Part 3

The maid admitted him and he waited in the little round room. The shades were low and the place was filled with shadows, shadows that made the close walls seem very far apart, and the teak wood bookcase quite remote. To satisfy himself of the illusion Houston thrust one foot forward until it touched the lowest shelf. He settled back among the cushions on the circular seat, then, quite satisfied.

He heard the soft, cool swish of skirts on the stairs and the next instant the _portières_ parted and framed Florence. In passing she had opened the outer door and the light, streaming about her, as for an instant she stood there, filled the little room with a soft, white glow that seemed to radiate from her. He did not move; gazed at her simply before she glided silently to where he sat, and stooping, kissed him.

She held her cheek close to his an instant then drew away, and moving to the window raised one of the shades. Her face was turned from him.

"Jove!" he muttered, "but you're beautiful, Florence--in that--in that blue thing."

She turned, at his exclamation, and a little pale ghost of a smile hovered about her lips. She came to him and sat beside him and took one of his hands in both hers.

"Jack, what is it?" she asked, quietly.

Their eyes met as she spoke, and before his could fall, she said: "Tell me, tell me what it is----"

It seemed to him, that instant, that he ceased to breathe.

He fairly wrenched his eyes from hers. "Flo"--it was not often of late that he called her by this name of his own invention--"Flo, I--I----"

"Tell me," she whispered, leaning toward him.

"Flo, it's all off."

He got up quickly and strode out into the hallway, and back again.

He stood beside the bookcase and looked at her, across the room, where she sat between the windows, the little smile, only, perhaps fainter now, still hovering about her lips.

"I understand, dear," she said simply.

The relief her words carried to him filled him with as keen and as complete a joy as he had ever felt.

"I knew you would," he said; "I knew you would--you're so sensible about things."

The smile flickered an instant brighter as she replied, with a little pout, "Oh, Jack, never call a girl '_sensible_': it's as bad as calling her '_nice_,' and that's like throwing a stone at her."

He laughed, a little stridently.

"Come here, dear; sit here and tell me all about it." She made room for him beside her and held the cushions against the wall till he sank among them.

"Is it your father, dear; did you tell _him_?" she asked quietly.

"No, it isn't," he blurted, frankly. "I wish to Heaven it were."

"So it's you; just yourself; oh, Jack!"

How grateful he was for that little note of gay mockery in her voice she never knew.

"Can't you tell me all about it?"

He did not answer at once.

"Then shall _I_ tell _you_?" she said. He glanced at her appealingly, but she was still smiling.

"Well--let's see,--where does it begin? Oh, yes. There was once a boy came to college, and he fell in with other boys and had the best sort of time till he met an ogre--no, I mean an ogress--and after that he didn't have a good time at all----"

He was smiling now, with her.

"----And in some foolish way he began to think he liked the ogress--whom he shouldn't have liked--and she, well, she liked him too, and they became pals--regular pals--and one day he told her he loved her. He thought he did. He didn't _really_; but he was to learn _that_ afterward. So they became engaged--this fine fellow and the ogress. Silly, wasn't it? Silly of the fine fellow and silly of the ogress. And for a little while--no,"--she mused--"not a _little_ while; quite a long while, they were happy; very, very happy. And all the time they were drifting closer and closer to the edge of a precipice over which they were sure to take a tumble one day. But before that day came the fine fellow woke up, for, you see, he'd only been dreaming all the time. And the ogress wasn't an ogress at all, but just a girl--a _sensible_ girl...."

He glanced at her reprovingly.

" ... just a sensible girl," she went on, "who, when he told her it was all a dream, said it had been a happy, happy dream, but that perhaps the awakening had come just in time. Perhaps it has, Jack," there was a note of seriousness in her voice now. "Perhaps it has; who knows? We shall think so anyway; shan't we? It will make it easier...."

"Yes, it will make it easier," he muttered, all the light gone out of his eyes, the smile from his lips.

"Jack; you _will_ tell me one thing, won't you, dear?"

He looked up into her face wonderingly.

"What is it?" he said.

