“And flunking again to-morrow, I’m sorry.” He was sorry, very, very sorry. “Because it prolongs the agony for everybody, your mother in particular.” Dilford was sidling about the room, nearing the door by furtive stages. When Haydock glanced up, he was no longer there. “I’m the last person in the world to advise running away as long as there’s any music to face. But there isn’t any more for you just now. The thing is played out, and you simply have to leave.” Haydock himself didn’t quite know what he meant by this tuneful figure of speech; but he thought it sounded rather well, and would impress Billy. “You know yourself that a smash of some kind is coming--you’ve known it for weeks.” The senior didn’t attempt to understand the mind in which a keen knowledge of approaching, but easily averted doom ran in a never converging parallel with an insatiable lust for the present. He merely knew that such minds could be, and that Billy’s, if left unmolested, was one of them. He undertook now to lead these lines to a point. He didn’t say very much, and his remarks weren’t in the least spiritual; as a matter of fact they were decidedly worldly. He didn’t remind Billy that his wickedness might eventually keep him out of the kingdom of Heaven, but told him,--which is of far more importance to a Harvard freshman--that if he went on making an ass of himself he would ruin his chances for the “Dickey.” Haydock played some variations on this seemingly simple theme, threw in a few merciless truths he had learned from John, an original reflection or two, and an unanswerable prediction of a general and depressing character. “You must get out and go home, and think about it,” he ended. Billy had probably already begun to act on the last of these suggestions, for in a minute or two he stuffed his head into the sofa-cushions and began to cry. Haydock returned to his Milton, and learned several pages to an accompaniment of smothered sobs, until Billy at length became quiet. “Now we’ll go down and have a cool swim in the tank,” said Haydock, rousing him gently. They undressed in silence. Billy was pathetic and absurd in a long blanket wrapper, his face still wet with tears, pattering after Haydock through the halls to the bath. “Maybe you had better see your ‘adviser,’” Haydock suggested, when they were back again in his room. Billy hadn’t spoken in the interval. “I can’t--he hates me!” gulped Billy, turning away. Ordinarily he would have said that the man was “_affreux_.” He went to bed and cried some more on the cool pillows. Haydock wrote out a respectful form of resignation from the college for him to copy in the morning, composed a letter to Mrs. Ware, tenderly adapted in all respects to that lady’s intellectual needs, and returned, when the fog at his windows was white with the morning, to Paradise Lost. A DEAD ISSUE