As a matter of course, the search began in the outer laboratory where, in all probability, the professor had been hindered by a student grappling either with conscience or a condition, perhaps, indeed, with both combined. Such things had happened more than once in Brenton's experience of the department. The fact that it was a girls' college, though, made the earlier alternative more probable than was the later one. Brenton smiled a little, as he thanked his lucky stars that it was not the custom of the college girls to haunt their spiritual pilots as insistently as some of them haunted their mental ones. Smiling still, he doffed his hat before the dozen girls in the outer laboratory, while he looked about him. Professor Opdyke was not there. After an instant's hesitation, Brenton crossed the intervening strip of floor and tapped upon the door leading to the private laboratory beyond. "Come in." The voice was more than a trifle husky; and the professor's chair was carefully planted with its high back to the light. The professor was in the chair, and bent above the table which, Brenton's quick eye noted, was bare of anything that looked like work. As Brenton's face appeared in the doorway, Professor Opdyke looked up at him in a vague uncertainty which all at once changed to a guilty recognition. "Brenton! I quite forgot. I'm very sorry," he said; but his voice lacked all resonance. "The fact is, I've had news from Reed." "Bad?" The curt monosyllable was kinder than many words. The professor nodded. "There's been an accident." "He's not--" Brenton faltered at the grisly word, not so much in mercy to the father, seated there before him, as because the old-time love for that father's son seemed to rise up and catch him by the throat and strangle him. The Professor gave a long, shuddering sigh, the sigh of a woman verging on hysterics. "No; not that--yet. They'll wire again, to-night, they tell me." "When did you hear?" "Just now. An hour ago. His mother doesn't know it yet. Brenton, I've got to tell her." And the professor turned a wan, appealing face up to the younger man, as though in search of help. "Yes." The single word fell heavily. "You must." But Brenton, even while he was speaking, shut his teeth upon the thought. Then the priest within him rallied to the need, although the latent man of science in him forbade him to accompany the rallying with many words. "Can I be of any help?" "If you feel you could go to the house with me, Brenton. You knew Reed." Brenton's alert ear caught the unconscious change of tense. He interrupted with a question. "Just how bad is it?"