"Dear me," said a low, mocking voice with a curious rising and falling infection, "who's here? Another delegate to this congress of scintillating intelligences?"

"Yes, sir," said Dink in a whisper.

"Quite a valuable addition, I hope. Yes? What is the name?"

"John."

"Well—well?"

"John Humperdink Stover," said Dink with difficulty.

"Ah, yes, Stover: the name is familiar—very familiar," said The Roman, with a twitch to his lip and a sudden jump of the eyebrow. "Haven't we met before?"

Dink, suffocating, nodded. The class, at a loss, turned from one to the other, watching for the cue.

"Well, Stover, come a little nearer. Take the seat between Stone and Straus. Straus will be better able to take his little morning nap. A little embarrassed, Stover? Dear me! I shouldn't have thought that of you. Sit down now and—try to put a little ginger into the class, Stover."

Dink looked down and blushed until it seemed as though his hair would catch on fire. The class, perceiving only that there was a point for laughter, burst into roars.

"There—there," said The Roman, stilling the storm with one finger. "Just a little joke between us two; just a little confidential joke. Now for a bee-ootiful recitation. Splendid spring weather—yesterday was a cut; of course you all took the hour to study conscientiously—eager for knowledge. Fifth and sixth rows go to the board."

While The Roman's modulated accents doled out conjugations and declensions Stover sat, without a thought in his head, his hands locked, staring out at the green and yellow necktie that rose on Pebble Stone's collar.

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" he said at last. "Dished! Spinked! He'll flunk me every day. I certainly am in wrong!"

He raised his eyes at the enthroned Natural Enemy and mentally threw down the gage of battle with a hopeless, despairing feeling of the three years' daily conflict that was to come. For, of course, now there could be no question of The Roman's mortal and unsparing enmity. But after the first paralyzing shock Dink recovered himself. It was war, but the war he loved—the war of wits.

The Roman, having flunked a dozen by this time, had Channing, the Coffee-colored Angel, on his feet, on delicate matters of syntax.

"Top of page, third word, Channing—gerund or gerundive?" said The Roman.

"Gerund, sir."

"Too bad!" said The Roman musically, and on a lower octave repeated: "Too bad! Third line, fifth word—gerund or gerundive?"

"Gerund, sir," said the Coffee-colored Angel with more conviction.

"No luck, Channing, no luck. Tenth line, last word—gerund, Channing, or gerundive?"

"Gerund-ive," said the Coffee-colored Angel hesitatingly.

"Poor Channing, he didn't stick to his system. The laws of probability, Channing——"

"I meant gerund," said the Coffee-colored Angel hastily.

"Dear me! Really, Channing?"

"Yes, sir."

"Positive?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"It was the gerundive, Channing."

The Coffee-colored Angel abruptly sat down.

"Don't want to speculate any more, Channing?"

"No, sir."

"No feeling of confidence—no luck to-day? Try the gerundive to-morrow."

The discouraged began to return from the boards, having writ in water. The Roman, without malice, passed over the rows and, from flunking them individually, mowed them down in sections.

"Anything from the Davis House to-day? No, no? Anything from the Rouse House combination? Nothing at all? Anything from the Jackson twins? Alas! How about the D's this morning? Davis, Dark, Denton, Deer, Dickson, nothing from the D's. Let's try the F's. Farr, Fenton, Foster, Francis, Finch? Nothing from the F's—nothing from the D F's! Nothing at all?"

Dink burst into laughter, and laughed alone. The Roman stopped. Every one looked surprised.

"Ah, Stover has been coached—well coached," said The Roman. "But, Stover, this is not the place to laugh. The D F's are not a joke; they are painful, every day facts. Well, well, it has been a beautiful recitation in the review—not exceptional, not exceptional at all. Has any one the advance? Don't all rise at once. Strange what trying weather it is—too sunny, not enough rain—every one rises exhausted. Will Macnooder kindly lead the massacre?"

Macnooder disdained to rise; one or two faltered and tripped along for brief spaces, and then sat down. The Roman, counting his dead, hesitated and called:

"Stover."

"Me, sir?" said Dink, too astonished to rise. "Why, I'm unprepared, sir."

"Unprepared?" said The Roman with a wicked smile. "I never thought you would be unprepared, Stover."

The smile decided Stover.

"I'll try, sir," he said.

"Very kind of you, Stover."

