There was one son, strong, bright, eager, and by dint of driving his eternally wearied brain overtime, the father had been able to send him to Yale, his own alma mater.  More or less pious deception had led young Ernest Seeley to believe that his father had regained much of his old-time prestige with the Chronicle and that he had a hand in guiding its editorial destinies.  The lad was a Freshman, tremendously absorbed in the activities of the autumn term, and his father was content that he should be so hedged about by the interests of the campus world as to have small time or thought for the grizzled, taciturn toiler in New York.

This was the kind of man that trudged heavily into the little German cafe of an early morning after his long night’s slavery at the copy-desk.  His mind, embittered and sensitive to slights like a raw nerve, was brooding over the open taunt of the night city editor, who had been an office boy under him in the years gone by.  From force of habit he seated himself at a table in the rear of the room, shunning the chance of having to face an acquaintance.  Unfolding a copy of the city edition, which had been laid on his desk damp from the press-room, Seeley scanned the front page with scowling uneasiness, as if fearing to find some blunder of his own handiwork.  Then he turned to the sporting page and began to read the football news.

His son Ernest had been playing as a substitute with the university eleven, an achievement which stirred the father’s pride without moving his enthusiasm.  And the boy, chilled by his father’s indifference, had said little about it during his infrequent visits to New York.  But now the elder Seeley sat erect, and his stolid countenance was almost animated as he read, under a New Haven date line: 

“The Yale confidence of winning the game with Princeton to-morrow has been shattered, and gloom enshrouds the camp of the Elis to-night.  Collins, the great full-back, who has been the key-stone of Yale’s offensive game, was taken to the infirmary late this afternoon.  He complained of feeling ill after the signal practice yesterday; fever developed overnight, and the consulting physicians decided that he must be operated on for appendicitis without delay.  His place in the Princeton game will be filled by Ernest Seeley, the Freshman, who has been playing a phenomenal game in the back-field, but who is so lacking in experience that the coaches are all at sea to-night.  The loss of Collins has swung the betting around to even money instead of 5 to 3 on Yale.”

The elder Seeley wiped his glasses as if not sure that he had read aright.

Ernest had seemed to him no more than a sturdy infant and here he was, on the eve of a championship football battle, picked to fight for the “old blue.”  The father’s career at Yale had been a most honorable one.  He, too, had played on the eleven and had helped to win two desperate contests against Princeton.  But all this belonged to a part of his life which was dead and done for.  He had not achieved in after years what Yale expected of him, and his record there was with his buried memories.