Perhaps this was due in part to his memory of that prostrate figure on the sofa in the hall. It was a picture that he could not forget,--the relaxed muscles, the pallid face, the disordered hair, the glassy, half-closed eyes, the wreck and ruin of young manhood stretched prostrate in his father’s hall. It was pitiable, it was dreadful--the sight of death would have been less terrible. Day and night this image was before Parmenter’s eyes. Go where he would he could not escape it. It followed him relentlessly. It hung about him as persistently and ceaselessly as his own shadow. It blotted out all thought of anger or revenge toward Charley Lee; it brought with it only patience, pity, a desire to help, and a great longing to be reconciled. Before he quite knew it himself, Parmenter was sighing for the old companionship, looking forward impatiently to the days when, with the kindly help of each other, they would both be themselves again; waiting with feverish anxiety for an opportunity to get back on the old fair footing with Charley Lee. CHAPTER VI. ALMOST A TRAGEDY. Charley Lee had not been seen in public since the day when his intoxication had been so terribly exposed by Van Loan. Some of the students said that he was ashamed to show himself; others that his father was keeping him prisoner. But after a little while the truth came out, and all the college knew that he was ill, and could not go out. The reaction from his fit of inebriety had been a severe shock to a system not especially strong, and the disgrace which had fallen on him preyed sharply on his mind. He suffered a kind of nervous prostration, followed by a low fever, and his strength gave way rapidly. Parmenter was stricken with grief and remorse. His old friend’s illness swept away the last vestige of his resentment. In all that had passed between them, Parmenter came to recognize no unfriendly acts but his own, no unkind words save those which he himself had spoken. He kept himself informed of Charley’s condition through his friends; and at last, finding that the sick man was not likely to be able to leave his room until after Commencement, he sat down one day and wrote him this letter: “FRIDAY AFTERNOON. “DEAR CHARLEY,--I feel that I have been a brute, and I want to apologize. I also have some beggarly excuses for my conduct which I would like to tell to you personally, if I may call and see you. May I come, and when?--Fraternally, PARMENTER.” He dispatched this message by the janitor’s boy, and paced the floor of his room in a fever of anxiety until the answer came. When the boy returned with the letter, he snatched it from his grasp, and tore open the envelope as a starving man would break a crust of bread. The message ran: