Who he was and what, we knew not; he came among us as a stranger and we took him in.

I

For an instant a hush that was more than that enveloped the grand stand, the crowded veranda of the Athletic Club, and the bleachers opposite. And then, as though by silent signal, the immense throng got upon its feet, and with ragged cheers, broke through or leaped the boundary ropes, and bore down the field, a tidal wave of shrieking youth that police could not control.

The girls on the veranda, inspired by the ecstasy of their companions, cried shrilly and wildly waved their handkerchiefs and the little flags they carried. Many were left standing there to cheer alone, while their escorts joined the surging mob that swept upon the dirty-gray, padded and masked Olympians at the further goal.

No one seemed to pay the least attention to the Cornell giants as laggingly they came up the field close to the ropes, and slipped silently into the dressing-room, disconsolate in their defeat, their chins upon their breasts, their eyes upon the ground.

And, as the girls left on the veranda to care for themselves, watched, they saw eleven stuffed figures lifted in the air to ready shoulders which bent beneath their weight and thus the strange procession of triumph and of noise came up the field.

Above the heads of the moving mass of young humanity canes were waved stiffly. Hats, torn and broken, were flung about the field. In the riot of joy each man sought to shout louder, wave higher and leap further than his brother, so great was the delight the triumph of the team occasioned among them all. The little boys clinging in the trees and clustered on the electric towers outside the fence, cheered with the mob in the field and were glad likewise. The men in blue, waiting beside their cars in the street, just beyond the gate, grinned at one another intelligently, as roar after roar ascended to the turquois sky that domed the gridiron.

On came the throng, running, bending, stumbling, while the cheers of the flushed girls on the club house veranda rose shrilly above the deeper-throated masculine yells. The victors, dirty beyond measure, plastered with the brown, clinging mud in which they had so valiantly wallowed for a good two hours—a splendid contest for the honor of the colors on their stockings—rode their fellows' shoulders uncomfortably, as the cavalcade, shapeless, soulless, inchoate but voiceful, seethed and surged across the field. One of them, to save himself from falling, clutched wildly at the long hair of the bareheaded youth beneath him; another planted a heavy heel unwittingly in a second bearer's mouth, and the youth wrenched free and ran up the field sopping his bloody lips, but turning each tenth step to wave his reddened handkerchief and yell.

It was such a scene as might have been witnessed by Grecian maidens in the Stadium of old, when other young giants—the distant ancestors of these borne now in triumph—were themselves carried, as loftily, as triumphantly, down the course.

The shouting continued so vigorously that it shook the windows of the narrow, low-ceiled, suffocating room where other youths—the vanquished—were peeling the garments of the battle, and silently rubbing their smooth, pink bodies with wide, coarse towels.

The eyes of every girl above were turned down the field and all were alight; each soft cheek glowed with ruddy color, every nerve was tense.

Among these now subdued spectators was one who had not cheered, but whose excitement had been none the less great, as testified to by the eagerness with which she leaned over the veranda rail, her cheeks white from the pressure of her slim fingers against them.

Now, apparently oblivious to her immediate surroundings, her attitude unchanged, she watched every swerve of the throng as little by little, and unsteadily, it approached. As the human maelstrom swept on and the stuffed shapes outlined so ridiculously against the sky became distinguishable, one from another, the girl smiled and leaned further over the rail. Another instant and she saw but one figure among the many—Adams'. He sat higher than the others; was more conspicuous among them. Again and again, that afternoon, she had seen him seize the ball and, plunging, forge down the field, clasping it closely to his breast. Once she had seen him flung heavily to the ground by a low tackle and had held her breath when a little ring formed where he lay. She took in her faint breath quiveringly when the ring broke and she saw him get upon his feet unsteadily. Then the lines formed again—two slanting walls of fine young brawn. But none of these things that she had seen had set alight her eyes as they were lighted now.

With a yell of almost demoniacal joy, the mob surged beneath the veranda, the warriors crouching on their unsteady pedestals to avoid the timbers overhead. As he was borne beneath, and out of her delighted sight, Adams cast one glance up at the girl leaning eagerly across the rail. Her eyes had been awaiting his and the light that flared in both their eyes as they met told her that he had fought for her; told him that she had known he'd win.

She rose, then, folded her little flag and thrust it into the pocket of her coat. With the others she descended to the club room below and waited for him there.

She withdrew to one side and watched with curious interest the great crowd in the street, fretting impatiently for a nearer glimpse of the victors.

The four horses had been taken from a high tally-ho and a score of youths were running ropes from the front axle of the vehicle away down the street. The girl perceived it was the intention of the crowd to drag the tally-ho to the city in the good old way of joyous, eager crowds. And as she watched she saw a man in the blue overalls of a laborer, his face and hands smoke-blackened, break through the throng on the walk and approach the club house. She saw a policeman step in front of him and bar the way. The laborer and the officer seemed to argue. The former, his face toward her, she saw gesticulate angrily and stamp his foot, and then she saw a look of dumb pain in his blackened face as the officer, without more ado, seized him by the shoulders, roughly, and turning him about, pushed him into the crowd which parted to make way for his broad, squat figure.

