J.M.'s mind flew back to the summer home of the president of Middletown. "Good gracious," he exclaimed, "you're right!" Mrs. McCartey did not take in to the full this compliment, her mind being suddenly diverted by the appearance of a tall figure at the door of the farther wing of the house. "Say, Uncle Jerry," she said, lowering her voice, "Stefan Petrofsky asked me the other day if I thought you would let him talk to you about Ivan some evening?" "Why, who are they, anyhow?" asked J.M. "I've often wondered why they kept themselves so separate from the rest of us." As he spoke he noticed the turn of his phrase and almost laughed aloud. "Petrofsky's wife, poor thing, died since they come here, and now there's only Stefan, he's the father, and Ivan, he's the boy. He's awful smart they say, and Stefan, he's about kilt himself to get the boy through the high school. He graduated this spring and now Stefan he says he wants him to get some _more_ education. He says their family, back in Russia, was real gentry and he wants Ivan to learn a lot so that he can help the poor Roosians who come here to do the right thing by the government--" "_ What_?" asked J.M. "I don't seem to catch his idea." "Well, no more do I, sorra bit," confessed Mrs. McCartey serenely. "Not a breath of what he meant got to me, but what he _said_ was that Ivan's schoolin' had put queer ideas in his head to be an anarchist or somethin' and he thought that maybe more schoolin' would drive out _thim_ ideas and put in other ones yet. Hasn't it a foolish sound, now?" She appealed to J .M. for a sympathy she did not get. "It sounds like the most interesting case I ever heard of," he cried, with a generous looseness of superlative new to him. "Is Ivan that tall, shy, sad-looking boy who goes with his father to work?" "That's _him_. An' plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says _he_ don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to join the anarchists in the fall and go to----" J.M. rose to his feet and hurried down the porch toward the Petrofsky wing of the house, addressing himself to the tall, grave-faced figure in the doorway. "Oh, Mr. Petrofsky, may I have a few minutes' talk with you about your son?" he said. III