"Was there another--another besides the ogress who turned out to be the sensible girl? Tell me, Jack; it's all I want to know. I don't know why I should want to know even that; but I do. I guess a girl always does. Perhaps it's because it usually tends either to light-up things or to make her still more miserable. I don't know which; only it's at such times that a girl wants either light or more misery. One seems to do as well as the other. Tell me--was there, Jack?"

He met her eyes frankly, as he spoke.

"Why Flo--I--you see----" He looked away.

She settled back among the cushions.

"Flo, you wouldn't understand," he managed to say. "You see, it's----"

"But I know now," she exclaimed--"and somehow it makes me feel better----"

"Flo!"

She perceived the reproof in his tone and added eagerly: "Don't think I meant to mock you, dear; I didn't truly. I meant just what I said--and just that way...."

Presently he stood up before her and looked down into her face.

"Flo,"--he spoke earnestly, almost passionately--"Flo, you're a girl in a million!"

"There!" she cried gaily, "that's better than '_sensible_.'"

He smiled.

"In a million," he repeated as though to himself. "I can never, never forget you----"

"Oh, Jack!" Again the old note of playful raillery crept into her voice. "Now you've gone back. Of course you can't forget me; at least you mustn't, really you mustn't; it wouldn't be fair."

He took up his hat from the little table.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"I'd better," he said, simply.

"And shan't I see you again?..."

Before he could reply she cried: "But I can see you graduate! I can see you get the Athens scholarship; and I shall too. And oh, Jack, when I read some day about you I shall be so glad--so glad I'll cry!" As she spoke he saw the thin mist that he remembered seeing once before, gather over her eyes again. He touched her lightly on the cheeks with the tips of his fingers, and, stooping kissed her forehead.

"Good-bye," he said.

She took his hand and pressed it.

"Good-bye--and the best luck in the world!" she cried.

She heard the door close behind him. For a long time she did not move from among the cushions. Finally she rose. From the top shelf of the teak wood bookcase she took down a Japanese rose jar, and from it drew out a little card portrait of a young sweet-faced girl. She stood at the window and lifting her eyes from the portrait gazed off down the street.... The pink faded from her cheeks.... The photograph slipped from her fingers.... She sank upon her knees and hid her face among the cushions.... By and by she rose and went out into the hallway and up the stairs....

Her mother, entering below, called to her.

"I'm up here dressing, dear," she answered. "I had a note from Ed Trombley--you remember him, mother--a '90 man. His class is having a reunion and he's back for it. He has asked me to drive to the Lake with him--you don't care do you?"

"No child...."

And the frail, gray-haired woman went quietly into the little round room with her sewing.

THE KIDNAPPING

I

The glimpse to be caught of the outer world through the wide west entrance of the main building, as a scurrying undergraduate, now and then, leaned sidewise against the heavy door and pushed it back, was not cheering. There was snow upon the ground; snow that lay not white and glistening in a strong light, but smudged and indelicate beneath the low hanging smoke. At either side of the broad, rounded tar walk, now covered with ashen gray ice, Paddy's plow had piled the snow in two rows. The maples were gaunt, skeleton-like, and the wind that cried in their branches was chill to the ear and to the cheek.

When the thick door was flung back to permit the passage of a youth becomingly dressed for the season in loose trousers that, not infrequently, were rolled into high russet lace boots; closely buttoned coat, above the throat of which rose the blue tower of a sweater collar; or to allow the entrance of a girl in tam-o'-shanter and furs, her few books hugged close to her breast, the various notices and handbills on the bulletin board at the left of the corridor fluttered, often to be torn from the clips and sent soaring down the hall.

On the square marble-topped radiator in the middle of the floor opposite the door of the president's office sat Kerwin. Another youth was slouching beside him.

