One night after leaving Pauline he went to play poker in Charley Braddock's rooms. Braddock, only son of the richest banker in Saint X, had furnished the loft of his father's stable as bachelor quarters and entertained his friends there without fear that the noise would break the sleep and rouse the suspicions of his father. That night, besides Braddock and Dumont, there were Jim Cauldwell and his brother Will. As they played they drank; and Dumont, winning steadily, became offensive in his raillery. There was a quarrel, a fight; Will Cauldwell, accidently toppled down a steep stairway by Dumont, was picked up with a broken arm and leg. By noon the next day the town was boiling with this outbreak of deviltry in the leading young men, the sons and prospective successors of the "bulwarks of religion and morality." The Episcopalian and Methodist ministers preached against Dumont, that "importer of Satan's ways into our peaceful midst," and against Charley Braddock with his "ante-room to Sheol"--the Reverend Sweetser had just learned the distinction between Sheol and Hades. The Presbyterian preacher wrestled spiritually with Will Cauldwell and so wrought upon his depression that he gave out a solemn statement of confession, remorse and reform. In painting himself in dark colors he painted Jack Dumont jet black. Pauline had known that Dumont was "lively"--he was far too proud of his wild oats wholly to conceal them from her. And she had all the tolerance and fascinated admiration of feminine youth for the friskiness of masculine freedom. Thus, though she did not precisely approve what he and his friends had done, she took no such serious view of it as did her parents and his. The most she could do with her father was to persuade him to suspend sentence pending the conclusion of an investigation into Jack's doings at the University of Michigan and in Detroit. Colonel Gardiner was not so narrow or so severe as Jack said or as Pauline thought. He loved his daughter; so he inquired thoroughly. He knew that his daughter loved Dumont; so he judged liberally. When he had done he ordered the engagement broken and forbade Dumont the house. "He is not wild merely; he is--worse than you can imagine," said the colonel to his wife, in concluding his account of his discoveries and of Dumont's evasive and reluctant admissions--an account so carefully expurgated that it completely misled her. "Tell Pauline as much as you can--enough to convince her."