“What _is_ the worst part of it, Dick?” “Don’t you know?” the canned one asked, in the same dull monotone. “No more than the man in the moon.” “Didn’t you ever hear of ‘The Mixers’?” “Just the name; that’s all.” “Well, you might as well know; it’s all out now. There was a bunch of us, with more money than was good for us, I guess. We’ve been going over the river to a room in the Brandon House to play cards. Night before last the town police raided us. The others all skipped through a window and down the fire-escape, but I was bonehead enough to stand my ground and try to bully it out. For the sake of the college it was kept out of the newspapers, and the police contented themselves with handing me over to the faculty.” “And you’re the only one to be expelled?” Dick nodded. “They gave me a chance that I couldn’t take; said they’d make it suspension to the end of the semester if I’d tell who the others are. It’ll just about break Dad’s heart, Larry.” “Don’t you know it,” said Larry, with a franker emphasis than he meant to put upon it. Then: “Have you told it all?” “No; not quite all. I’ve lost money――lots of it. I owe pretty nearly everybody in sight. Worse than that, I’ve used up all my year’s allowance and I’m overdrawn at the bank. I’ll have to wire Dad for money to get home on.” For a few minutes Larry was just about as badly crushed as Dick seemed to be. That Dick, the chum he loved almost as a brother of his own blood, should make such a frightful smash of himself and his prospects in just a few weeks or months seemed utterly unbelievable. Then there was Dick’s father.... Just here Dick broke in again. “You mustn’t charge it up to the Omegs, Larry; that’s one of the things I got you out here to say to you. I know some of the fellows in my frat are pretty swift, but I was the only one that was in the ‘Mixers.’ It’s only fair to say that Carey Lansing and some of the others have done all they could to hold me down and keep me from getting tangled up with fellows of the Underhill sort. But it didn’t do any good. I was just an easy mark, all around the block.” “_I_ could have held you down,” Larry maintained, with his jaw set. “Yes, I guess you could have. But I never gave you a chance to try.” Larry sat quietly for a few minutes, kicking his heels against the concrete wall. This was the time of day when, ordinarily, nothing would have kept him from thinking of his supper. But now he was not remembering that there were any such things as suppers. “What will you do after you get home, Dick?” he asked, more to be saying something than for any cogent purpose behind the words. “I don’t know; get Dad to give me a clerkship or something on the railroad, so that I can earn money enough to pay my debts. I’ve had my fling and I’m out of it for the rest of my life.” If you are a little older than Dick you may smile at this, if you like, but it was the end of the world for him, or he thought it was――which amounts to the same thing.