Kerwin knocked his heavy heels against the pipes of the heater and looked down at his loafing acquaintance with eyes that twinkled unceasingly. Kerwin was not beautiful. He was round of face--all but his jaw; that was square. His hair was red and grew in divers "cow licks" that rendered brushing futile. On the backs of his hands, despite the season, were large, circular freckles. The frat. pin he wore on the breast of his blue sweater suggested certain of his characteristics with singular precision. It was a kite-shaped affair, bordered with tiny pearls and emeralds, alternating, and the Greek letters across the middle were Delta Psi Phi. Not by the Greek, however, were the owner's characteristics indicated--unless, of course, to Kerwin himself--but by the symbols of the order the insignia of which it was and which consisted of a weird, staring, human eye--the "white" enamel, and the "pupil" emerald--, a flat lamp of the sort they are making in Germany and digging up in Pompeii, and a round, moon-face.

The little freshman at the radiator had been eyeing the pin curiously for some minutes.

"Say," he said finally, and Kerwin looked down.

"What?"

"Tell me the meaning of that eye."

The twinkle grew in Kerwin's own.

"That!" he exclaimed, burying his chin in the huge collar of the sweater and pulling out the garment like the cuticle of the elastic-skinned boy, the better to examine the badge. "Oh, that is the all-seeing eye of the frat. It means that the fellow who wears our pin--it means that I am next, that I'm on--up to the game; that no hot air goes with me. See?"

His eyes met the little independent freshman's squarely and soberly.

"Oh, does it," the latter replied with interest. "Then what does that thing mean?" With a chubby forefinger he indicated the lamp.

"Now, that's different," Kerwin continued, none the less grave. "That is symbolic of brilliancy. It indicates brilliancy of the highest order. Yes, siree; a chap's got to be _mighty_ brilliant to wear that!"

Again their eyes met and the little independent's were alight with interest still.

"And that?" It was the moon-face at the bottom of the pin that next came in for an explanation. The little fellow grinned back at it feelingly.

"Ah, that's the best of all," Kerwin exclaimed. It was quite as though he were telling a pretty fairy story to a child. "That denotes geniality, joviality, and--there's another 'ality' in the list, but I've forgotten it for the moment. You understand, though, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I understand."

And then--this is hard to believe--what did that little freshman do but ask:

"Say, what do you think my chances are of ever wearing a pin like that?"

Kerwin almost fell off the radiator. He had heard of freshmen as fresh as this one, but at the stories of such he had always smiled, regarding them as pleasant fictions. Recovering, he realized that his duty was to disillusion the youth who awaited his reply, with a look of anxiety in his clear eyes. So----

"Very slim," he replied, brutally, sliding off his marble perch. "Very slim indeed! You see," he added, buttoning his coat and measuring with his eye the distance to the transverse corridor, "you're too bloomin' fresh ever to wear anything but a cornflower, or a wood-violet at best."

He ran then, and, even before the little independent realized the full significance of the speech, was out of sight.

It was quite two minutes later by the clock above the president's door that the blush began to mount the youngster's cheeks. He gathered his books under one arm and tiptoed down the corridor, staring at the floor and regretting heartily that he had even so much as mentioned the pictures on his classmate's--his wiser classmate's--pin.

But the displeasure that he suffered so keenly, the chagrin that forbade a lifting of his eyes, and the realization--harder to bear than the rest--that he had displayed his freshness so frankly, were emotions of the moment only, for when, two weeks later, his "stringer" came up before his class as the fraternity candidate for the toast-mastership he cast his ballot for him regardless of the fact that his own independent brethren had put forward a man as well. For, you see, that was Kerwin's way of making friends; perhaps not the best way, to be sure, but, in Kerwin's case, justified by its success.

On behalf of their man the independent faction waged a valiant fight. Campus legend told them that for many years their class ancestors had seen victory wrested from them, once almost at the moment of victory, so in caucus they decided that they had "stood it long enough."

"Winning or not," an enthusiastic speaker cried on that occasion, "we'll show 'em a few things."

And show them a few things they did, but the things didn't count, in the wholly unexpected incident that occurred, of a sudden, to cast them into confusion, panic, chaos.

Norse was their "man." After the first ballot all was rosy for a little minute and then what did Norse do but rise in his seat, and with a calmness that was appalling withdraw in Kerwin's favor! It was a proceeding entirely unprecedented. The jaws of the fraternity men dropped. As for the independents they merely gazed at one another, blinking, their cheeks colorless.

