“I know what I’m going to do,” said Mott glibly.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going home.  Of course, the governor won’t believe me at first when I tell him why I’ve returned to the ancestral abode, but you may rest easy when he sees it in the papers, then he’ll believe it all right enough.  Fine to have your daddy believe a lying newspaper before he takes the word of his own offspring, isn’t it?”

“May not be all his fault.”

“Yes, it is.  I’d have been as decent a fellow as you or any fellow in college if I’d been treated halfway decently.  But I wasn’t.”

Will had his own ideas as to that, but he did not express them, for the full sense of the calamity of the college was now strongly upon him.  Even the shadows of the great hills seemed to him to be more sombre than usual, and in whichever direction he looked there was an outer gloom corresponding to the one within.  In the first shock of the report a nameless fear swept over him, and already he was positive that in his own case he could discover certain symptoms that were the forerunners of the dreaded disease.  He hastily bade Mott good-night and ran all the way back to his room.

Foster was already there, and at once he exclaimed: 

“Foster, have you heard about it?”

“The typhoid?”

“Yes.  They say Peter John and Wagner and six others are down with it.”

“It’s true.”

“What’s going to be done?”

“You mean what the college is going to do or what we’re to do?”

“Yes, that’s it.  Both.”

“I’ve telephoned home,” said Foster quietly.

“You have?”

“Yes.  I have just come back from the office.”

“Did you telephone my father?”

“No.  I telephoned my father and told him to ring up your house.”

“And did he?”

“Of course he did.”

“Did you hear anything—­I mean—­”

“Now, look here, Will,” said Foster quietly.  “Don’t get rattled.  I know it’s bad, but there isn’t any use in losing your head over it.  I’ve been down to see the dean and have talked it over with him.”

“What did he have to say?”

“He said the report was true and the eight fellows were all down with the typhoid, and that every one of them had been taken to the infirmary.”

“What else?” demanded Will, his excitement increasing in spite of his effort to be calm.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll give me half a chance.  He said the president had sent for the best experts in the country, and that everything that it was possible to do would be done.  He said too, that they would deal absolutely squarely with the boys, and if it was discovered that there was the least danger of it spreading they would tell us, and if necessary they’d close for a while till the whole thing had been ferreted out.”

“That’s square.”

“Of course it is.”