I think a darn sight more of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal nerve to pretend I scored fifty!" Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus, gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see.

Since that morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater College.

They were retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly, cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college politics to suspect.

He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no longer would teach.

The college he had served for thirty years-since it consisted of two brick buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no longer needed him.