“And the students, generally?” Dr. Fenneben questioned.
“Mr. Trench will be back,” Elinor exclaimed, “and folks have just found out that it's old Trench who's keeping that crippled boy in school, the one they call 'Limpy.' Trench rustles jobs for him and divides his own income for college expenses with the boy for the rest of the cost. I don't know how the story got out, but I asked him about it when he was up here to see you. He just grinned and drawled lazily, 'I can save a little on shoe leather, that some fellows wear out hurrying so, and I don't burst up so many hats with a swelled head as some do. So I keep a little extra change on these accounts. We're going down to Oklahoma when we graduate. Limpy's going to be a Methodist preacher and I a stockman. I'll keep him in raw material for converts out of the cowboys I'll have to handle.' Isn't old Trenchy a hero? He says Dean Funnybone showed him how to think about somebody else beside Trench a little bit.”
“Oh, yes; Trench is a hero and I've known about that whole thing for a long while,” the Dean asserted. “And Victor Burleigh?”
A shadow in the beautiful dark eyes, a half-tone lowering of the voice, and a general indifference of manner, as Elinor answered:
“I'm sure I don't know anything about him, except that he's coming back next year.”
Dr. Fenneben read the whole story in the words and manner of the answer, and he smiled grimly as he thought of Burgess and of the conflict of Wream against Wream if Elinor and his brother Joshua ever came to the clash of arms. But he was too weak now to direct matters.
And meantime, while Lagonda Ledge was holding its breath in anxiety and dread, and all the churches were joining in union prayer service for the life of their beloved Dean Fenneben, and the college year was ending in a halting between hope and dread—meantime, the same queries of Dr. Fenneben as to motives were also queries in Professor Burgess' mind.
To the school and the town Dr. Fenneben's recovery was the only thing asked for. There was as yet no clew regarding the cause of the assault. Bond Saxon had avoided Burgess since the event, so the young man himself made occasion to get Bond up into Dr. Fenneben's study one June day just before commencement.
“Saxon,” he said gravely, “you are a man of sense, and you know that there's something wrong about this Fenneben assault. You've put up some smooth stories about our happening to be out at the bend of the river that night, so I guess suspicion will be turned from us all right when Lagonda Ledge gets time to think about causes; but I must be let into the truth now.” Burgess was adamant now.
For a little while the old man looked away through the study window at the prairie empire to be found for the looking.