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.