“He had to drop out after his second year for financial reasons. He is working his own way through college, you know. For the past two years he has been teaching school in some out-of-the-way place over in Prince Edward Island. He isn’t any too well, poor fellow--never was very strong and has studied remorselessly. I haven’t heard from him since February. He said then that he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to stick it out till the end of the school year. I hope Larry won’t break down. He is a fine fellow and worthy even of Agnes Campion. Well, here we are. Coming in, David?” “Not this afternoon--haven’t got time. I must mosey up to the North End to see a man who has got a lovely throat. Nobody can find out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors. He has puzzled me, but I’ll find out what is wrong with him if he’ll only live long enough.” CHAPTER II. A LETTER OF DESTINY Eric, finding that his father had not yet returned from the college, went into the library and sat down to read a letter he had picked up from the hall table. It was from Larry West, and after the first few lines Eric’s face lost the absent look it had worn and assumed an expression of interest. “I am writing to ask a favour of you, Marshall,” wrote West. “The fact is, I’ve fallen into the hands of the Philistines--that is to say, the doctors. I’ve not been feeling very fit all winter but I’ve held on, hoping to finish out the year. “Last week my landlady--who is a saint in spectacles and calico--looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, VERY gently, ‘You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a doctor about yourself.’ “I went and did not stand upon the order of my going. Mrs. Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. She has an inconvenient habit of making you realize that she is exactly right, and that you would be all kinds of a fool if you didn’t take her advice. You feel that what she thinks to-day you will think to-morrow. “In Charlottetown I consulted a doctor. He punched and pounded me, and poked things at me and listened at the other end of them; and finally he said I must stop work ‘immejutly and to onct’ and hie me straightway to a climate not afflicted with the north-east winds of Prince Edward Island in the spring. I am not to be allowed to do any work until the fall. Such was his dictum and Mrs. Williamson enforces it.