The girl felt a hand upon her arm. She turned quickly and looked up into Adams' face.

The little light of fright fled from her eyes and a mist gathered in its place as she murmured eagerly: "Oh, John, John, how glorious it was!"

He smiled down at her gladly.

"And see," she said, "look—they are going to drag the team down town in the tally-ho."

Through the window he saw the throng. His face at the pane was recognized and a cheer rose that prompted the girl to draw back, blushing. From where she stood at one side she could see a broken line of the crowd.

"Oh, look, John!" she cried, "there's that dirty old man again. He's been drinking—the police drove him away before."

He turned in the direction of her gaze, then drew away instantly from the window.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

His face was pale and his mouth was set in a straight line.

"Nothing," he replied quickly. "Come——" and started toward the door opening upon the now deserted field.

She followed him unquestioningly.

On the porch she said:

"Aren't you going on the tally-ho with the team?"

"No," he replied, "I don't like being made a fool of. There's a gate over there on Cass Avenue. We'll go out that way and they won't see us."

"But, John——"

"I don't want to ride down town in state," he complained, testily. "I'd rather be with you. I shall have to be with them until train time. Now, I'd rather be with you." And he looked down at her and smiled.

By a devious route they finally reached the Campus Martius and at the little door of a big Woodward Avenue hotel he left her, for she had told him there would be friends awaiting her there with whom she would take dinner later.

"At the train, dear?" she said, as he opened the door for her.

"Yes. Good-bye till then."

She followed his great figure with her eyes and saw it disappear in the crowd below. Then she turned and passed down the narrow corridor from the "ladies' entrance."

II

It had been a glorious day.

The first touch of winter was in the air, clear, crisp, and set the blood a-tingling.

"Ideal football weather," the sporting writer of the Journal had called it in the early afternoon edition where, with the wisdom of his species, he had sought to forecast the game's result.

In honor of the occasion a gracious citizenry had swathed Jefferson and Woodward Avenues in bandages of maize and blue, and all day long the small boy had been as active as though it were the fourth of July rather than the fifth of November.

And now in the evening, the older portion of the citizenry withdrew, and the theatres, the lobbies of the prominent hotels, the clubs, and all the places of public meeting, were turned over, unconditionally, to youth.

A kindly disposed commissioner of police had instructed his men to be lenient.

"Boys will be boys," he said to the captain on night duty at the Central Station, as he left the office.

"But what about the girls?" inquired the captain with a twinkle in his own eyes that was almost youthful.

"Well—they will be, too—sometimes," the commissioner replied.

In the lobby of the Russell House, where the team was installed, the mayor of Detroit—who himself had been an undergraduate once and remembered it—addressed the throng below him, from the first broad landing of the wide marble stairway.

His rounded periods were cheered to the echo; and when he drily observed that all the policemen had been taken off duty the roof fairly lifted and guests came pouring into the corridors, their faces clearly indicating their alarm.

"You know," the mayor observed, his eyes twinkling,—"we've what they call a slow town here. Well, it rests with you boys, for this night at least, to make it fast. Moreover, it's an old town, a very old town, and wherever you find an absence of paint you have my permission and the permission of the commissioner of police to redecorate. I suppose red would be the proper tint. I have had a fondness for the color ever since I was one of you—an undergrad. at old Ann Arbor——"

In the pandemonium that ensued the mayor judiciously withdrew. The crowd "rushed" the lobby, and staid old men, in town over the day, sought places of greater security on landings, behind pillars, and in corners whence might be had a view of the proceedings without, necessarily, participation.

One by one various members of the team appeared at the head of the stairway and at each appearance a welcome of ringing cheers was sounded. The director of athletics, a little man with a wiry mustache and a square chin addressed the crowd from the top step after prolonged cries of "Speech! Speech!"

The trainer, a huge man with a face like a fist, a Cockney accent, and the shoulders of an ox, shouted a few phrases above the din. Each time he uttered the word, "Michigan," which he insisted upon pronouncing "Mitch-ti-gan," he was cheered wildly.

When Adams appeared on the upper landing and hesitated there the commotion became deafening.

A section of the throng swept up to him, seized him and carried him further down where he was made to blurt a few incoherent sentences in which one caught, above the noise, a constant repetition of the words—"fellows"—"great"—"wiped 'em up"—"knew it"—"right stuff"—and others from the campus jargon, generally as unintelligible as Ute gutterals.

Then he, too, descended and became an atom of the matter below as eager to cry "Speech!" to the others when they should appear, as the mob about him now had been to demand a word from him.

It all combined to constitute a riot of triumph, a veritable debauch in the sensation of triumph—a triumph well won, and fairly; honestly accepted, and as honestly celebrated by nearly three thousand as irresponsible young spirits as ever took possession of a town.

Into the streets they poured. The police gritted their teeth and restrained themselves with an effort, the strength of which their tormentors did not dream.

