I

"Stop!"

The command from the rostrum brought the class up in their seats. Every eye was bent upon Catherwood standing at the end of a bench in the second row.

Some one snickered.

Catherwood stared at the floor, a blush of shame mounting his cheek and melting into his thin, bristly red hair at his freckled temples.

The assistant professor of history glared through his spectacles.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this is most unseemly! Mr. Catherwood, you may be seated! I should advise you, ladies and gentlemen, to devote a little more time to this course; and a little less, perhaps, to the Junior Hop. I am sure you do not wish me to make general the mailing of conditions next week. As you know the examination is set for nine o'clock on the morning of February 10th. I trust you will act upon the suggestion I have given you...."

The gong in the corridor clanged just then and the class shuffled out of the room.

Shunning his acquaintances in the hall Catherwood disappeared. The blush did not recede from his face until he banged the wide door shut behind him and the cold of the crisp February morning smote him full.

He walked swiftly down Williams Street to his room, not once lifting his eyes from the pavement, which was dirty white from the much trampled snow.

Another flunk! The third in as many weeks! Catherwood with a muttered imprecation reviewed the succession of class-room disasters.

"Confound history!" he growled as he strode into his room. He flung his books upon the bed and himself into the deep Morris chair by the window. A sparrow was hopping on the porch roof without. He rattled the window violently and the sparrow flew away in fright.

"Go it, you imp," he snarled; and again he condemned all history and its study to the deepest depths.

It was bad. The assistant professor had been lenient, but fate seemed to have composed that particular section of every history hater in the junior class.

Catherwood realized this—or thought he did—as he sat staring out of the windows into the skeleton branches of the trees, and from the thought he obtained a modicum of consolation.

He had worked. He had worked hard—but for some unknown reason he couldn't bite into the course, couldn't dig his teeth into the subject. He did not fear; on the contrary he was certain—as certain as a man can be—that his semester's work in class-room was of sufficiently high a grade to assure him his full credit in the course. And yet, he considered, there was the examination, five days away. In two hours he would be required to write out in a thin "blue book" all he was supposed to have learned in twenty weeks.

He ruminated.

How much of what he had learned had stopped in his head? He asked himself this, seriously, then smiled. He confessed to himself that he had worked merely from recitation to recitation with no effort to hold the subjects in that mathematical brain of his that caused his forehead to bulge.

And the examination only five days away!

As he reviewed the situation Catherwood's brow darkened and he scowled. For a space he twiddled his large thumbs and glared at a horse hitched to a grocery wagon across the street.

"I wish you'd freeze," he muttered viciously to the horse; but of course the horse did not hear for the window was down.

Catherwood counted his flunks on his fingers. Five; five clean, perfect flunks, altogether, he recalled. Not so bad, he considered; that is, not so very bad.

But there before him like a great monster with dripping jaws and green, slimy body, was the examination; and it was creeping, creeping upon him with the passage of the minutes.

He stood up and shook himself nervously.

From the window he saw the assistant professor approaching his home next door. He carried several bulky volumes in his arms, hugged to his breast lovingly.

Catherwood watched him sourly.

There was the man, he mused, in whose hands—now covered with gray-striped woolen mittens—lay his fate! Pretty serious business—one's fate lying in hands covered with gray-striped woolen mittens.

The courses in mathematics Catherwood did not fear; nor those in shop work; not the one in elocution, to be sure, for that was a snap; nor yet the two in political economy; indeed, those were rather fun. But history! Ugh!

The assistant professor turned in at the gate of his house next door, and as he vanished the scowl fled from Catherwood's brow and his face lighted.

He would drop in on the assistant professor within the week and call. Admirable! He wondered if the date might be anywhere reasonably near the birthday of one of his children. A box of sweets might work wonders; a china headed doll greater wonders. He marveled that the idea had never before occurred to him. And, too, he considered, there was the president.

The president!

Ah, that would be different. There were no little tads in the president's family. Then he quickly recalled having read in the 'Varsity News of the day before that the president was in the east and would not return until the thirteenth.

Three days after!

Futile—absolutely futile!

And Catherwood scowled again and stared out the window, idly twisting his trunk-check watch fob.

He saw the assistant professor's wife on the walk below with the little Mary.

It was the psychological moment and Catherwood recognized it. Snatching his hat from the book rack he plunged down the stairs. He pulled himself together at the door and stepped, unconcernedly, out upon the porch.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Lowe," he called quite gaily. "Ah, and there's little Mary—sweet child. Come here, Mary, won't you?"

He squatted in the snow at the gate and held out his hands to her. She ran to him with a little cry of delight. The mother's face was radiant.

"Oh, good-morning, Mr. Catherwood," she called.

He smiled and nodded. On the instant he made a vague calculation of the value of Mrs. Lowe's good-will.

He flung his arms around the child and lifted her clear of the walk to her great delight as attested by the cries of glee that escaped her.

Mrs. Lowe stopped at the gate.

"Such a dear child," Catherwood gurgled, holding the tot close to him.

"Do you think so?" the mother murmured.

"So strong and so well," Catherwood added, weighing little Mary in his strong hands.

"Yes, she is heavy," Mrs. Lowe said.

Then the child cried in her pretty patois:

"Pleese frow Mary up an' catch her."

"Oh, ho," Catherwood exclaimed gaily, "so that is what Mary wants, is it? Well then, here goes."

"Careful, Mary daughter," the mother cautioned, smiling.

Catherwood never before had felt his strength as keenly as he did that moment. It had for him, then, a definite, precise meaning; even a value; yes, an incalculable value.

"Frow up Mary 'n' catch her like farver do," the child urged.

He tossed her into the air.

"There!" he said as she left his arms.

His hands—broad fine hands—were outspread to catch her.

Afterward, when recollection of that vivid, scarlet instant returned to him, he was never quite able to explain to himself how it had happened. Perhaps he did not reckon with his various courses in physics—certain laws of falling bodies, accelerated motion, and such uninteresting things. In any event it was as though his hands had not been there; for before he could clutch at the little furry ball of falling femininity it had shot between those groping hands of his and in an infinitesimal space of time had struck the low snow-drift beside the walk, no longer a furry ball but a sprawl of screaming child.

