Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 27, 1925 — page 146: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

& . P FZ, »,/ 7] 13 -_ y,/ ’ ar ou # o 5 ee 4 ae ’ 4 -~ az . 4 ( | N \ \ ! : ‘ — * ‘ coil \ - = NY RA : RN pose i A =) LD = Pa hg round By GORDON STILES HEN Roger Bassett entered Shef- WV field Scientific School, he was a tall, rather gangling youth just verging on his eighteenth birthday. To his fellow students he appeared as a some- wwhat reserved chap, a little too serious, per- haps, to whose forehead frown-lines leaped readily. It was known that he hailed from New York and that he roomed with Tom Ellis who was taking the academic course at New Haven. That was about all. Only Tom Ellis, who had lived on the same street as Roger and who had been his playmate and chum all his life, knew that the dominant influence in the forma- tion of Roger Bassett’s character had been the intense mutual hatred which had ex- isted between Roger’s father and mother. The son never knew what had been the origin of this hatred and his parents had died within ten months of each other during — year at prep. So he never would What did stand out in his mind was the recollection that, in the beginning, the ani- mosity appeared to be on his mother’s side only. Always from the earliest days he could remember, she had had a grievance. It may have taken different forms, but it was always there. As a child of seven OI eight years, be had been forced to the con- clusion that his father must be a very bad man; otherwise there would not be occasion for perpetual criticism on the part of his mother, He had felt this keenly because at first his father had seemed to him a delightful person—a genial, kindly soul. Wonderful, too. Wonderful and big and strong. Why, his father could do anything in the world he chose to do! Roger used to wone der why, at table or in the evenings, his mother found so much that was unpleasant to say to his father. Things that caused his father to grow silent and grave and to wear a worried look when he finally left the table or the room, 940 COMmica@oo S Co