Passers-by were good-naturedly jostled off the pavement by phalanxes of obstreperous lads, who swept all before them as arm in arm, eight and ten abreast, they advanced upon the city.

Money had been wagered and money had been won and there was money to spend and be spent; and they spent it. They took possession of the restaurants. In the theatres they shouted the choruses of all the songs they knew, and between acts they whistled, stamped and applauded, in that deadly unison and rhythm that has been known to bring buildings tumbling about the heads of less vehement folk.

And why all this stampede of ecstasy?

Because two minutes before the umpire's call of time, John Adams, a tall, broad, blonde giant, whom few of his worshippers really knew, had found an elliptical pig-skin and, rushing like an engine of destruction down a well turfed field, had touched it to the ground behind a pair of slim, straight poles.

III

The theatre was packed. The throng extended into the lobby where the ticket scalpers in the faces of the police hawked their coupons each of which called for "an orchestra chair on the aisle three rows back." The leader of one group leaned against a convex bulletin board bearing the lithograph of a gaily garbed soubrette in red, and waving his cane shouted the first line of a familiar college song. Each man of the group lent his voice to the clamor and there was at once precipitated a riot of discord in which the original air was lost in a brazen yell. There was much rushing; a congestion at the window of the box office at which hands were thrust between the fingers of which dangled government notes of various denominations. Beyond the window, his bust framed in the narrow rim of metal the treasurer of the theatre sat on his high stool dealing out the tickets with the sang-froid and ease of a judge upon the bench. Men left their change there on the ledge. The treasurer always shouted at them once—perhaps it was the voice of his conscience merely—then with a sweep of his curved palm magically transferred the money to the till. A solid V of eager youth with its apex at the narrow door of green, pushed and jostled and shouted.

"Look out there behind, you're squeezing a lady!" some one cried.

"Don't she like it?" called an ungallant if witty youth away at the back of the crowd. There was a little feminine shriek, then a peal of laughter in which the throng joined. The police in the lobby were completely at a loss. No man was to be arrested, their commissioner had instructed them. But they gripped their clubs nervously; longing to leap into that seething maelstrom of manhood uncontrolled and wield them to the best purpose. A policeman is born with a hatred for loud-voiced youth—particularly if the youth wear good clothes of trim and fashionable cut. So the policemen there in the lobby, disarmed by the strict injunction of their chief, were as helpless as babes, and like babes they drew down their mouths and gripped tighter that which was within their clutch. Now and again, however, one, bolder than his fellows, and moved perhaps by a spirit of chivalry would shout gruffly:—

"Remember there are ladies in this crowd, you fellows."

"Sure," some one in the throng would yell.

Finally the manager appeared and stationing a man at each of the two other doors flung them back and relieved the pressure at the one. This stroke of genius resulted in a quick emptying of the brilliant lobby and an equally sudden congestion at the tops of the aisles where the ushers in their dark green uniforms were conducting the audience to the seats below amid the confusion resulting from exchanged coupons, balcony tickets presented on the lower floor and the presence in the crowd of "general admissions" who demanded their rights to a seat anywhere in the house. The manager, a tall young man with a black mustache and black eyes darted here, there, through the crowd, thrusting aside the men whose money he had taken, and seeking by every means at his command to wrest order out of chaos.

It was after eight o'clock before the score of ushers were by circumstance permitted to emerge from under the burden of their responsibilities and creep away down-stairs to the smoking room where, flinging themselves on the long low lounges in sheer fatigue, they berated the patrons of the house roundly and condemned each and every one to the hottest depths of a boiling hot perdition.

Ten minutes later the manager himself conducted the men of the victorious eleven to their adjoining boxes, on the right. The great audience had had its collective eye upon those boxes and at the appearance of the men a great shout went up from pit and gallery that sent the cold shivers up and down the spines of the already nervous actors behind the gold and scarlet curtain.

"There's the Count," some one shouted.

"Where? Yes!"

And the short heavy person with the baby face who had been thus honored by selection from among his fellows arose in the box and bowed. The throng cheered again and after that each man in turn was called for and each man rose and bowed.

During the clamor attendant upon this official welcome of the victors, a dozen men, quite as tall, quite as broad and quite as serene of countenance, were ushered into the corresponding boxes across the house. Their appearance was not noticed, for the entire audience had turned in its seats to observe the men of Michigan, proud in the triumph that had come to them. But, finally, after each man had been given his salvo of applause some one noted the men on the other side.

"There's Cornell," was cried.

And the audience, to its everlasting credit, and after the fashion of youth's wild way, repeated for their good cheer the welcome they had given the fellows of the maize and blue. The vanquished had hardly expected the ovation they received. A football man is not a modest creature as a general rule, but in this instance it must in justice be recorded that several of the brawny giants in the left hand box withdrew behind the curtains.

Their names, however, were known to the throng below them and were called.

Finally, unable by modesty to end the uproar, they rose, one by one and bowed, and the feeling engendered that moment has never died, but lives in the hearts of Cornell men to-day, who are wont in reminiscent mood to refer to it as the "finest show of fellowship on record."

