“Folks in love will do all sorts of things. She's gone on that young Sawyer, and she only started in on the thing so she could have a chance to traipse around the country with him. He'll come back here for her some day, and her market'll be made. All I hope is that he'll take her to Boston, or some other foreign place to live an' we shall see and hear the last of 'em.”
CHAPTER XXI. — AT HARVARD
The newspapers gave much space to the near approach to miscarriage of justice in the Wood's case, and many editorials were written on the fallacy of allowing circumstantial evidence to carry as much weight as it did. But what was spoken of most was the clever detective work of Mary Dana. She was the recipient of congratulatory letters for her work from all parts of the country, and the press could not say too much in her praise.
Mary received a most flattering offer to join the Isburn Detective Bureau in Boston. Mr. Irving Isburn, the proprietor of the world-wide known agency, had for more than fifty years been engaged in solving mysteries and apprehending offenders against the law. His success had been phenomenal, and if his agency had been called “The Scotland Yard of America” it would have been a derogation rather than a compliment. He had surrounded himself with the most expert men and women in the profession, and in a letter to Mr. Dana he said he considered Miss Dana would be a most important and valuable acquisition to his staff. Mr. Dana, however, decided that Mary was too young to start business life, so she was sent to Boston to boarding school for a year. At the expiration of that time she joined Mr. Is burn's staff, and soon that gentleman wrote her father that in certain lines of investigation she was unexcelled.
With the coming of autumn, after Bob Wood's release, Quincy and Tom started in on their four years at Harvard. They had passed their entrance examinations without conditions, so the few days in the last of September, spent so anxiously by many of the freshman class in trying to make up conditions given them the spring before, allowed Quincy and Tom to live in Arcady until the portals of the temple of learning were ajar. Rooms were engaged at Beck Hall, and the young men began their inspection of the classic city on the Charles.
“This city is on the square,” remarked Tom. “Lafayette, Central, Putnam, Harvard, Brattle, and some more on the East side I suppose.”
“The college is on the square too,” said Quincy, “as long as Dr. Eliot is Prexie.”
College life has been depicted many times in books, and Quincy and Tom's four years probably contained few events that had not had their counterparts in the lives of other young Harvard men. They joined many clubs and societies the initiation ceremonies being, in reality, a mild form of hazing.