I leaned forward quickly, picked up the discarded paper and thrust it under my elbow on the table.
Oliver was alone. I shall always remember how he looked on that spring evening as he swung along, overcoat open and flapping in the wind, head held high and brow smooth and cloudless. His step was as sure and firm as when he joined us all after he had received his diploma on his graduation day at college. My heart went out to him—poor Oliver always getting into trouble, gifted and talented in a way (he can sing like an angel) awfully good-looking and lovable (he has friends everywhere), poor Oliver—what would become of him? I heard his step on the veranda, and a minute later he was standing, six feet high, smiling and confident in the door of the library. There is something irresistible about Oliver's smile. If he had only looked at me I should have smiled back, but his eyes rested on Tom.
"Hello, everybody!" he said. "Hello, Tom! Mighty good of you to come way on East. Well, well," he glanced swiftly around the room, "all here, aren't you?" Then he added, "Well, what do you think?"
"Seen the paper?" inquired Tom.
"Is it in the paper?" asked Oliver, and Malcolm pulled the horrible thing from beneath my elbow and thrust it into Oliver's hands. I watched Oliver closely. I saw the slow, dark colour spread over his face and across that cloudless brow of his. I saw his eyes travel once through the article and then go back and retrace each painful word of it again. When