A youth with a high tenor voice, who could not be distinguished from the rear of the theatre started the chorus of "The Yellow and the Blue." The boys around him took it up and the citizenry of Detroit, in the balcony, were treated to such a song recital as they had never before heard. In the midst of it the discovery was suddenly made by some keen youth in the gallery that one man was missing from the right hand boxes. He nudged his companion. The word was passed along the rail. Then, with a suddenness that caused the women in the balcony to start with little screams, one name was shrieked above the clamor of the lower floor:—

"Adams! Adams! Adams!"

The singing ceased.

The cry was taken up, repeated, screeched.

A commotion was observed in the box and then a tall figure arose. It was the manager. A silence that was awesome descended upon the house.

He held up his hand.

"I'm sorry," he began.

"Adams!" some one shrieked. Part of the audience laughed. The rest hissed.

"I am sorry," the manager resumed, "but Mr. Adams is not here to-night."

He sat down.

It was well that at that instant the orchestra commenced a medley of college airs by way of overture.

Presently the shrill tinkle of a little bell was heard and with a swish the curtain lifted, disclosing the glittering, golden court of an Oriental monarch. There was a blare of trumpets and a score of lithe limbed dancers appeared upon the stage. The crowd cried its huge delight and the college yell was flung across the footlights to the end that several of the dancers made missteps, and, covered with a confusion that brought forth another cheer, rushed into the wings.

After that first catastrophe the audience lent itself to a full enjoyment of the piece. Occasionally when the chief comedian gave utterance to a joke of ancient manufacture, the throng gave voice to its displeasure, by way of criticism, but more often the clamor sprang from keen appreciation of a song or bit of funny "business."

In all the audience there was, perhaps, but a single spectator whose face showed him to have no interest either in the audience and its noise or the action on the stage. He sat at one end of the balcony, back from the rail, unnoticed by those about him, satisfied, seemingly, to look on without participation either in the pleasure or the anger of the crowd around him. When his gallery champion cried out his name he had shrunk in his seat and almost held his breath, but now he sat up, his arms folded across his deep, broad breast.

He had entered the theatre late. Indeed there had been no one in the lobby when he bought his ticket. He was glad when he learned the location of his seat. He had thus far avoided all contact with the crowd. He would continue to avoid it. Through the first long act he sat looking down, apparently seeing nothing, staring blankly as though dreaming, yet awake.

When the second act was well under way, he glanced at his watch. He drew out his hat from beneath the chair and inconveniencing no one, left his seat. He glided up the aisle close to the wall. In the lobby, less brilliant now, he squared his shoulders and pulled in a long, deep breath. He lighted a cigarette and for a space stood just outside the door, in the street, idly watching the passers-by.

At the soldier's monument a group of students—he recognized them as such in the lighted thoroughfare—had formed a ring around some one who appeared to be dancing on the asphalt as they shouted, rythmically, and clapped their hands. As he watched, Adams saw the ring part on the side nearest him and he glimpsed the dancer. All the blood went out of his face. He threw away his cigarette and buttoned his coat nervously. With a cry, the ring resolved itself into two lines and paraded down the street with the dancer, who was obviously unsteady on his legs, supported by a twain of students at the front. Adams, at the edge of the curb, perceived the goal toward which the poor little procession was making its way—the portal of a huge German restaurant which he knew well. A picture of its interior as he remembered it flashed upon his mind—the long room, filled with tables, many white clad waiters, stolid of face, light of tread. The head of the procession reached the wide door, bright beneath the great electric sign above. He waited until the last man had entered, then crossed the street swiftly. In the outer hall he heard a medley of noises beyond the mahogany and glass partition. He heard the quick shuffle of feet. Some one was trying to dance on the sanded floor. In the midst of the jig he flung back the connecting door and entered the room of riot.

IV

He was immediately perceived and the crowd with a single voice shouted him a welcome. Through the shifting gossamer of smoke that filled the room he distinguished many familiar faces.

"Come over here, old man," he heard some one call, and turned. He stared without sign of recognition at a young man, who, with many gestures, indicated a vacant chair at a near-by table. He saw the smoke, the waiters gliding noiselessly through it, the littered floor, the wet, glistening table-tops. These misty details he saw mistily, as one sees things in a dream.

His face was pale; there were unfamiliar lines about his mouth, and an unnatural glitter was in his eyes.

He saw the dancer, a man of age who wore the clothes of a laborer, fling himself heavily upon a frail chair at the nearest table, across which he leaned unsteadily, wagging his head and muttering incoherently.

Adams strode over to him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Come," he said, quietly.

With an effort the man balanced his head and lifted his heavy eyes.

"Come," Adams repeated.

It was as though the youths at the other tables knew it to be a psychological moment. The noise subsided. Every eye in the room was intent upon Adams, strong in his splendid youth, and the man beside whom he stood and who was weak in his age.

