowing why and Larry wouldn't lend me any either, sight unseen. I wouldn't have blamed either of you for refusing. I haven't deserved to be taken on trust.

"The only other way I knew of to get money quick was to play for it. I have fool's luck always at cards. Last year I played a lot for money. Larry knew and rowed me like the devil for it last spring. No wonder. He knew how Dad hated it. So did I. I'd heard him rave on the subject often enough. But I did it just the same as I did a good many other things I am not very proud to remember now. But I haven't done it this year—at least only a few times. Once I played when I'd sent Madeline all the money I had for her traveling expenses and once or twice beside I did it on my own account because I was so darned sick of toeing a chalk mark I had to go on a tangent or bust. I am not excusing it. I am not excusing anything. I am just telling the truth.

"Anyhow the other night I played again in good earnest. There were quite a number of fellows in the game and we all got a bit excited and plunged more than we meant to especially myself and Ned Delany who was out to get me if he could. He hates me like the seven year itch anyway because I caught him cheating at cards once and said so right out in meeting. I had absolutely incredible luck. I guess the devil or the angels were on my side. I swept everything, made about three hundred dollars in all. The fellows paid up and I banked the stuff and mailed Madeline a check for the whole amount the first thing. I don't know what would have happened if I had lost instead of winning. I didn't think about that. A true gambler never does I reckon.

"But I want to say right here and now, Uncle Phil, that I am through with the business. The other night sickened me of gambling for good and all. Even Dad couldn't have hated it any more than I do this minute. It is rotten for a man, kills his nerves and his morals and his common sense. I'm done. I'll never make another penny that way as long as I live. But I'm not sorry I did it this once no matter how hard I'm paying for it. If I had it to do over again I'd do precisely the same thing. I wonder if you can understand that, Uncle Phil, or whether you'll think I'm just plain unregenerate.

"I thought then I was finished with the business but as a matter of fact I was just starting on it. Somebody turned state's evidence. I imagine it was Delany though I don't know. Anyhow somebody wrote the president an anonymous letter telling him there was a lot of gambling going on and I was one of the worst offenders, and thoughtfully suggested the old boy should ask me how much I made the other night and what I did with it. Of course that finished me off. I was called before the board and put through a holy inquisition. Gee! They piled up not only the gambling business but all the other things I'd done and left undone for two years and a half and dumped the whole avalanche on my head at once. Whew! It was fierce. I am not saying I didn't deserve it. I did, if not for this particular thing for a million other times when I've gone scot-free.

"They tried to squeeze out of me who the other men involved were but I wouldn't tell. I could have had a neat little come back on Delany if I had chosen but I don't play the game that way and I reckon he knew it and banked on my holding my tongue. I'd rather stand alone and take what was coming to me and I got it too good and plenty. They tried to make me tell what I did with the money. That riled me. It was none of their business and I told 'em so. Anyway I couldn't have told even if it would have done me any good on Madeline's account. I wouldn't drag her into it.

"Finally they dismissed me and said they would let me know later what they would do about my case. But there wasn't any doubt in my mind what they were going to do nor in theirs either, I'll bet. I was damned. They had to fire me—couldn't help it when I was caught with the goods under their very noses. I think a good many of them wished I hadn't been caught, that they could have let me off some way, particularly Prof. Hathaway. He put out his hand and patted my shoulder when I went out and I knew he was mighty sorry. He has been awfully decent to me always especially since I have been playing round with his daughter Elsie this fall and I guess it made him feel bad to have me turn out such a black sheep. I wished I could tell him the whole story but I couldn't. I just had to let him think it was as bad as it looked.

"I had hardly gotten back into the Frat house when I was called to the telephone. It was Madeline. She thanked me for sending her the money but said she was sending the check back as she didn't need it, had found a way out of her difficulties. She was going on a long, long journey in fact, and wouldn't see me again. Said she wanted to say good-by and wish me all kinds of luck and thank me for what she was pleased to call my goodness to her. And then she hung up before I could ask any questions or get it through my head what she meant by her long, long journey. My brain wasn't working very lively after what I'd been through over there at the board meeting anyway and I was too wrapped up in my own troubles to bother much about hers at the moment, selfish brute that I am.

"But the next morning I understood all right. She had found her way out and no mistake, just turned on the gas and let herself go. She was dead when they found her. I don't blame her, Uncle Phil. It was too hard for her. She couldn't go through with it. Life had been too hard for her from the beginning. She never had half a chance. And in the end we killed her between us, her pious old psalm singing hypocrite of a grandfather, the rotter who ruined her, and myself, the prince of fools.

"I went to see her with the old Doc. And, Uncle Phil, she was beautiful. Not even Granny looked more peaceful and happy than she did lying there dead with the little smile on her lips as if she were having a pleasant dream. But the scar was there on her forehead—the scar I put there. I've got a scar of my own too. It doesn't show on the surface but it is there for all that and always will be. I shan't talk about it but I'll never forget as long as I live that part of the debt she paid was mine. It is mea culpa for me always so far as she is concerned.

"Her grandfather arrived while I was there. If ever there was a man broken, mind and body and spirit he was. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Of the two I would much rather have been Madeline lying there dead than that poor old chap living with her death on his conscience.

"Later I got my official notice from the board. I was fired. I wanted to get out of college. I'm out for better or worse. Uncle Phil, don't think I don't care. I know how terribly you are going to be hurt and that it will be just about the finish of poor old Larry. I am not very proud of it myself—being catapulted out in disgrace where the rest of you left trailing clouds of glory. It isn't only what I have done just now. It is all the things I have done and haven't done before that has smashed me in the end—my fool attitude of have a good time and damn the expense. I didn't pay at the time. I am paying now compound interest accumulated. Worst of it is the rest of you will have to pay with me. You told me once we couldn't live to ourselves alone. I didn't understand then. I do now. I am guilty but you have to suffer with me for my mistakes. It is that that hurts worst of all.

"You have been wonderful to me always, had oceans of patience when I disappointed you and hurt you and worried you over and over again. And now here is this last, worst thing of all to forgive. Can you do it, Uncle Phil? Please try. And please don't worry about me, nor let the others. I'll come through all right. And if I don't I am not afraid of death. I have found out there are lots of worse things in the world. I haven't any pipe dreams about coming out a hero of any sort but I do mean to come out the kind of a man you won't be ashamed of and to try my darnedest to live up a little bit to the Holiday specifications. Again, dear Uncle Phil, please forgive me if you can and write as soon as I can send an address." Then a brief postscript. "The check Madeline sent back never got to me. If it is forwarded to the Hill please send it or rather its equivalent to the president. I wouldn't touch the money with a ten foot pole. I never wanted it for myself but only for Madeline and she is beyond needing anything any of us can give her now."