"Oh! Mr. Catherwood!" cried Mrs. Lowe.

There was an instant's silence and then the atmosphere was punctured by the piercing yelps of the little Mary.

Mrs. Lowe snatched her daughter from the drift and, clutching her close, cooed to her, consolingly.

"Did the great horrid man drop mother's darling?" she murmured.

Catherwood, stricken momentarily dumb by the accident, finally found his voice though it was unsteady and very much in his throat.

"Mrs. Lowe," he exclaimed, despairingly, "I'm very sorry; believe me; I guess, I must——"

She shot him one glance of injured motherhood, and without replying turned and strode out of the yard still hugging close to her maternal bosom the wailing Mary.

The shrieks had penetrated to the study of the assistant professor and as she turned in at her own gate he appeared upon the porch.

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

"The young man next door dropped Mary on the tar walk."

Catherwood clearly distinguished below the child's still frantic yells the grunt of the man who waited on the steps.

He was prompted to shout: "You lie; it was a drift," but a quick second thought restrained him.

As it was he took the stairs in the darkened hallway in three bounds and, rushing into his room, raved impotently. He kicked the legs of the Morris chair; he kicked the legs of the table; he kicked the backs of the books on the lowest shelf of the rack. He seized a pillow from the divan and proceeded to punch it violently, viciously. Then he flung himself face down upon the divan, and from the heart of the cushions came the muffled words:

"I wish the confounded kid had never been born!"

After some minutes he rolled over and for a space stared blankly at the ceiling. Then he rose, took a book from the rack and flinging himself into the Morris chair by the window opened it upon his knee.

It was a volume of the marvelous and enthralling adventures of the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes.

II

There are two kinds of hazing, as practiced by undergraduates at Ann Arbor; the plain and the ornamental.

The first may be a mere practical joke, as the "stacking" of a room, the kidnapping of a freshman toastmaster, or the "losing" of a fraternity initiate in the broad fields that lie between the town and the North Pole.

But ornamental hazing is quite a different thing. It is the sort most indulged in by practical hazers, professionals, as it were; by juniors; even by seniors; and as such is found to have many and varied forms. Moreover it differs from the plain brand in that a genuine injury is, by its application, wrought upon the hazee. Thus, a man may be lost in a swamp and made to find his own way home by the tenets of the plain hazing code; whereas, if, in the swamp, he is "injured," that is to say if he is painted with iodine, if a broad pink parting is shaved across his scalp, or if his hair is cut off in scrubby patches, he may quite properly consider himself to have been allowed a taste of the ornamental sort.

It may be seen from these distinctions therefore, that plain hazing is really harmless; no one is hurt, unless, as not infrequently occurs, and justly, the hazers, themselves; and as a consequence of this the University authorities seldom concern themselves in these really feeble attempts to smirch the honor and destroy the valor of the freshman class, which in most instances is sufficiently lusty an infant to take excellent care of itself.

For instance, no excitement is created by the appearance on the campus, or even in the corridors of the recitation buildings, of a lanky youth in exceedingly snug knee breeches who drags about behind him by a long string a gaudy little horse on squeaking wheels. Indeed, men whose height reaches a flat six feet have not infrequently ridden to classes on very small tricycles to the ecstatic delight of certain upper classmen and to the pitying sneers of their instructors.

As has been observed, the authorities of the University are not wont to interest themselves in such manifestations of under-class idiocy.

But a hazing of the second sort!

That, truly, is a different matter.

There was the case of Cleaver, for instance, whose disappearance from Ann Arbor on a wet night in March six years ago was telegraphed to every paper of consequence in the country and which furnished a delectable topic of conversation at faculty dinners for the entire two months of his absence.

Hazed?

Of course he was hazed.

He was persona non grata to the sophomore class as represented by the fraternity contingent and that contingent had simply done away with him temporarily. When he did return it was a wan and haggard figure that he presented. The belief gained currency that his people had known his whereabouts, but no one ever knew to a certainty. As for Cleaver himself, he would not—or perhaps could not—tell what had been done to him or who had planned and carried out the adventure of his disappearance. The faculty was nonplussed. No one else had been missed. Who, then, could have accompanied Cleaver to his dungeon, if dungeon had been his residence for two months? No one, to this day, has solved the mystery. As for Cleaver, he was given his credits and permitted to graduate in due time. And to-day whenever he speaks of a certain individual—now a lawyer in Syracuse—who was a sophomore during his own freshman days, it is with a twinkle in his eyes. But he still keeps a sacred silence.

Ann Arbor was shaken to its foundations by the incident. Shaken, too, has it been by circus riots; but it is doubted if ever within the period of the University's establishment has it been so tremendously excited, for a little period, as it became over the case of Catherwood.

In the first place Catherwood had incurred the enmity of no one. A student of fair attainments and average record who, during his three years in the University, had taken but small part in undergraduate activities, he found himself, of a sudden, standing in the blinding lime-light of an official investigation. And an official investigation at the University of Michigan is not to be considered lightly. All over this broad land are men who have the questionable privilege of looking back upon a time when they were the unwilling subjects of such investigations.

Catherwood's case, to be sure, was different in that he was the sufferer from others' depredations, but the odium of participation rested upon him nevertheless, and so delicate and shrinking was his nature that he was known to suffer miserably from the publicity of his position.

For three days he was conscious that every man's eye was upon him; that every finger pointed at him, that every tongue discussed him. An attempt was made to heroize him, but he withdrew to the seclusion of his room and would see no one. His, indeed, was a case to defy, in its solution, the most subtle reasoner, the most invincible logician on the faculty.

