Instantly Opdyke flung up his head and relaxed the pressure of his hand. "Then--last call for science!" he said, with a carelessness which did not quite ring true. "Your mother is worth the sacrifice, Brenton. I saw that for myself, to-night." It was not until they were settled at an initial-hacked table in the smoke-thick air of Mory's that either of them spoke again. Then it was Opdyke who broke the silence. "Who's the girl, Brenton? Your Book of Chronicles hasn't mentioned her, so far as I know." "She's----" Scott hesitated, a little at a loss as to the proper way of cataloguing Catie. Opdyke nodded at the hesitation. "Ja. I comprehend. Well, she's a pretty thing, and she knows her good points," he answered. "That counts a lot, too, in a girl like that." Scott turned on him a little bit pugnaciously, the more so by reason of his own doubts of an hour before. "Like what?" he queried curtly. However, Opdyke had no idea of being betrayed into any indiscretion. "Like her," he made tranquil answer, and then he bent above his glass of beer and blew aside the froth. "She is sure to arrive," he went on, after a minute. "The only thing I question is whether you may not have to hustle a good deal, to keep up with her. You're a born student, Brenton, and a sanctimonious grind. Nevertheless, when it comes to the worldly question of arriving, you're a confoundedly lazy lubber, and I suspect you always will be." Commencement over, and the intervening summer, Scott Brenton set himself to work to try to prove the falsity of Opdyke's words, by way of the divinity school. Moreover, as in the case of Opdyke, although in a wholly different sense, the parental plans for Scott had slipped a cog. He also left the university behind him, and went elsewhere in search of his professional degree. The change of plan, however, did not achieve itself without some tears and many lamentations upon the part of Mrs. Brenton. In carrying out her wishes that Scott should preach the gospel to the heathen, it never had occurred to her that he could preach any but the most azure forms of ultra-Calvinism. A sudden fading in the dye of his theology well-nigh destroyed all of her pleasure in his preaching. The change in tint had come, to all appearing, during the summer that had followed his bachelor's degree. How far, however, the stability of the dyes had been affected by Scott's previous experiments in Professor Mansfield's laboratory, it would be hard to say. It is quite within the limits of scientific possibility that certain chemical changes might have been taking place for many months, changes so slight and so slow as to have escaped the notice of Scott or any of his friends who chanced to feel an interest in the soundness of his theology. Doubtless the change was there, potential, its elements held in suspension and only waiting for the final molecule to arrive and start precipitation.