Adams was seen to encircle the man's shoulders with one arm and fairly lift him from the chair. On his feet he was unsteady. Adams supported him to the door of the restaurant, which swung back noiselessly as the ill-mated couple disappeared.

Then were exchanged many glances among those who had watched the little play in silence.

"What's he going to do with the old guy?" some one asked.

A general, half-forced laugh of relief ensued, which broke the tension, and immediately the company relapsed into its previous state of conviviality. The songs were resumed. The noise developed swiftly and the strangely incongruous incident of Adams' disappearance with the drunken moulder was forgotten straightway.

No one even took the trouble to go to a window to see if developments had occurred outside. And if one had been thus sufficiently interested, he would merely have observed Adams hail a passing cab, into which, as it drew up at the curb, he thrust the man, hesitating an instant with his hand on the door to mutter a certain address to the cabman leaning from his box.

The driver touched his horse, and the vehicle swung into Woodward Avenue. Of a sudden, from the dark patch of pavement that the restaurant faced, Adams felt himself flung into a maelstrom of light.

The faÇades of two theatres were all a-glitter; an immense confectionery across the street was ablaze, and, looking down at the pavement through the window in the cab door, Adams noted the weird, distorted reflections in the asphalt ooze that gives the city streets at night the uncertain quality of a looking-glass wantonly smeared with pitch.

He blinked in the yellow glare of the street illumination. It was as though he were passing through a tunnel of brilliance. A car whirred by, with clanging gong. He caught a fleeting, swift glimpse of the several passengers.

As the cab proceeded, his attention was attracted now and then to groups of young men loitering at various corners as though in contemplation of some deed, very secret, if not very terrible. The lilting chorus of a college song that he recognized was brought to him in the noiselessly rolling cab. Before the last store-lights in the business district were passed, he had obtained such an impression of the city as he had never had before.

Through the window in the door he saw the skeleton trees in Grand Circus Park as the cab cut the circle of its area, and he shivered at the prospect of the winter they suggested.

A sound very close to him caused him to start. He smiled, looked down, and the smile went out of his eyes and left them cold and hard.

The man beside him had succumbed to the comfort of the cab, and, asleep, was snoring gently. Passing beneath an electric lamp, the light fell an instant on his face—pale beneath the stubble beard and the splotches of grime. His knees were high and his hands, broad, work-hardened, lay limp upon them.

Adams turned again to the window.

The cab was passing through a residence district now. He noted with a shifting, vague interest, the houses—big, shapeless for the most part, and set far back in broad yards. The lights in the lower stories glared yellow like the earth-close eyes of crouching monsters.

Suddenly Adams pulled himself together. He began to experience a livelier interest in the dark picture of the street, with its broad curbs, its iron fences, dark hedges, and wide yards. He pressed his face against the window in the cab door, and now and again twisted his neck to gaze as far back down the street as the swift motion of the vehicle would permit.

He remembered definitely, vividly, certain landmarks of his young boyhood, as he was whirled on, noiselessly, save for the rythmic clackety-clack of the horse's hoofs on the echoing asphalt. There was the house from the side yard of which he had once, as a tiny lad, stolen a great armful of roses. There, again, was the house with the smoke tree near the porch behind which Pauline, his little sister, and he had once hidden until the policeman passed, indolently swinging his night stick.

Adams smiled at the recollection.

The cab came opposite a tall apartment house at the junction of a cross-town car line. On the ground now occupied by the ungainly, rambling pile of stone, he remembered vividly, had stood, when he was a very small boy—hardly big enough to push his cart—a little shack occupied by an old cobbler, deserted in his age by a son who had robbed him. Very many were the hours he had spent in that little shop. He recalled certain of those hours with a momentary pang of sadness. The cobbler had been a soldier in Poland, in his time, and was wont to tell great stories of his own valor, to which the yellow-headed lad, all forgetful of his mission and his cart, had listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The memory came swift and certain and distinct in detail and in the richness of it Adams shrank from the ugly stone pile in passing, as though it were a horrid thing thus to thrust itself upon a young man's memory of his little boyhood.

As he dreamed thus the cab turned a corner, suddenly. The rich residential thoroughfare vanished like the palace in the pantomime, and Adams, his face still close to the glass, saw a row of little, squat, mean houses, set regularly behind low white picket fences. Only here and there a light shone from small, square windows. The street seemed totally deserted, save for a single dog that he saw crawl under one of the low latched gates and vanish behind a house that was like all the others in the little squalid street. And as he noted these things, the cab pulled up before such another house, and, mechanically, he passed his hand over his forehead, as a child does when awakened.

A brief parley ensued with the burly driver of the cab, comical in his bristling fur cape.

"Kin yeh git 'im out?" he asked.

"Yes."

One of the windows in the second story of the cottage before which the cab had stopped, was aglow, and across the drawn shade a shadow passed, and passed again.

Adams shook the sleeper in the cab. Finally after a series of muffled grunts and grumblings that were like remonstrances, the man was gotten out.

"All right?" inquired the driver, gathering up the reins.

"All right," Adams replied; whereat the driver spoke to his horse, turned, and drove back down the squalid street.

