“I thought then I was finished with the business but as a matter of fact I was just starting on it.  Somebody turned state’s evidence.  I imagine it was Delany though I don’t know.  Anyhow somebody wrote the president an anonymous letter telling him there was a lot of gambling going on and I was one of the worst offenders, and thoughtfully suggested the old boy should ask me how much I made the other night and what I did with it.  Of course that finished me off.  I was called before the board and put through a holy inquisition.  Gee!  They piled up not only the gambling business but all the other things I’d done and left undone for two years and a half and dumped the whole avalanche on my head at once.  Whew!  It was fierce.  I am not saying I didn’t deserve it.  I did, if not for this particular thing for a million other times when I’ve gone scot-free.

“They tried to squeeze out of me who the other men involved were but I wouldn’t tell.  I could have had a neat little come back on Delany if I had chosen but I don’t play the game that way and I reckon he knew it and banked on my holding my tongue.  I’d rather stand alone and take what was coming to me and I got it too good and plenty.  They tried to make me tell what I did with the money.  That riled me.  It was none of their business and I told ’em so.  Anyway I couldn’t have told even if it would have done me any good on Madeline’s account.  I wouldn’t drag her into it.

“Finally they dismissed me and said they would let me know later what they would do about my case.  But there wasn’t any doubt in my mind what they were going to do nor in theirs either, I’ll bet.  I was damned.  They had to fire me—­couldn’t help it when I was caught with the goods under their very noses.  I think a good many of them wished I hadn’t been caught, that they could have let me off some way, particularly Prof.  Hathaway.  He put out his hand and patted my shoulder when I went out and I knew he was mighty sorry.  He has been awfully decent to me always especially since I have been playing round with his daughter Elsie this fall and I guess it made him feel bad to have me turn out such a black sheep.  I wished I could tell him the whole story but I couldn’t.  I just had to let him think it was as bad as it looked.

“I had hardly gotten back into the Frat house when I was called to the telephone.  It was Madeline.  She thanked me for sending her the money but said she was sending the check back as she didn’t need it, had found a way out of her difficulties.  She was going on a long, long journey in fact, and wouldn’t see me again.  Said she wanted to say good-by and wish me all kinds of luck and thank me for what she was pleased to call my goodness to her.  And then she hung up before I could ask any questions or get it through my head what she meant by her long, long journey.  My brain wasn’t working very lively after what I’d been through over there at the board meeting anyway and I was too wrapped up in my own troubles to bother much about hers at the moment, selfish brute that I am.