In detail it was as follows:

Mrs. Turner, Catherwood's landlady, a most estimable woman who had moved into town from a not-distant farm for the purpose of "putting Willie through school," was away from the house all the evening of February ninth. A "social" at the Congregational Church—socials were her chief, indeed, her only, diversion—on the arrangement committee of which she was most active, delayed her return until nearly midnight. Willie accompanied her to the church and at nine o'clock was put to bed in a pew up-stairs. Therefore Mrs. Turner could not know what had transpired in one of her second-floor rooms between the hours of seven-thirty and twelve on that momentous night. Moreover, as Mrs. Turner varied the monotony of house work with "plain sewing by the day" and was, all the morning of the tenth, at the Alpha Phi house "fitting" Miss Houston, she did not set about to "do the room work" until eleven-thirty.

At that hour, tired beyond measure,—Miss Houston had been so finicky about the hang of the skirt—she suddenly realized that if she did not make haste Mr. Catherwood would return from college to find his room in the condition of untidiness that he, presumably, had left it on going out.

So she dragged her leaden limbs up the stairs and from force of habit knocked on the door of the second room, back. There was no reply. She had expected none. She pushed open the door.

The scene of chaos that met her gaze defies description. The room had been completely and most effectively "stacked." Strewn about the floor were papers. The inverted waste-basket was cocked rakishly upon an arm of the chandelier. Books from the rack were lying everywhere. The rack lay flat on the floor. The face of every hanging picture was turned to the wall, and the Morris chair, which had been carefully taken apart, was piled upon the writing table. Mrs. Turner at a single sweep of her eye noted these details and also certain splotches that were unmistakably ink spots on the walls and on the carpet.

The divan had reared itself and now stood upon one end. Three chairs were piled upon the bed.

These Mrs. Turner noted last.

She understood the meaning of the chaos. Someone, during his absence, had entered Mr. Catherwood's room and "stacked" it. And as she calculated the time necessary to complete a restoration of its usual neat appearance, the poor woman sighed deeply.

Suddenly she started.

Was it an echo of her sigh she heard? Surely she had heard a human sound. She peered, stooping.

"Mr. Catherwood!" she called; her face pale.

A distinct, graveyard moan was the answer.

The blood fled from Mrs. Turner's lips and her eyes bulged. She cautiously approached the bed, whence, seemingly, had come the moan. She peered between the legs of the chairs. Then, with a cry that rang through the house, she fled from the room, down the stairs and into the freezing out-of-doors.

As she ran down the walk, slipping, stumbling, the bells in the library tower rang out twice, musically clear on the frosty air—fifteen minutes past twelve. And approaching, she saw her neighbor, the assistant professor of history, returning from the examination.

Mrs. Turner flung herself heavily upon him. His spectacles slipped from his nose. The armful of thin "blue books" he was carrying littered the walk. He parried awkwardly with hands that were encased in gray-striped woolen mittens.

"Madame! Madame!" he cried, "what the—what is the matter—are you crazy?"

Mrs. Turner gasped—gasped like a pickerel dying on the grass. It was quite half a minute before she found her voice and when she spoke it was with many vocal quavers.

"Oh, Professor Lowe! Professor Lowe!" she wailed, "Mr. Catherwood—Mr. Catherwood——"

"Well, well; what of him, madame, what of him?"

The assistant professor spoke sharply.

"He's been murdered!"

"What!"

She seized him by the arm.

"Come—come, quick," she cried. "He's on the bed: his face is all blood."

"Yes, yes," he replied, stooping and hastily gathering up the "blue books"—"I'll fling these in the hall; you run on ahead—I'll be right there."

From the doorway he called to his wife,

"Young man murdered next door, Jenny," and from the porch at the end nearest Mrs. Turner's house he leaped into a snow-drift. He floundered out and into the house as his wife appeared upon the porch wringing her hands and moaning.

He bounded up the stairs in the wake of Mrs. Turner and brushed past her into the room of horror.

He brought up stock still and looked about.

"There's the corpse! There; over there on the bed!" the woman wailed, frantically.

He pulled away the piled chairs, and seizing the body rolled it upon its back. Over Catherwood's eyes was bound a strip of cloth and a gag made of a stocking was tied across his mouth. The assistant professor unknotted the gag with trembling fingers and tore away the blindfold and Catherwood blinked up at him owlishly.

"Are you dead?" the assistant professor asked with bated breath.

Catherwood's mouth worked convulsively and then he muttered hoarsely: "Water! water!"

Mrs. Turner hurried to the bathroom and returned with a cup, which the assistant professor took from her and held to the young man's lips. He gulped eagerly.

"Look at his face!" cried Mrs. Turner.

It was streaked and spotted with a brown stain.

"Is it blood?" The woman shivered.

The assistant professor sniffed.

"Iodine," he exclaimed. "And see," he added, stooping, "here's the bottle." He held up the phial that had caught his eye where it lay on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"Untie my hands," Catherwood gurgled—"Here, behind me!"

They were tied securely by two handkerchiefs knotted together. The assistant professor fumbled at the loops. He disengaged the swollen wrists and Catherwood sat up in bed. He loosened the bindings of his ankles himself and stood up.

"Whew!" he whistled.

He caught sight of his brown-streaked and spotted face in the dresser mirror.

"CÆsar!" he exclaimed, "that was a fine job!"

Satisfied that a rescue had been accomplished in good time, the assistant professor said:

"Sit down, Mr. Catherwood, and explain, if possible, the meaning of this—this hazing. I observed you were not present at the examination to-day."

Mrs. Turner, who till now had stood by wringing her hands, commenced, with mechanical precision, to wrest order out of chaos in the room.

From time to time during Catherwood's recital she stopped in her work long enough to voice an ejaculatory "oh," or exclaim—"Well, I declare."

"It is clearly a case of hazing—hazing of the most malicious sort," observed the assistant professor, "and as such merits the fullest investigation on the part of the faculty, which I have no doubt the faculty will undertake. Do you know your assailants, Mr. Catherwood?"

"Yes—and no," the young man replied, rubbing a red and swollen wrist.

"Why do you say that?" the assistant professor inquired, significantly.

"I thought I did from the writing of the note I received yesterday afternoon——"

"Ah—you received a note then?"