In the silence some one with a grain of reason left in working order moved that Kerwin's election be made unanimous. The independents forgot to vote. There was not a solitary "nay." It was the succeeding cheer that aroused the independents finally. They hissed; they wrangled; and a girl was seen quickly to draw away from a group near which she was standing, for a youth with eyeglasses and long hair had used a few words that were hardly delicate.

As Kerwin was rushed down the room to the rostrum he heard some one ask, with cutting sarcasm, "Is Norse looking for a bid from your frat.?"

Kerwin took no note of the irony, replying, "He ought to have one." As he stepped behind the chairman's table he turned suddenly, and brought his fist down hard, exclaiming: "By Jove! I see now how it was!"

"How?" a henchman at his elbow asked, eagerly.

"Why, I helped out Norse in the entrance exam. in geometry. Never occurred to me till this minute. He sat next me; told me in the hall geom. was what he was afraid of. I didn't pass him a pony but I gave him a couple of cues. I guess this is his way of repaying me. Wait a second." He broke through the crescent that had formed in front of the table.

Deserted by all his former champions who, with sneers and dire threats flung in his direction had left, Norse still sat by a window at the back, bent over a copy of that day's issue of the _U. of M. Daily_. Kerwin went to him and held out his hand, which the other took, grinning. They talked in undertones a minute and as Kerwin joined his heelers at the table Norse strode out of the room.

"That was it!" the victor exclaimed radiantly. "That's why he did it--what I said. I asked him straight out if it was to curry favor with the frat. crowd and he said it wasn't. Said he couldn't join one if he wanted to. His father thinks they're no good. I told him maybe the gang would try to even up with him for withdrawing. He grinned and said 'let 'em.' He's all right, fellows. We've got to play square with him. I offered him the best toast on the list right off the bat--'The Girls'--but he wouldn't accept it. Said he guessed he'd rather not. Said he's no good talking to a crowd, and doesn't know enough about girls to have an opinion one way or the other."

"Better take him over to Ypsilanti," a youthful Don Juan cried.

"Gee! He is fresh!" another ventured.

"What does he want, anyway?" was asked.

"Nothing. Wouldn't it kill you?" Kerwin replied. "I told him he'd better look out they don't try to do him up."

"You'd better keep your own eye peeled," was suggested by a little fellow on the outer edge of the crescent. "They're sore clear through--turned down for ten years running. Better stay in nights, or you'll show up at the banquet with no hair or an iodine-face, if you even show up at all----"

"Don't you believe it!" Kerwin exclaimed, with rare bravado. "Norse said he'd help me if they get funny. He's a husky guy; did you get a good look at him, fellows? I'm not worrying about the independents any; it's the sophomores I'm going to keep my eyes on. I inferred from what Norse said, there's something in the air. If he finds out what it is he'll put me next. We can depend on him, fellows. He's a regular crackerjack!"

"Well, don't be too sure of yourself," was the significant warning that caused Kerwin to exclaim:

"Rot! Let 'em come--let 'em _all_ come! Don't you fellows lie awake nights worrying about little Willie. He's old enough to sit up and take notice."

And the crescent in front of the table broke.

It was gratitude simply that prompted Kerwin to take Norse to Ypsilanti one evening during the week following and make him known to a Miss Myrtle Green of the normal school. It was obvious to Kerwin that Norse's ignorance of girls was not due to any disinclination on his part to abolish that state. Indeed he seemed to hunger for knowledge on the subject. As for Miss Green she seemed quite willing to instruct him. He became a regular caller. The other girls learned to speak of him as "Myrtle's steady." And Myrtle seemed agreeable that he should continue just that.

II

February promised to go out like a thousand lions. Toward noon on the twenty-fourth it began to snow, listlessly, at first, but more thickly as nightfall approached. The next morning the townsfolk awoke to find their homes half buried in a white, downy mass as thick as the height of the fences.

