“What’s the big idea?” I asked.  “Big idea is right, Harry,” he grinned.  “Just thought I would beat you to it.  Had a dickens of a time with Dan Clark, of the engineering department.  Told him I wanted to study philosophy.  The old boy put up a beautiful holler.  Couldn’t understand what an engineer would want with psychology or ethics.  Neither could I until I got to thinking last night when I went to roost.  Because a thing has never been done is no reason why it never will be; is it, Harry?”

“Certainly not.  I don’t know just what you are driving at.  Perhaps you intend to take your notes over to the machine shop and hammer out the Secret of the Absolute.”

He grinned.

“Pretty wise head at that, Harry.  What did you call it?  The Secret of the Absolute.  Will remember that.  I’m not much on phrases; but I’m sure the strong boy with the hammer.  You don’t object to my sitting here beside you; so that I, too, may drink in the little drops of wisdom?”

It was in this way that Hobart entered into the study of philosophy.  When the class was over and we were going down the steps he patted me on the shoulder.

“That’s not so bad, Harry.  Not so bad.  The old doctor is there; he’s got them going.  Likewise little Hobart has got a big idea.”

Now it happened that this was just about six weeks before Dr. Holcomb announced his great lecture on the Blind Spot.  It was not more than a week after registration.  In the time ensuing Fenton became just as great an enthusiast as myself.  His idea, of course, was chimerical and a blind; his main purpose was to get in with me where he could argue me out of my folly.

He wound up by being a convert of the professor.

Then came the great day.  The night of the announcement we had a long discussion.  It was a deep question.  For all of my faith in the professor I was hardly prepared for a thing like this.  Strange to say I was the sceptic; and stranger still, it was Hobart who took the side of the doctor.

“Why not?” he said.  “It merely comes down to this:  you grant that a thing is possible and then you deny the possibility of a proof—­ outside of your abstract.  That’s good paradox, Harry; but almighty poor logic.  If it is so it certainly can be proven.  There’s not one reason in the world why we can’t have something concrete.  The professor is right.  I am with him.  He’s the only professor in all the ages.”

Well, it turned out as it did.  It was a terrible blow to us all.  Most of the world took it as a great murder or an equally great case of abduction.  There were but few, even in the university, who embraced the side of the doctor.  It was a case of villainy, of a couple of remarkably clever rogues and a trusting scholar.

But there was one whose faith was not diminished.  He had been one of the last to come under the influence of the doctor.  He was practical and concrete, and not at all attuned to philosophy; he had not the training for deep dry thinking.  He would not recede one whit.  One day I caught him sitting down with his head between his hands.  I touched him on the shoulder.