"Yes—wait." Catherwood dove a hand into the inside pocket of his coat. "Here it is," he said, and held out to his questioner a crumpled bit of paper written in a hand obviously disguised.

The assistant professor examined the writing closely.

"This, Mr. Catherwood," he opined finally, "is, as you see, 'back-hand.' Moreover, it is quite clear to me that it was penned by some one who used his left hand, although he is, naturally, what we call 'right handed.'"

The professor remembered his "The Count of Monte Cristo."

"Ah——"

At Catherwood's exclamation he looked up quickly.

"That's why I could not identify it," the young man added.

"But, Mr. Catherwood," the assistant professor continued, "isn't it rather odd that you did not see—did not recognize the two men who assailed you; for of course there were two—the note reads——"

He looked down at the crumpled sheet again—"'We shall call at your room this evening.' Isn't it rather strange?" He awaited Catherwood's reply, calmly.

"I think there was but one!"

The assistant professor started.

"One!" he exclaimed. "Why it is more mysterious than ever—and you didn't see him, Mr. Catherwood?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"You did not?"

"No, sir...."

"Well, I declare," ejaculated Mrs. Turner.

Mr. Lowe smoothed over the note and folded it. "I shall take this," he said—"that is, if you do not mind."

"No—no—of course not——"

"And, Mr. Catherwood," he added, "I am to assume, am I, that you can throw no light on this—on this most mysterious matter...?"

At that instant a knock fell on the door.

"Come in," Catherwood called.

The door was pushed back and a young man with a note-book in his hand stood on the threshold.

"I'm Green," he explained. "I'm on the 'Varsity News. You're Catherwood, aren't you? Yes; well, we got wind of the case. Fellow heard your landlady yell and telephoned us. What does it amount to——?"

The assistant professor, squaring his shoulders, assumed the privilege of answering the breezy youth.

"Perhaps," he said, "it might be as well not to go into details just now. Mr. Catherwood was assaulted in his room last night and was found gagged and tied in his bed not an hour ago. It is a case for official investigation. Mr. Catherwood was made, much against his will, naturally, to miss an important examination this morning—I may say a very important examination. There is a meeting of the faculty to be held to-night when I shall present the facts of this most shocking affair as I have gathered them and I am confident that an official investigation will follow. You may say as much...."

The reporter had been busy with his note-book.

Now looking up at Catherwood, he asked: "What's the matter with his face?"

"I believe it is iodine," the assistant professor replied, frigidly.

Little Green grinned.

"You're a sure beaut," he exclaimed.

"I think that will be all," observed the assistant professor drily.

"Oh yes, yes—that's all—thank you very much; good-morning." And the journalist vanished.

The eyes of Catherwood and the assistant professor met.

"I think I should wash my face, if I were you," suggested Mr. Lowe. "You may be able to remove some of the stain."

Catherwood went to the stand in the corner of the room. For a space he sputtered the water in the bowl. "Any better?" he asked, at length.

Mr. Lowe shook his head sadly.

"No—it won't come off. You had best see a doctor."

He rose.

"Now, Mr. Catherwood," he said, "as I have said, this is a case for the most thorough investigation. You need not give yourself any uneasiness. The University authorities will, you may be sure, sift matters to the bottom. You have been maltreated; abused, tortured, and, I may say, disfigured."

Catherwood, with a sigh, sank into the Morris chair by the window.

"I shall take the matter up this evening at faculty meeting. Mark my word, we shall discover your assailant or assailants at once; for despite your belief to the contrary, it is my opinion that two men, if, indeed, not more, had a hand in your undoing. We shall see. I shall talk of the case to several this afternoon and I suppose you would have no hesitancy in appearing at the meeting to-night, if your presence there should be deemed desirable."

"No," Catherwood replied, weakly, "not if they want me." The hand he passed across his brow trembled.

"I observe you are nervous," the assistant professor said. "Get a little rest this afternoon." He shook his head slowly. "It is very unfortunate," he added, "that the president is away; however, I am confident we shall have the case cleared up before his return. You, of course, Mr. Catherwood, have no reason not to assist us in every way possible?"

"None at all." The young man leaned back and closed his eyes, and sighed deeply.

"However, I must say, you have not seemed to me as interested as——"

Catherwood sat upright.

"I'm half sick," he cried, "half sick. It's so strange. I know no one who would have a reason for hazing me; I can't understand it; it's like a bad dream."

He rose and paced back and forth the length of the room.

"Ah, yes, to be sure," the assistant professor murmured, consolingly. "Now, I shall go. You will hear from me later—perhaps very soon."

Catherwood stood motionless in the middle of the floor until he heard the outer door close, then he descended the stairs slowly, and encountering Mrs. Turner in the kitchen begged the privilege of taking dinner at her table.

"This face," he explained. "I can't go to 'Pret's' with this face."

And she, gentle motherly soul, bade him be seated, and fed him well, and consoled him; while Willie, fascinated by the streaked and horrid face of the self-bidden guest, allowed his rice-pudding to grow cold while he gazed at him.

III

Little Green, the pink-cheeked reporter of the 'Varsity News, was not that at all, and on this occasion he gave his name the lie direct.

Little Green possessed a nasal organ keenly atuned to news. As he hastened back down town after his summary dismissal from Catherwood's room, he calculated accurately the latent story value in the assistant professor's indefinite account of his pupil's case.

He glanced at his watch, snapped the case, thrust it back into his pocket—and ran.

He estimated the time with reference to the publication hour of the Detroit afternoon papers.

He saw before him, as plainly as he saw the snow banks, one hour and thirty minutes. The period was material, tangible. Little Green, as he turned into Main Street and sped on toward Huron Street, not only saw it, but felt it; almost tasted it.

"Here, you!" he cried, bursting in upon the indolent operator in the little, box-like telegraph office.

He seized a block of blue-white paper that lay on the counter.

"What's up?" asked the operator dreamily.

By way of answer little Green thrust a sheet of the blue-white paper at him.

"Get that on the wire—hurry—it's a scoop."