Adams supported the tottering figure of the man to the door of the house and fumbled for the knob, which, when his fingers found it, turned in his hand and the door swung open. On a table in the room at the end of the narrow, bare, unlighted hallway, stood a lamp, turned low. As he half carried, half led the man into the room, Adams heard footsteps overhead. And as he cast his burden down upon a carpet-covered lounge, pushed back against the wall at the further end of the room, he heard a voice from above call:

"Iss dat you?"

"Come down," he answered.

There was a little frightened, feminine "Oh!" followed by quick, heavy footfalls on the bare stairs. The next instant the short, thick figure of a woman was framed by the doorway. The light of the lamp struck her face which was broad and kindly.

"Chon!" she exclaimed.

His eyes met hers and he smiled faintly. Then his gaze wandered to the lithograph of the Christ tacked to the wall, and to the couch beneath, and he said:

"There's father; I brought him home."

The woman uttered a little cry and bent over the prostrate figure.

"Ah," she muttered. Then, glancing back over her rounded shoulder, she asked: "Where you git heem?"

"Down town," the boy replied, quietly.

"So." And the woman sat down again, and as long as her son was with her she kept her eyes upon him, oblivious, seemingly, of the unfeeling body on the couch.

"Ven you come in?" she asked.

"This morning," he replied. "I played football to-day."

"Och, yes," she murmured, nodding. "I heard dee noise. Yes."

There ensued a moment's silence that was complete, save for the heavy breathing of the sleeper on the couch.

"Chon," the woman said, calmly, "you don't do dat?" And she indicated with a gesture the prone shape on the lounge.

The boy laughed forcedly, and shook his head.

"No," he said.

"Och, yes, no," his mother muttered.

"How's Pauline?" he asked.

"She's vell; she's to a dance."

He shivered as with cold.

"Isn't it late?" he asked.

"No," his mother replied. "She be home maype a hour; maype two hour."

Each seemed conscious of the infinite labor of the conversation.

"Well," John said after half an hour, "I guess I'd better be going."

"So soon!" his mother exclaimed. "Vy not in de morning? We go to church, you ant me."

He shook his head, sadly.

"No," he said. "I must go back to-night. The train leaves before long."

"All right," she muttered.

At the gate in the low fence he turned. His mother's figure was silhouetted against the light of the room at the end of the hall.

"Good-bye," he said, "and tell Pauline to take care."

"Goot-pye," she called to him softly.

She turned back into the house at once and he heard the door shut.

Passing beneath an electric light he examined his watch. The train was due to leave in an hour. He decided to walk to the station. The cold felt good on his face.

He straightened his shoulders and walked with long, even strides, looking neither to right nor left.

He found Janet waiting in the shadow of the baggage-room doorway. The station was thronged with a shouting, jostling crowd. Taking her arm, he guided her through the gate and assisted her to the platform of the last coach.

"You hold the seat, will you?" he asked. "I want to smoke. We broke training to-night, you know."

She nodded, smiling.

And until the porter's call he paced up and down the long train shed. As the train pulled out he swung himself to the platform of the rear coach and entered.

V

A throng of several hundred awaited the arrival of the train at midnight in the railway yards. At the first shriek of the whistle away beyond the bend of the river the cheering commenced. It gathered force sufficiently to smother completely the pounding of the great engine as it thundered past the trim little station and came to a grinding stop.

In the crowd that packed the platform the old men were as eager as the lads; and there were not a few such old men with white in their hair and lined faces, that the lights of the station made radiant. Professors were there, eagerly jostling, squirming, edging in the crowd, holding their own in the tight-squeezed mass with elbows every whit as pointed as the elbows of the youngsters that the youngsters thrust into their sides.

The crowd discovered at once that the team was in the second coach and before a man of the eleven had reached the platform the car was surrounded.

Late as was the hour, speeches were demanded, nor was a path opened through the throng until the demand had been acceded to. A circle formed around the band and its brassy noise blared out upon the night until every townsman within range of the farthest-carrying horn flung up his window and poked a head wonderingly into the outer darkness.

As the crowd surged down the platform to the front of the train, Adams, taking advantage of the clear way at the rear, assisted Janet to the ground and unobserved they passed out into the street through the tall turnstile in the shadow of the baggage-room.

She breathed deeply of the cool night air and he felt the pressure of her hand upon his arm as her steps quickened to his.

In the crowded train she had refrained from all attempts to learn the reason for his silence. Only now and then, as in answer to some question that she asked him, had he spoken in the hour and a half required to cover the forty miles between Detroit and Ann Arbor.

But now in the silence of the darkened street she took courage. At the top of the steep hill, as they passed beneath a sputtering electric lamp, she looked up at him and asked:

"What is it, John—tell me—what is it?"

She hung upon his reply eagerly, a little frightened, though she realized, in seeking to analyze her foreboding that she could not tell herself why she should.

"There's a great deal, Janet," he replied calmly. She perceived an unfamiliar note in his voice, a note that seemed to her to sound a sort of resignation.

