As he crawled to the bare, unsympathetic chapel, the morning after spying on the faculty-room, Carl looked restlessly to the open fields, sniffed at the scent of burning leaves, watched a thin stream of blackbirds in the windy sky. He sat on the edge of a pew, nervously jiggling his crossed legs. During the prayer and hymns a spontaneously born rumor that there would be something sensational in President Wood's announcements went through the student body. The president, as he gave out the hymns, did not look at the students, but sadly smoothed the neat green cloth on the reading-stand. His prayer, timid, sincere, was for guidance to comprehend the will of the Lord. Carl felt sorry for him. "Poor man 's fussed. Ought to be! I'd be, too, if I tried to stop a ten-inch gun like Frazer.... He's singing hard.... Announcements, now.... What's he waiting for? Jiminy! I wish he'd spring it and get it over.... Suppose he said something about last night--me----" President Wood stood silent. His glance drifted from row to row of students. They moved uneasily. Then his dry, precise voice declaimed: "My friends, I have an unpleasant duty to perform this morning, but I have sought guidance in prayer, and I hope----" Carl was agonizing: "He does know it's me! He'll ball me out and fire me publicly!... Sit tight, Ericson; hold y' nerve; think of good old Turk." Carl was not a hero. He was frightened. In a moment now all the eyes in the room would be unwinkingly focused on him. He hated this place of crowding, curious young people and drab text-hung walls. In the last row he noted the pew in which Professor Frazer sat (infrequently). He could fancy Frazer there, pale and stern. "I'm glad I spied on 'em. Might have been able to put Frazer wise to something definite if I could just have overheard 'em." President Wood was mincing on: "----and so, my friends, I hope that in devotion to the ideals of the Baptist Church we shall strive ever onward and upward in even our smallest daily concerns, _per aspera ad astra_, not in a spirit of materialism and modern unrest, but in a spirit of duty.