The picture of the Reverend Valerian Harassan, which was posted on the bulletin-board, gave promise of a realization of the hopes which the good doctor had raised. It showed a man in evening clothes, impressively massive, with a clean-shaven face and Roman features, a broad, low forehead from which the hair rolled back in glistening black folds, curling around his ears to the line of his collar. The deep-set eyes seemed to look out from a mind packed with knowledge, and the firmly set mouth to hold in check a voice of marvellous power for eloquence.
In high spirits I went one evening to hear this eastern philosopher. It was cold and raining, but in those days the worst of weather could cast no shadow over me. It was a pleasure even to battle with the elements with no other weapon than an umbrella, and multiplied a hundred-fold was that pleasure when with that weapon I was battling also for Gladys Todd. Though as yet I had said nothing to her of my cherished hope, I know that when we stepped out together into the night, we both believed that we should face many another storm under the same umbrella. I was conscious that she clung more closely than usual to my arm, and, with spirits keyed high with the sense of protecting her, my feet hardly touched the dripping pavement which led from the doctor's house to the college building and the chapel. We said little on the way. We had long since passed the point where idle chatter is needed in communing. I remember that I did ruminate pleasantly on my good fortune in having found this sympathetic spirit to share with me the intellectual pleasure of a scholarly discourse, whose heart could beat quicker in time with mine at the inspiration of some fine thought. I remember that she broke the current of these meditations to ask if I had decided to make Harlansburg my home after my approaching graduation. She asked it with a tone of deep personal interest. At that moment I should have proposed to Gladys Todd had not the wind been tugging at the umbrella, and had we not come from the shadow of the trees into the glare of the college lights. So I answered affirmatively. Of course I should remain in Harlansburg. At that moment my resolution was fixed unalterably, if only for the sake of Gladys Todd; and if I had settled in my mind that I should walk in the way of Judge Bundy till, like him, I dominated the town and the county and my name was known in the farthest corners of the State, that, too, would be for the sake of this gentle, clinging girl whose nearness to me made my umbrella seem like the sheltering roof of home. But in this calculation I left out of my equation one important element--the throat of the Reverend Valerian Harassan.