"But what—— Can't you tell me? Has anything happened?"

For a moment he did not answer, but then he said: "Yes, dear; several things have happened—several things——"

"What?" she asked, almost in a whisper, and he felt her hand's pressure upon his arm again.

He continued, ruminatively, quite as though she had not spoken: "Several things, that make other things clearer to me now—much clearer."

She had never heard him speak like this before. Perhaps it was a matter intimately personal with him, too intimately personal even for her to share his knowledge, his consideration of it. She almost regretted having asked him. Why had she not prattled on about the game, the splendid victory, his own skill? But when next he spoke she understood she had done no wrong.

"I must tell you about those things, Janet; I must tell you now—to-night—I have meant to before."

Her hand upon his arm tightened its grasp.

"John, what is it? What has happened?" Now she made no effort to conceal the fright that sounded in her voice.

He patted her hand, white on his black sleeve, and laughed lightly—forcedly, she thought.

"There, don't be afraid," he said, "I haven't committed any crime."

She laughed then herself, and said, "You did frighten me, though."

They had come to the library. As they passed, the deep throated bell in the tower rang out twice upon the stillness—tang—tung.

Fifteen minutes past one, Janet calculated.

They took the diagonal walk to the crossing of South and East University Avenues. Her room was in the second house from the corner, on the former street.

He seemed of a sudden to perceive where they were, for, looking about him, he said: "Janet, it is something I must tell you for your own sake. And when I'm through, you can say to me what you think; it won't hurt."

A step and they were at her home.

"Can't you sit here on the porch a few minutes?" he asked; "I shan't keep you long."

With sudden anger she replied:—

"John, if you don't speak out at once what you have to say, I shall go in immediately. You've said again and again that there is something you must tell me; why don't you? Couldn't you see; can't you see now that I haven't begged you to tell because it seems to pain you."

"It does," he exclaimed, "you can't know how it pains me." He looked down at her where she sat on the step and into her uplifted face.

"What is it?" she asked calmly, now.

He sat beside her.

"I hardly know where to begin," he commenced and hesitated. He seemed to be arranging the words in his mind, for, after a moment he resumed.

"I told you it wasn't any crime," he said. "Well, maybe it isn't, but Janet," he went on quickly, "while you were standing at the window of the club this afternoon, you saw a man—do you remember? He wore overalls. His face and hands were black. You said you saw a policeman push him back into the crowd, and you believed him to be drunk—— He was drunk, Janet——"

"How do you know?" she asked, quite indifferently, "did you see him again?"

"Yes, I saw him again," he said. "I saw him in a big restaurant that was crowded with students, men whom I know, whom I have eaten with, whose cheers till now have been—been inspiring to me——"

"John—really——" the girl put in impatiently. "I can't see why that drunk man should have made such an impression—that common laborer—nor what he can have to do——"

"Wait a moment," he remonstrated. "You remember, when you called my attention to him, I took you out across the field, and down town another way? Yes? Well, I had a reason. I didn't want that drunken man to see me—to see you——"

"But, dear," she exclaimed with a little laugh.

"It was my father," he said, quietly.

"John!"

Passion, shock, anger, perhaps pity, were all in the tone of her exclamation. Unconsciously she drew away from him.

"Don't be afraid," he said, holding out a hand to her, "I shan't smirch you——"

She realized her movement then, and pity filled her heart, pity for this great creature beside her whose own heart, the heart she knew, was like a child's.

"Dear," she murmured, "don't think that. Don't. I didn't mean to."

He seemed not to notice the plea in her voice.

"I don't blame you," he went on as calmly as before, "but it was because I knew you would do just that that I haven't told you before. But now—I can't wait any longer. Listen. My parents are Poles, Janet. My father and mother were born in the same tiny town in Poland a little way from Cracow. They came to this country when I was only five years old—before my sister—my little sister Pauline, was born. My father was a peddler at first; afterward for a time he was a street sweeper; and then, during a strike, a good many years ago, he went into the Stove Works and learned the moulder's trade. It's a good trade, Janet; the men sometimes earn four dollars a day, pouring the hot iron into the sand. My father earns that now——"

She had listened to him raptly, the pale light white upon her lifted face.

"But John," she exclaimed, "your name—your name isn't foreign?"

He laughed.

"My name isn't 'Adams,'" he replied.

"John!"

"No," he went on—"but maybe my name is, too, after all. I should have said 'perhaps.' My father's name is not. It is Adamowski——" He heard her little quick in-taking of breath and looked away.

"You have never heard of such things before, have you?" he asked. "But it is a custom with Polish young men nowadays. Their names handicap them in their work, in their advancement, so they often change them."

"Yes, I understand," she murmured.

"Well," he went on, "until I was ten years old I attended the parochial school——"

"John, you're not a Catholic!" she exclaimed.