Dink rose slowly, put the book on his desk, tightened his belt, buttoned his coat and took up the prosy records of Caesar. Pebble Stone showed him the place. He straightened up and, glancing at the first line, saw:

"Ubi eo ventum est, Caesar initio orationis ..."

"Caesar," began Dink in a firm voice.

"Excellent!" said The Roman.

"Caesar, wherever the wind blew him, initiated the orators ..." Dink continued smoothly, after a rapid glance.

The Roman, from a listless attitude, gripped the desk, pivoted clear on one leg of his chair, staring at the familiar text as though it had suddenly taken on life and begun to crawl about the page.

Dink, resolved not to be bested, gravely and fluently continued to glide on, without pause or hitch, turning syllables into words, building sentences wherever he met an acquaintance. On and on he went, glib and eloquent, weaving out of the tangled text a picture that gradually, freeing itself from the early restraints, painted in vivid detail a spirited conference between Caesar and the German envoys. The class, amazed, resorted to their books; many of the unprepared, quite convinced, stared at him as though a new rival to the high markers had suddenly appeared.

The Roman, fascinated, never quitted the text, marveling as the tale ran on, leaping adverbs and conjunctions, avoiding whole phrases, undismayed by the rise of sudden, hostile nouns, impressing into service whatever suited it, corrupting or beating down all obstacles.

Once or twice he twitched spasmodically, twice he switched the leg of his chair, murmuring all the while to himself. Finally he rose and, slowly approaching to where Stover stood, glanced incredulously at his book.

"Shall I stop, sir?" said Stover.

"Heaven forbid!"

Stover completed the page with a graphic, rushing account of the athletic exercises of the ancient Germans, and sat down without a smile.

The Roman, back at his post, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and spoke:

"Very well run, indeed, Stover; excellently well run. Take your breath. Very fluent, very vivid, very persuasive—a trifle free, a trifle—but, on the whole, a very creditable performance. Very! I was sure, whatever you did, Stover, you wouldn't bore us. Now, let us see how the same passage will appeal to a more prosaic, less richly-endowed mind."

Then Red Dog rose and, unfeelingly, brought the scene back to Rome and the deliberations of the Senate.

But this was a detail that did not interest Dink in the least. He had clashed with The Roman and not retreated. He had his first moment of triumph, attested by the admiring glances of the class and the muffled whisper of Straus, saying:

"Gee, you're a peach!"

The session ended with a solemn warning from The Roman.

"One word," he said in his deepest tones, "just one word to the wise. We have journeyed together for two whole terms; there is only one more between you and reassignment. Candor compels me to say that you have acquired not even a flunking knowledge." He turned and raked the awed ranks with the sweep of a pivot gun, and then took up again in cutting, chilling, spaced syllables: "I have, in the course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You may go."

And Stover, who had brazenly planned to remain and converse, went swiftly out with the rest, little imagining that he whom he had ranked as a deadly, unforgiving foe sat a long while chuckling over the marvelous route Dink had gone, murmuring gratefully to himself:

"Wherever the wind blew him, Caesar initiated the orators."



VIII

In the hallway the Coffee-colored Angel jabbed him with his elbow, muttering:

"You laughed at me, you miserable Rinky Dink. I'll fix you for that."

He disappeared swiftly. Before Dink could frame a reply he was surrounded by an admiring chorus. The Tennessee Shad and Macnooder shook hands with ceremony.

"You'll do," said the Tennessee Shad.

"You certainly will!" said Doc Macnooder.

"You've made a hit with Lucius Cassius," said the Tennessee Shad.

Dink shook his head; he knew better.

"You must always recite—always," said Doc Macnooder, from his great knowledge of the nature of masters. "Whether you're prepared or not—recite."

"I will," said Dink.

"And say, Dink," said Macnooder, "keep that outfit we sold you. There'll be more hayseeds in the fall."

Dink had thought of that; he had thought of something else, too, which he craftily hid in his own memory.

"Next fall I'll show them a thing or two," he said gleefully. "I'll make souvenir crockery sets the rage."

The Coffee-colored Angel and the petty annoyances of the Green House forgot, he went with a hitch and a kick, loping along, while his delicately-balanced imagination, now soaring above the gloomy descents of the morning, swam joyfully in the realms of future triumphs.

In this abstracted mood he passed Foundation's gloomy portals and Laloo standing in his door gazing down the road, and took the leafy path that led to the Green.