The operator smiled sadly and checked off the words. He glanced up at the clock—regulated electrically from the observatory—and scribbled the "filing time" at the bottom of the sheet.

Little Green fidgeted.

"Say, cancha hurry?" he asked anxiously.

"Plenty time," replied the operator calmly; and so there was, but little Green was enveloped in a haze of zeal that set perspectives all awry.

Presently the little machine on the glass-topped table began to click.

Little Green, standing at the counter, counted the clicks.

Clickety—click—click—clickety—click—clickety.

"You got 'em?" he asked eagerly.

"Yep." Calmly.

Little Green emitted a sigh of relief and proceeded, carefully but hastily, to fill sheet after sheet torn from the block of blue-white paper. He scratched out, wrote in, amplified, condensed. He wrote in many tiny paragraphs; for little Green was wise beyond his years.

And while he wrote, oblivious of the clickety—click—click of the little machine on the table, of the droning tick of the electrically regulated clock, of the rasp of his pencil on the paper, the indolent operator looked up.

"Rush three hundred," he called with a yawn.

Little Green grinned. Another page and he brought his "story" to a snappy end with a tiny, quick little sentence.

He knew the run of his own "copy."

He was conscious that he had exceeded the order by sixty words, approximately, and he hesitated an instant. Then thrusting the numbered sheets at the operator, he exclaimed: "Here, take it; I'll wait for another order."

In half an hour it came. It was for a photograph of Catherwood.

How little Green procured that photograph even after Catherwood's threat that he'd kill him if he used it, is a story in itself—a story for another time. But in less than an hour after the receipt of the telegraphic request it was in the post-office bearing on its plain wrapper a special delivery stamp.

It has been suggested that little Green was wise beyond his years. He was just wise enough not to tell all his story to an afternoon paper at so late an hour.

So, with a confidence born of a short but crowded experience, he sent out by wire eight queries to as many morning papers in the middle- and the further-west.

Meanwhile that occurred which little Green had been far-sighted enough to expect would occur.

The tall, angular, boy-faced agent of the Associated Press in Detroit wandered into the office of the Journal shortly after one o'clock.

Passing the city desk he tickled the man sitting there, on his round, shiny, bald spot, and as he looked up with a scowl, asked blandly:

"Anything doing?"

The city editor growled and resumed reading the typewritten page that lay before him.

The agent wandered into the office of the state editor, where a man with long hair sat, fidgeting in a swivel chair and mumbling to himself under his breath.

"Anything?" asked the agent, tersely, at the same time reaching for the proofs that dangled from a hook at the side of the desk.

The state editor looked up, scowling. He disliked being annoyed when talking to himself.

"Pretty good one from Ann Arbor," he snapped. "Find it there."

The agent ran hastily through the proofs and retained one. The others he hung back on the hook.

"Much obliged," he said, and strolled out of the office.

At six o'clock that night the story was "on the A. P. wire," and being ticked off in every newspaper telegraph room from Portland to Portland, for the night manager at Chicago had called it "bully good stuff."

And when it came clicking into those offices to which little Green had wired shortly after noon, the desk men in charge recognized the incompleteness of the "A. P. story," and forthwith telegraphed their unknown correspondent for more. Regular correspondents were totally disregarded. Little Green was supreme; and no one realized that supremacy more keenly than little Green himself. He was the king of the night with his story; and sheet after sheet he filled with his jagged, irregular chirography, and the dreamy operator kept up with him.

But there came an end to his work at last, as there comes an end to all things; and when the end came in this particular case, little Green whistled, slipped his pencil into his pocket and sauntered out of the telegraph box jauntily. He did not recall until he reached the office of the 'Varsity News that he had not eaten since morning. He glanced at his watch. He would write the "story" for his own paper now—and then—Supper.

All of which may explain to the reader of this veracious tale why it was that the president of the University, as he glanced over his Providence Journal in Providence the next morning, suddenly started in his chair, and calling for a telegraph blank sent this message to the dean of the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts:

"Take no action in Catherwood case. Sift it. Leave for Ann Arbor at once."

And likewise it may account for the sudden exclamation of the dean himself, as at breakfast, earlier that same morning in Ann Arbor, his eye chanced to fall upon a column-and-one-half story with a two column display head, that blazed forth to all the world many details unknown to him in the case of Frederick Edward Catherwood.

He had attended the faculty meeting the night before, when the case was threshed out to the finest grain, and he had heard no such explanation of the affair as stared at him now in cold black type from the front page of his morning paper.

A secret secret society in the University, the function of which was to haze every one big or little who for one reason or another, might fall under its bann! He had never heard of any such organization. And yet—and yet——

Oh, little Green! Oh, little Green! Little did you dream to what ill end your rare invention, your insane imaginings, would result!

For, after partaking that night of a luncheon and dinner rolled into one big steak in "Tuts," little Green sought his room where he slept the sleep of vigorous youth till a beam of the winter sun, shining through his alcove window, fell athwart his eyes and wakened him.

As for Catherwood, he had not been commanded to appear before the faculty. Indeed, of what transpired at that momentous meeting he never knew; that is to say, definitely, but every one learned, in a general way, something of the wordy resolutions that were passed and the learned opinions that were there put forth, all of which tended to no purpose save to obscure more thickly, rather than illumine more brilliantly, the strange affair.

The dean presided—a large man with reddish hair and pleasant eyes and a jerky, nervous manner.

Inasmuch as it was assistant professor Lowe who had found Catherwood, gagged and tied, that savant was asked to give his opinion, first.

With much natural evasion of the subject, and a cloud of "ahs" and "aws," he explained as lucidly as his slow moving mind would permit how he had rushed into the room to discover his pupil stowed away upon the bed behind a barricade of chairs.

"And, professor," inquired the dean, "you can throw no light upon the case; you have learned nothing—that is to say—oh—ah—nothing that might serve as a clue to the apprehension of the offenders?"

The room became as still as the royal ante-chamber whilst the king dies beyond the arras.

The assistant professor fumbled in his pockets and finally drew out the crumpled note that Catherwood had given him, which he offered the dean, meekly, as becomes a serf in the presence of his master.

