The face of the Professor of Theology grew grave as he approached the topic of his favorite heresy. Stern lines cut themselves about his fine mouth. His gentle eyes darkened. He felt keenly the responsibility of the influence that he bore over his students, even in hours of what he called social relaxation, and the necessity of defending the truth was vividly present to his trained conscience. Bayard watched his host with troubled admiration. It was with a start that he heard a woman’s voice sweetly breaking in upon the conversation. She was speaking to the guest of the flannel shirt. “Oh, have you seen the snow professor since the rain? He’s melted into such a lovely slush!” “Helen!” rebuked her mother plaintively. “Helen, Helen!” But the Professor smiled,--a warm smile peculiar to himself. He shot a tender look across the table at his daughter. He did not resume the subject of the Presbyterian trial. “The trouble with the snow professor,” suggested Bayard, “is that he had the ice in his head, but the sun at his heart.” Helen Carruth turned quickly towards him. Her glance lingered into a look distinctly personal and indistinctly grateful. She made no answer, but her eyes and the student’s understood each other. IV. It is manifestly as unfair to judge of a place by its March as to judge a man’s disposition by the hour before dinner. As the coldest exteriors may conceal the warmest loves, so the repelling Cesarean winter holds in store one of the most alluring summers known to inland New England. The grass is riper, the flowers richer, the ranks of elms are statelier, the skies are gentler, and the people happier than could be expected of Cesarean theology. Nay, theology itself unbends in April, softens in May, warms in June, and grows sunny and human by the time the students are graduated and turned loose upon the world,--a world which is, on the whole, so patient with their inexperience, and so ready to accept as spiritual leaders men whose own life’s lessons are yet to be learned, and whose own views of the great mysteries which they dare to interpret are so much more assured than they will be ten years later. Emanuel Bayard and Helen Carruth walked together beneath the ancient trees that formed the great cross upon the Seminary green. The snow professor was melted out of existence; head of ice and lecture of sleet had vanished months ago. Dandelions glittered in the long grass. Sparrows built nests under the awful chapel eaves. It was moonlight and warm,--a June night,--and the elms cast traceries of fine shadows, like a net, about the feet of the young people; they seemed to become entangled in the meshes, as they strolled up and down and to and fro, after the simple fashion of the town; which pays no more attention to a couple sauntering in broad day, or broad moonlight, in the sight of gods and men, across the Seminary “yard,” than it does to the sparrows in the chapel eaves.