It was a morning of fine sport. Old men and young turned out with a will to clean the walks of the city. It was hard work for strong hands manipulating broad wooden shovels, for so deep was the snow that after a few feeble attempts Paddy, the plowman, was forced to give in and urge his plunging horse back to the stable. His plow was useless.

The oldest resident experienced such pleasure as had not been his for many years. He reveled in vague recollections of the winter of 1830 when the snow--according to him--had fallen "a mite deeper," and the farmers, living along the main highways, had been compelled to combine their genius and their strength in digging tunnels to the market!

That day and the following were clear and crisp. Every one wore green spectacles. Cases of snow-blindness were numerous; and then, toward evening on the twenty-sixth, the mercury, which for thirty-six hours had hovered near the zero-point, began slowly to rise. At midnight a weak, half-hearted rain set in. The next noon, with that mischievousness in which the elements of our zone not infrequently indulge, a strong piercing wind, straight from the north, swept down the state. At seven o'clock that night the common thermometers registered five degrees below zero and a shimmering crust of ice an inch thick lay upon the land.

Across the fields and over the fences the farmers drove, in heavy bob-sleds, into town. In the southwest corner of the state a new sect was born whose leaders proclaimed the dawn of the Age of Ice and beseeched the people to look to their souls, before the final congealment of all things.

In town a season of gaiety ensued. Numbers of art students proceeded to the open spots upon the campus, and, with hatchets, cut out of the crust gigantic caricatures of well-known instructors. With the zeal and yo-heave-ho of lumber-jacks they raised the figures upright supporting them with props, and the campus became, as if by magic, adorned with profile statues of professors!

General as was the interest in the unique entertainment a kind nature had provided, there were certain sophomores who, shunning the spectacle afforded by the decorated campus, sought the seclusion of a certain back-room down-town where they evolved a plan of hazing that promised to be entirely overlooked in the interest otherwise occasioned.

Thus far Kerwin had not been molested and had begun to think that at least one banquet was to pass without a recurrence of those adventures which for years had made it notable among the events of the college year.

"There's too much else to interest them," he said to Norse, one morning in the State Street Billiard Hall. "If they were up to any stunts we'd have heard before this, with the banquet coming off day after to-morrow. It's all easy sailing, thanks to the ice."

Norse, however, was not so certain. "You can't tell," he said, with a significant wag of his head. "Maybe this keeping-still now means action at the last minute. What do your own freshmen say?"

"There's not one in the frat. who thinks they'll attempt anything," Kerwin replied. "And as for the sophomores, they say there's too much going on for them to waste time fooling with a dinky freshman toastmaster."

Norse's doubts were not, however, to be so easily dispelled. "You'd better keep an eye out," he advised. "I'll help you all I can. If I get next to anything I'll let you know."

But neither that day nor the day after did he hear a word that sounded in the least suspicious, but on Friday he did; and thus wise:

At noon he met Kerwin again in the billiard hall.

The toastmaster drew him to one side. "I'm fixed," he whispered with a grin of satisfaction.

"How?" Norse asked.

"Got my dress suit hid."

"Where, in the furnace?"

"No; better'n that. You know that built-in closet in my room? Yes. Well, the top of it is lower than it seems to be from the front, and I've put my suit, and dress-shirt, and all, up there. Such a simple way of hiding the stuff they'll never think of, if they get into the room while I'm away."

"Anybody know about it?"

"Not a soul but you."

"Good. It does look as if they were going to let you alone, but you can't be too careful the rest of the day. What are you going to do this afternoon?"

Kerwin was going to do many things; he was going to be busier than a puppy with a bone, he said.

"You see," he explained, "I want the affair to go off as smooth as oil; and, by Jove, it's going to, if I've got anything to say about it. What were you going to do?"

Norse had planned to go skating.

"Go on," Kerwin urged, then perceiving that his friend hesitated, he added, slapping him sturdily on the back, "Don't you have any fear for me. Go on. I wish I might go but I simply can't; and that's all there is to it."

"If you think it's safe, all right," Norse said.

"Safe!" Kerwin exclaimed, flauntingly. "Of course its safe. Go on!"

So Norse went.