All at once he heard a battle cry and, turning, beheld the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary spring from their concealment and bear down upon him with unmistakable intent. Now, whether in a former existence Dink had been parent to the fox, or whether the purely human instinct was quicker than the reason, before he knew what he had done he had bounded forward and burst for home in full flight, with his heart pumping at his ribs. Easily distancing his pursuers, he arrived at the Green House before it dawned upon him that he had been challenged and run away.

He stopped abruptly with clenched fists, breathing deep.

"Now let them come," he said, turning.

But the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary, having abandoned the hopeless chase, had gone another way.

Angry and ashamed, Dink went to his room, vowing terrific vengeance. He planted himself before the mirror and, doubling up either arm, felt the well-hardened muscles.

"There were two of them, and I didn't have time to think," he said. "I'll fight 'em—any of 'em."

Reassured by the scowling ferocity of his reflected countenance, he turned away. But, passing near the window, he saw the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary come militantly up the stone walk. A moment later their steps sounded on the stairs. He went hastily to the door and shot the key. An instant later the door was tried, and then the contemptuous face of the Coffee-colored Angel loomed through the transom.

"I knew you were yellow the moment I looked at you," he said scornfully. "Pah!"

Dink did not answer. He was all in a whirl. His action in locking the door, so contrary to his heroic resolutions, left him in confusion.

"I wonder if I really am afraid," he said, sitting down-all in a heap. The look in the Coffee-colored Angel's eye had brought him an unpleasant creeping sensation in the region of the back.

And yet the Coffee-colored Angel, bone for bone and inch for inch, was just what he was—only he had fled from him, inadvertently, instinctively, it is true, yet feeling the running menace at his back.

"I'm a coward!" he said, staring at the opposite wall. "I must be a coward! If I weren't I would have opened that door."

Now, Dink had never fought a real fight. He had had a few rough-and-tumble skirmishes, but a fight where you stood up and looked a man in the whites of the eyes, a deliberate, planned-out fight, was outside his knowledge, in the mists of the unknown. And so his imagination—which later should be his strength—recoiled before that unknown as it had recoiled the moment he stepped from the stage to face his new judges; as it had recoiled in the hushed parlor before the closed door of the head master's den, and again at the thought of stepping into the batter's box and risking his head against the deadly shoots of Nick Carter, of the Cleve. He had never fought, therefore he was aghast at the fear of being afraid.

"Well, I won't run again," he said desperately. "I'll have it over with—he can only lick me."

But he did run again, and often, despite all his resolves, impelled always by the psychological precedent that he had run before.

The Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary made a regular ceremony of it, raising a hue and cry at the sight of him and bursting into derisive laughter after short chases.

Dink was miserable and now thoroughly frightened. He slunk into the solitude of his own company, avoiding the disdainful looks of his House mates. He knew now he was a coward and should never be anything else. He did not blame Butsey, who scarcely spoke to him. All he thought of was, by roundabout ways, to put off the dreadful hour when either the Coffee-colored Angel or the White Mountain Canary should catch him and beat him to a quivering, senseless pulp.

Then the unexpected happened. One day, cutting across fields to avoid his persecutors, he was suddenly shut off by the White Mountain Canary, who rose from ambush, jeering horribly. Cut off from the Green, Dink returned post-haste up the village, when all at once the Coffee-colored Angel closed in on him. Only one way of escape was open to him, down an alley between two houses. With the Coffee-colored Angel at his heels he dashed ahead, turned the corner of the house and found himself caught in a blind area.

Whereupon he turned on the Coffee-colored Angel and slathered him, drove him hither and thither with terrific blows, knocked him head over heels, caught him by the throat and beat him against a wall, rolled him on the ground and rubbed him in the dust, tore his clothes, blacked his eyes and left him beaten and supinely, passively wallowing.

He walked out on his tiptoes, like a terrier, head erect, his chest out, fists still folded, tears in his eyes—tears of pride and relief. He had fought a fight, he had received terrific blows and minded them not. He had thrashed the Coffee-colored Angel: he could thrash or take a thrashing from any one. He had his first thrill, the thrill of conscious rage, comparable only to first love and first sorrow. He had licked the Coffee-colored Angel—he was not a coward!

At this highly-auspicious moment the unsuspecting White Mountain Canary perceived the despised object of his chase and, raising a shout, triumphantly bore down upon him. With a rush he cleared the intervening space and then, catching sight of the new Dink, stopped as though he had been jerked in by a rope.