The dean pursed his lips and looked down at the sheet.

"Oh—ah," he muttered. And then added, passing it back to the assistant professor, "I—oh—ah—make nothing out of this—nothing at all. It is very simple. It shows that Mr.—oh—ah—Catherwood was assaulted by two—two—persons. But, that, gentlemen, we already know. What we now wish to learn is: Who were they?"

The assistant professor shook his head, wearily.

"Yes, yes," he muttered.

At this point an aged man at the rear of the room rose, and clearing his throat asked in a dry, metallic cackle: "Am I to understand that the young gentleman is a member of a fraternity?"

It was quite apparent that no one appreciated clearly the significance of the old gentleman's question.

The dean stared inquiringly over his glasses at the assistant professor of history.

"He is not——"

"He is not," echoed the dean.

"Oh," cackled the old gentleman and sat down. His prejudice against fraternities was well known. Several of the younger men present, who wore their pins on occasion, glanced at one another and smiled.

"It would—oh—ah—seem to me," began the dean, when he was interrupted by that dry, metallic cackle a second time.

"Does he contemplate joining a fraternity?"

"No," Lowe shouted.

"Oh"—and the old gentleman sat down again.

In the second row there rose a round, boy-faced man with a pompadour, who, after clearing his throat, began:

"It would seem to me, gentlemen, that we are on the wrong track; what? It would seem to me that there is a way—a sure way—of apprehending the villains who seem to have worsted our young friend, Mr. Catherwood; what?"

Every man in the room leaned forward, and again the hush became awesome.

"And it is?" observed the dean, very soberly.

"That we compare the handwriting of that note with all the students' signatures in our possession; what?"

There ensued a general exchange of puzzled looks and then the dean exclaimed:

"A very good idea, my dear professor—oh—ah—a most ingenious idea; but—oh—ah—would you be willing to undertake to make the suggested comparisons?"

"Well I thought the clerks in the registrar's office might——"

"Very good—very good!" said the dean—"I believe there are about thirty-five hundred such signatures—oh—ah—quite a week's work for the entire office force—quite——"

Several of his colleagues openly congratulated the boy-faced genius who seemed to them to be the only man with a plan worthy of adoption.

Amid the general exchange of felicitations before which the genius blushed and stammered his confusion, assistant professor Lowe rose and caught the eye of the dean.

"Order—oh—ah—order, gentlemen!" the latter called. "Professor Lowe seems to have a word——"

"It's just a word," was the reply, "but, gentlemen, the plan suggested can be of no avail and for a very simple reason——" He looked down at the boy-faced junior professor in astronomy who had formulated the plan referred to and who looked up at him, weakly, sufferingly.

"And what is the reason?" inquired the dean severely, loth to have a theory declared impracticable which he had seemed to favor.

"It is that this note was written—ingeniously I am willing to admit—by a right handed person, who, to disguise his writing, wrote with his left hand in what we call the 'back-hand' style. All writings, under such circumstances, are alike. My authority, gentlemen, is Dumas; of whom some of you may have heard." And with this cuttingly sarcastic speech the assistant professor of history sat down.

There was an instant's silence, broken by the old gentleman at the back of the room who had fallen asleep some minutes before. Awakening, just as assistant professor Lowe delivered his retort, he had heard but a word, and that word was pleasant to his aged ear.

"What's that?" he called.

No one assumed the task of explaining to him and he dozed off again.

As it was, for three hours, upward of seventy-five full-blooded, able-bodied men wrangled over an affair that little Green had assumed the responsibility of making clear to the wider world outside. Theories, opinions, solutions, were flung at the dean until he felt his head swim, and saw double.

In the entire assemblage there was but one who had taken no active part in the discussion, but, rather, had appeared to look on merely, an interested, if at times annoyed, spectator—the professor of French.

He was observed occasionally to yawn.

During a lull he got upon his feet and straightway, without clearing his throat—said:

"Gentlemen, it seems to me we are as far from a solution of this affair as we were when we assembled. For one I am getting tired and am going home,"—he was quite independent for there was a standing "call" for him from an eastern institution.—"Now I have a suggestion to make. It is this: Suppose we all go home, and await the return of the president. Meanwhile let us keep our eyes and ears open, and our mouths shut; perhaps we may see and hear things that will indicate the proper course for us to take. In any event, it would seem wisest for us to await the return of the president. Good-night, gentlemen."

And buttoning his overcoat about him, the professor of French left the room.

It was not until then that the futility of their discussion dawned upon his colleagues. Some one moved that the meeting adjourn. The motion was carried. The old gentleman voted the single nay.

The dean walked home with assistant professor Lowe. Their conversation was wholly upon the case in hand. And when the dean left the younger man at the latter's door, he said: "I—oh—ah—I confess to being more puzzled than ever. A very mysterious affair—oh—ah—a most mysterious affair."

And so it was that the puzzlement of the worthy dean deepened next morning as he read little Green's sprightly, suggestive story.

But the frown vanished from his brow and the wonder from his eyes, when, as he left the house, a messenger handed him the president's telegram. And he hastened to the campus to make known to his colleagues the glad tidings that had come to him in the depths of his perplexity.

IV

The various and varying newspaper accounts of the affair awoke Ann Arbor from its peaceful slumber and for a space the town lived. For two days interest developed with the passage of the hours. Speculation became general. Opinions were as many as those who offered them; until there was not a man or woman from the Cat Hole to Ashley Street who did not advance a theory, new or old.

A like puzzlement, but one tempered by more original conjecture, characterized the attitude of the undergraduate body as a whole. For two days Catherwood had not appeared upon the campus, but at all hours friends and mere nodding acquaintances called at his rooms only to be refused admittance by Mrs. Turner, whom he had bade inform all callers that he was ill, very ill, quite too ill to be seen.

Little Green was one of these callers. He had expected the refusal of admission which Mrs. Turner, with many apologies, gave him and straightway he telegraphed his papers that Catherwood was dying as the result of the great bodily injuries he had received at the hands of his unknown undergraduate assailants. For little Green knew by instinct what many a reporter requires long years to learn—that a "story" is "good" just as long as there is a drop of "life" blood left in it, and not an instant longer.