"No—you needn't be afraid of that either—I'm not—now," he answered. "And then," he continued as calmly as before, "I was sent to the public schools. It was the superintendent who wrote my name 'Adams.' He did it perhaps by accident; anyway it has been my name ever since. Plain 'John Adams.' I don't suppose I could make you understand the relation between parents and an only son among my people, so I shan't try, but it is to the son that the parents look for the fulfilment of all their happiest hopes. That I should have been sent here to college is not so surprising as you may consider it. I was sent here. I was sent here by my father who works in the sand of the moulding room; by my mother who, to help, has for three years taken in washing; and by my little sister, Pauline, who sits all day at a bench and tears the stems out of tobacco leaves in a great, gray factory. They are the ones who have sent me here to college—to study, to learn, to make something of myself——"

Thus far to the girl, save for little moments when from the narrative she had suffered twinges of pain, it was as though she were listening to a story of one whom she knew not. She had been moved and strangely thrilled at times and now leaning forward eagerly she exclaimed:

"And you have made something of yourself; you have, John! Oh, don't you see how brave you are—what you can do with the education they have given you; what you can accomplish for yourself, and so, for them?"

He did not interrupt her but when she had done he looked down at her pityingly and muttered, as though suffering an intense physical agony: "Oh Janet! to hear you talk like that—to hear you say such things; to feel you haven't understood."

She looked away from him piqued, chagrined that she had erred.

"I brave!" he went on, "I brave? Do you think I dare call myself brave when I think of that little girl tearing stems out of tobacco leaves until her fingers are stiff; when I think of my mother bent over a tub, her face wreathed in steam—I can hear the smooth rasp of the wet clothes now as she rubs them on the board? I brave when I see my father working in the awful heat of a moulding room—cooked alive—that I may dawdle here and kick a leather ball about a field." He looked away with a sneer. But the bitterness in his voice failed to move her.

"Your education!" she exclaimed, tersely,—"you have that!"

He laughed harshly. "Education! my education! What is it? There are my people—my father a moulder, a good workman who sometimes is drunk, and, so, a drunkard; my mother a wash-woman; my little sister a stripper in a cigar factory. They have given me my education and in giving me it what have they done? They have made me hate them!"

"John, John, you mustn't say that," she implored.

"I must say it," he replied,—"for it's the truth. They have lifted me above them. All the love I should have for them is gone, obliterated. My feeling toward them is the feeling a man has for a dog that has helped him, perhaps saved him from drowning. It is a feeling but it is not love. I've known this a long time, Janet, but not till now have I known what to do. There is my place, there beside them. Back in the little home I should be ashamed to take you into. I have been educated away from them; from my father, my mother, my little sister; yes," he added with a virulent bitterness, "I have even been educated away from my God."

She placed her hand on his arm but she did not speak.

"Educated even away from my God!" he repeated sadly. "They are Catholics. I should be. I am not. And what has been given me in return? Nothing; less than nothing; yes, something, for I have been given by this 'education' that has been paid for by my sister's blood, my mother's body, and my father's soul, the power to see my own false position. I thank heaven for that! O, don't remonstrate," he said, as she leaned toward him as though to speak. "I understand. From the high plane of your view the picture is not the same. I am closer to it. I see the fault of the method, the absurdity of the thing, the miserable falsity of the conception. You cannot understand, Janet. It is because I have known you could not, that I have not told you till now."

"But, John, dear," she murmured tenderly, pityingly, "I do understand."

"No," he contradicted, gently, "you don't; you can't; it is not for you to understand."

He stood up, and looking down at her where she sat, smiled sadly. The bell in the tower of the library rang out upon the stillness, six times—tang—ting—tang—ting—tang—ting!

"But perhaps you can feel a little as I feel and know something of how I have felt for weeks. I shall go back to-morrow." There was no drama in the declaration. It was uttered calmly.

The girl stood up now suddenly and leaned toward him.

"What do you mean?" she asked, "you're not really going—going back—there?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm going back. I am going to try to find what has been stolen from me. I am going to try to rid myself of my unrest; to undo for myself the wrong that all unconsciously has been done me, by hands that have hit me when they only meant to be gentle. I'm going back, Janet, to work in the moulding-room beside my father."

She stared into his face, in mute wonder.

"And give up your course, John? Now!" she cried, as the full force of his determination dawned upon her.

"I am going to give up the false that has been thrust upon me, for the good that I have flung away," he answered. "I shall work until I have paid back all my mother's money and my father's money, and my little sister's money. Would to God I could pay them for the aching backs, the stiff fingers, and the tortured souls. I shall try. And if when I have tried, I find that, after all, it has been of no avail, that these debts can never be paid, perhaps I shall come back. Good-bye."

He held out his hand. He felt hers cold in his palm.

"Will you forgive me?" he asked simply,—"I should not have—I should not have cared for you. It was wrong. Forgive me——"

"There is nothing to forgive," she said, quite firmly. He drew away his hand then and hers fell limp at her side.

She stood motionless and watched his figure as it swung up the street.

Her heart bade her lips call out to him. But the million voices of the night bade her heart be still. And then, even as she watched, where he was, there was he not, but only blackness.

THE OLD PROFESSOR