Chester telephoned, asking to see me. He came in looking thinner than I had ever seen him. "Do you know," said he, "that this case old Middlekauff's got plugged up comes off this morning?" "Having been summonsed by writ of subpoena," said I severely, "I am aware that your wilfulness in placing an untried importation in charge of our school, regardless of her unfitness, or of my political well-being, is this morning bearing its legitimate fruit in the hearing which comes _on_--not _off_! And I hope your lack of consideration for the welfare of the school system, so largely wrapped up in my career, will--" That Chester was temporarily insane is clear. He flew at me, seized my trachea in his iron hands, compressed it so as greatly to impede respiration, and knocked my head against the wall, using incoherently certain technical terms he had learned at Ames. "Shut up!" he cried. "You duplex--polyphase--automatic--back-action--compound-wound--multipolar _Ass_! Shut up!" An anatomical chart on the wall preserved my head, and I retained my self-possession. When he let me down I took my station on the other side of a table and looked him in the eye, strongly willing that he quiet down. "Forgive me, Oc," said he humbly, "I promised myself eight years ago not to lick you any more! Pardon me." I forgave him, and we have ever since remained reconciled. He explained that he wanted to consult as to methods of concealing from Miss Frayn the nature of the suit. "Am I to understand," said I, "that she does not know that the relief sought is her expulsion from the school?" "Of course she don't!" replied Chester. "Do you think I'd let her know? She thinks everybody loves her. Nobody ever dared tell her anything else, either here or down where she was raised. The boys down there always were in love with her. She don't see anything strange in it--and there isn't." "A change," said I, "would be wholesome for her." "She wouldn't know what to do," replied Chester. "And if she were to hear these charges--against herself! Why, I don't know what she might not do! She'd be absolutely desperate. She'd think she had no one to defend her--and you know the Frayn way." "I shall not endeavor," said I, after consideration, "to reconcile medieval notions of honor and personal dignity with proceedings under the Iowa Code. Neither do I feel it prudent for me to see this person." For a few minutes Chester sat grinding his teeth and gripping the desk, and then rushed from the office calling me a white-livered dub, and telling me to go plumb to some place the name of which was cut off by the door's slamming. I sat in the office feeling a sense of unrest, until the time for going to court, where I found Judge Worthington on the bench, Chester sitting at the defendant's table, and no Miss Frayn. "Are both sides ready in the next case?" asked the judge, without looking at the calendar.