Little Green fairly reveled in the commotion he had caused. The regular college correspondents, anÆmic, frightened little fellows, were at a loss to know who had beaten them in their own papers. It was little Green's game, absolutely his, and he purposed playing it alone, aided and abetted in the achievement of this purpose by the various telegraph editors whom he sought to serve. And so far as the faculty was concerned, the frequenter the dispatches, the more woefully addled did the professorial brain become.

Out in the state, and in adjoining states, wise editors, looking down, as it were, from some high place, wrote venomous and vicious editorials in which the legislature was called upon to pass laws abolishing hazing in institutions of the commonwealth by making the practice of it a felony, punishable by imprisonment. Parents in the further west with sons and daughters at Ann Arbor feared for their children's lives. School boards passed resolutions. Guardians wrote to the heads of various university departments asking if their wards were quite safe, alone and unprotected in Ann Arbor. A New York newspaper, on the second day, dispatched its most ingenious "woman reporter" to the scene of action and in three hours the sprightly creature had woven a fictional fabric beside which the tale of Ali Baba was the glowing, gleaming truth. She revived all the half-forgotten stories of ancient hazing rites, dead these many years, and wrote of them as of contemporary practice. And the imaginative artist in the home office illustrated her vivacious article elaborately, seeking to convey to the eye horrors of undergraduate torture that words were useless to describe.

Skeletonized, the story was wired across the sea and the ponderous Times gave forth an editorial in which it averred that such refined cruelty had never been heard of in English academic life; not even in the palmiest days of Rugby and of Eton at the height of the fagging system.

Amidst the wild excitement, little pink-cheeked Green grinned at his reflection in his mirror and exclaimed:

"Gad! You've got 'em goin', Greeny; you've got 'em goin'. Greeny, you're it!"

And he was; for three swift, brilliant days.

For then the president came.

He came unannounced save by the telegram the dean received at breakfast on the second day.

He was driven direct to his home; and ten minutes after entering the front door he issued from the back and hastened across the campus.

The registrar met him in the main corridor.

"What is this I have been reading?" he asked sharply. "This that the papers are full of? What is it?"

The registrar followed him into his private office where, as the president unlocked his desk, he explained accurately, tersely, the frenzy that had seized the University, and the town; the state, the nation, and the world.

As he spoke he was interrupted again and again by the characteristic "ah" of the president, who as he listened, toyed with a steel envelope opener.

"And those are the facts in the case as you—that is to say the faculty—know them; are they?" he asked, when the other had done.

The registrar nodded.

"Ah, yes," murmured the president—"now let me see if I have them correct and in their order;" and he recited the story as he had heard it from the other's lips, accurately, succinctly, with no point missing.

"Those are the facts, doctor," the registrar corroborated.

"Ah yes,—quite simple—yes."

The registrar was about to move away.

"Ah, just a moment," the president called. "You know Mr. Catherwood's address——"

"One hundred and three, Williams Street——"

"Ah, yes." And he hastily wrote a note which he folded and addressed.

"Have this delivered to Mr. Catherwood at once at his rooms."

The registrar nodded.

"And if he should call here at the office, have him wait, please—have him wait. I wish a word with professor Lowe."

He vanished into the corridor.

He was absent ten minutes and as he passed through the waiting-room to the inner private office he glanced into the office of the registrar.

He closed the door noiselessly and seating himself at his desk, proceeded with slow deliberation to open his accumulated mail.

* * * * * *

The bells in the library tower clanged twelve o'clock. As the last detonation sounded through the high corridors of the main building a timid knock fell upon the door.

The president glanced up quickly. He drew from an inner pocket of his coat two envelopes, which he laid on the top of the desk.

Then:—

"Come in!" he called.

The door opened and Catherwood, streaked of face and hollow eyed, stood upon the threshold.

The president rose.

"Ah, Mr. Catherwood," he exclaimed, smiling.

He advanced upon his caller with outstretched hand.

Catherwood was not conscious of the warm clasp; he only knew one thing—that he had been summoned and that now he was in the presence of the genius of the institution of which he himself was a little part.

"You—you sent for me, sir," he managed to say.

"Yes—ah—you got my note of course. Sit down."

The president seated himself at his desk and wheeled that he might face the odd creature near the door.

"Well, well, Mr. Catherwood," he exclaimed, after a moment, "they appear to have been treating you rather badly, eh?"

Catherwood pleaded with his eyes alone.

"Well, well; what does it all mean, Mr. Catherwood?" he went on, kindly. "You've no enemies here, have you——"

The young man brightened perceptibly—"Not one, sir; that is to say, not one that I know of," he added, less brightly.

"Ah, so I'm told. How do you account for this attack upon you, then?"

Catherwood's eyes dropped to the carpet. The president watched him covertly, fumbling the seal that dangled from his watch-chain.

"I can't," Catherwood replied at last, looking up.

"No, of course you can't. I hardly expected you could," the president exclaimed. "But, Mr. Catherwood"—he spoke slowly—"have you no idea who it was committed this most dastardly assault upon you?"

There was an instant's silence during which Catherwood followed the scroll design of the carpet up one row and down another.

"Yes, sir—I have."

"Who?" The president leaned forward.

"I don't feel justified in saying, sir."

Catherwood did not look up as he spoke.

The president leaned back and passed his hand across his forehead.

"Ah, yes; I think I understand, Mr. Catherwood—you—you—perhaps fear the blame may be placed where it should not—a fine sense of justice; Mr. Catherwood—a very fine sense of justice—I congratulate you upon it, sir."

Catherwood glanced up now, moved to a sort of secret impatience by what he assumed to be a note of sarcasm in the president's voice.

But the face his eyes encountered was most kindly.

His eyes fell again.

The president took up the envelope opener and placed the steel point to his lips.

"Mr. Catherwood," he began, and hesitated.

"Yes, sir."

"Of course you know," he went on, "that since my return the facts in your case have been placed before me by certain members of the faculty who are familiar with them."

"Yes, sir," Catherwood murmured.

"Now, Mr. Catherwood, while they have told me many things of interest, there is one little detail that seems to me to have a very important bearing upon the case, but which, for some unaccountable reason, they all seem to have missed. Perhaps you can throw some light upon this dark place." The president indulged here in a round, full laugh.

Encouraged by the infinite kindness of this voice, Catherwood lifted his eyes.

"Yes, sir; if I can—what is it?"

"Ah, yes." The president cleared his throat. "Mr. Catherwood," he resumed calmly, twirling the envelope opener between his fingers, "what I wish so very much to know is how you managed to tie your hands behind you!"

"Why I——" Catherwood began, and stopped. He tried to wrench his eyes from those of the president,—calm, blue—but could not. The room whirled. The design in the carpet became the design of the walls and of the ceiling; and there were no windows in the room, or doors—and all was black—black—black, save for two points of light; for there were those calm blue eyes, shining back at his.

And then as though it spoke from some great height he heard the mellow voice in his ears again.

"Go on, Mr. Catherwood," the voice said.

At last he managed to wrench his eyes away and stood up, and strode over to the window and looked out upon the white world. He saw two sparrows poise an instant on the crest of a drift.

"Well, Mr. Catherwood——" The voice again.

He turned slowly. His face was pale beneath the disfiguring streaks and stripes of brown.

"I—I—I confess, sir—I confess."

He flung himself into the chair at the end of the desk and covering his poor face with his two hands, sobbed aloud.

The president waited for the paroxysm to pass.

"Why did you do it, Mr. Catherwood?" he asked, quietly.

"I—I—was afraid of that history examination." The reply came faint.

Turning his face away, he stood up. He groped for his hat.

"But wait a moment, Mr. Catherwood."

Shame-faced the impostor turned, his hand upon the knob of the door.

"You have, I believe, neither credit nor condition in that course. Professor Lowe was at a loss which to give you; and awaited my return. Ah, sit down, Mr. Catherwood."

He obeyed, meekly. He fumbled his cap.

"Ah, Mr. Catherwood." The voice still was calm and even.

"Yes, sir," Catherwood murmured without changing his position.

"Mr. Catherwood, this is a delicate case—I may say a most delicate case. It is unique in my experience. Indeed I believe it is absolutely unique. Moreover, honesty compels me to say that it was most ingeniously managed—most ingeniously."

The president coughed and raised his hand to his lips. Catherwood looked up an instant and then away again.

"Now, Mr. Catherwood," the president went on in the same dispassionate tone, "let us look first at the case from your point of view. You were zealous to pass your history course, ahem, too zealous, perhaps. However, be that as it may. And I am right, am I not, when I infer that your zeal, your desire in the matter, is still unabated?"

Catherwood nodded, slightly.

"Ah, I thought so. So be it. It is your zeal, then, that induces a certain definite longing for the credit in that course? Am I right?"

"Yes, sir." Weakly.

"Ah, yes. But, Mr. Catherwood, there is that beside our zeal to which we must listen. There is our conscience."

Catherwood shifted uneasily.

"Consult your conscience, Mr. Catherwood. Shall I tell you what it whispers? Very well. It bids you ask for a condition—a condition, Mr. Catherwood."

"Give it me, doctor; give it me."

The suddenness, the eagerness of the request caused the president to raise his eyebrows. The pale ghost of a smile lingered an instant about his lips.

He held out a restraining hand.

"Just a moment, Mr. Catherwood," he said. "There is another point of view. Mine."

Catherwood had sunk back into his previous attitude of dejection.

"I may state it briefly," the president continued. "My interest in the proper conduct of this University, Mr. Catherwood, bids me give you a condition in the course to which we—ah—have referred. But—and I say this frankly—my interest in you, my boy, bids me hesitate. You are young. Your whole life is before you. A misstep now might mean the ruin of that life."

Catherwood caught his breath with a little spasm of the throat.

"Far be it from me to be the cause of such a misstep." The president spoke less rapidly now. "Too, you have brains. This—ah—your recent exploit is proof of that. Such ingenuity properly directed might work great good for not only you, but—ah—the country at large. Mr. Catherwood,"—every word was voiced with a cutting precision—"my genuine interest in you prompts me to give you your credit in this course; but——"

Catherwood started in his chair. The face he turned to the president was aglow; the eyes alight.

"But," the speaker emphasized—"I am not permitted to do this, Mr. Catherwood. Had you taken that examination you might—mind you I say 'might'—have passed. Again you might not. There would have been, you see, an element of chance. Mr. Catherwood, we shall let Chance hold the scales this morning."

The young man looked up wonderingly.

"I don't understand, sir," he said, weakly.

In his hand the president held two envelopes.

"Mr. Catherwood," he said, "you see these envelopes? Yes. Well, in one of them—I do not know which one—is a credit-slip; in the other is a condition. The envelopes are sealed."

He held them out to the limp creature at the end of the desk.

"Choose," he commanded.

Catherwood shrank back. "Oh, sir," he murmured, brokenly.

"Choose."

Their eyes met then; and there was that in the president's that forbade his disobeying.

He put forth a trembling hand. His fingers touched the smooth paper. He drew. He crushed the envelope in his hand.

"Is—is—that all, sir?" he begged, falteringly.

"That is all, Mr. Catherwood, good-morning."

And he seized his cap and rushed from the room.

The president, alone, leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Then he looked down. He still held the second envelope.

He ran the slim blade of the ebon-handled dagger beneath the flap and ripped it open.

He drew out the slip that it contained.

A queer little look came into his eyes. Then he pursed his lips, and smiled.

He tore the slip into tiny flakes and let them fall from his open hand like snow, into the waste-basket.

Just then the bells in the library tower clanged out four times.

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed the president. "Half-past one! I shall be late for luncheon!"

And gathering up his coat and hat he left his office, hurriedly.

THE DOOR—A NOCTURNE