The Mark of the Knife

came to Ridgley from half the states in the Union--from California and Ohio and the Carolinas and New York and New England--they came well-equipped and carried themselves with a manner that suggested the well-to-do homes they had left. Teeny-bits Holbrook was there because he had won the scholarship that under the terms of the endowment of the school was awarded each year to a public-school student who lived within the confines of Sherburne County. Fennimore Ridgley, whose coal mines had yielded the fortune with which he had founded the school on the hill above the village of Hamilton, had been born and bred in Sherburne County. He had long been lying in a peaceful grave with a tall granite shaft above it, but each year one of the boys of Sherburne County received a gift from him--the privilege of coming free of expense to Ridgley. For two years Teeny-bits had been going to the high school at Greensboro, covering the four miles on his bicycle morning and afternoon. Then the unbelievable had happened: he had w