"I thought it would cut him horribly," he was thinking. "And he's taking it as if he had only a friendly interest." Scarborough's face was again behind the newspaper. When he had finished it he sauntered toward the door. He paused there to glance idly at the titles of the top row in the book-case. Pierson was watching him. "No--it's all right," he concluded. Scarborough was too straight and calm just to have received such a blow as that news would have been had HE cared for Pauline. Pierson liked his look better than ever before--the tall, powerful figure; the fair hair growing above his wide and lofty brow, with the one defiant lock; and in his aquiline nose and blue-gray eyes and almost perfect mouth and chin the stamp of one who would move forward irresistibly, moving others to his will. "How old are you, Scarborough?" he asked. "Twenty-three-nearly twenty-four. I ought to be ashamed to be only a freshman, oughtn't I?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm tired of it all." And he strolled out. He avoided Pierson and Olivia and all his friends for several days, went much into the woods alone, took long walks at night. Olivia would have it that he had been hard hit, and almost convinced Pierson. "He's the sort of person that suffers the most," she said. "I've a brother like him--won't have sympathy, keeps a wound covered up so that it can't heal." "But what shall I do for him?" asked Pierson. "Don't do anything--he'd hate you if you did." After a week or ten days he called on Pierson and, seating himself at the table, began to shuffle a pack of cards. He looked tired. "I never saw cards until I was fifteen," he said. "At home they thought them one of the devil's worst devices--we had a real devil in our house." "So did we," said Pierson. "But not a rip-snorter like ours--they don't have him in cities, or even in towns, any more. I've seen ours lots of times after the lights were out--saw him long after I'd convinced myself in daylight that he didn't exist. But I never saw him so close as the night of the day I learned to play casino." "Did you learn in the stable?" asked Pierson. "That's where I learned, and mother slipped up behind me--I didn't know what was coming till I saw the look in the other boy's face. Then--" Pierson left the rest to imagination. "I learned in the hay-loft--my sister and my cousin Ed and I. One of the farm-hands taught us. The cards were so stained we could hardly see the faces. That made them look the more devilish. And a thunder-storm came up and the lightning struck a tree a few rods from the barn." "Horrible!" exclaimed Pierson. "I'll bet you fell to praying."