* * * * *

A few moments later the group on the Green House steps were lazily working out a French translation, which Beekstein, the Secretary of the Department of Education, was reading to them, when suddenly, in the fields opposite, two figures appeared, zigzagging wildly.

"Here comes the Dink again," said Stuffy Brown. "They'll get him this time."

"Who's after him?" said Tough McCarty. "He's a disgrace to the House."

"It's the White Mountain Canary," said Susie Satterly.

"Hello!" said Cheyenne.

"What?"

"I'll be darned—no—yes—dinged if it isn't the Dink chasing the Canary!"

As they sprang up, amazed, Stover dove at the fleeing tormentor, caught him, and the two went down in a heap, thrashing to and fro.

"Well, I'll be jig-swiggered!" said Cheyenne.

"I'll eat my pants!"

"The Dink!"

At this moment the awful wreck of the Coffee-colored Angel limped up. A chorus broke out:

"The Coffee-colored Angel!"

"Shot to pieces!"

"Massacred!"

"Kicked by a horse!"

"What hit you?"

"Dink," said the Coffee-colored Angel, taking a tooth out of his muddy mouth. "I caught him."

Presently they saw Stover arise and loose the battered White Mountain Canary, who broke wildly for shelter.

"Well, anyhow," said the Coffee-colored Angel, "Dink's swallowed the Canary."

"What's he up to now?" said Cheyenne.

They watched him approach the fence, deliberately take off his coat, remove his collar and necktie, tighten his belt and methodically, slowly roll up his sleeves.

"Here he comes," said the Coffee-colored Angel, moving swiftly away. "Why, he's crying!"

Dink came up the path, choking with rage and the knowledge of his own tears, and in front of them all threw down his coat.

"You thought I was afraid, did you? You thought I was a coward!" he sobbed. "Well, I'll show you whether I'm afraid of you, any of you, you big bullies! You big stuff, you, come on!"

And suddenly advancing, he squared off and struck Tough McCarty a wild blow, crash on the nose.



IX

They adjourned to a sheltered spot back of the stump willows and chose a bare space of soft, green turf. At their sides the brook ran splashing over the cool stones.

"Who'll be Dink's second?" said Cheyenne Baxter, the referee.

There was an embarrassed pause.

"Go on, any of you," said Tough McCarty generously.

"I'll be," said the Coffee-colored Angel. "He licked me square."

He stepped over and held out his hand.

"I don't want you—I don't want your hand!" said Dink with a scream. "I don't want any second; I won't have any! I hate you—I hate the whole lot of you!"

Cheyenne Baxter consulted with Tough McCarty and came over.

"Say, Dink," he said kindly, "Tough doesn't want to fight you now; it isn't fair. He'll give you a fight any time you want—when you're fresh."

"I don't want to wait," cried Stover, blubbering despite himself. "I'll fight him now. I'll show him if I'm afraid, the big bully!"

"What rounds do you want?" said Cheyenne, seeing it was wisest not to interfere.

"I don't want any rounds," cried Dink wildly. "I want to get at him, the great, big mucker!"

Cheyenne went over to Tough, who stood apart, looking very uncomfortable.

"Better go on, Tough. Don't hurt the little varmint any more than you have to."

It was a strange fight. They stood around in silence, rather frightened at Stover's frenzy. Tough McCarty, overtopping his antagonist by four good inches, stood on the defensive, seeking only to ward off the storm of frantic blows that rained on him. For Dink cared not a whit what happened to him or how he exposed himself.

Blinded by rage, crying from sheer excess of emotion, shrieking out inarticulate denunciations, he flung himself on McCarty with the recklessness of a mad dervish, crying:

"You thought I was a coward,—darn you! You great, fat slob! You thought I was afraid of a licking, did you? I'll show you. Lick me now if you can, you big brute! Lick me every day! I'm not afraid of you!"

"Confound the lunatic!" said Tough McCarty, receiving a solid thump in the ribs. "I can't stand here, getting pummeled all day. Got to hit him—ouch!"

Dink, in his frantic rush, throwing himself under his enemy's guard, almost bore him to the ground by the shock of his onslaught. McCarty, angrily brushing the blood from his already outraged nose with the cuff of his sleeve, shook himself like an angry bear and, catching Stover with a straight-arm blow, sent him rolling on the turf.

Back again and again came Stover, hurling himself wildly onto the scientific fists that sent him reeling back. The green arms of the trees, the gray faces of the onlookers, the blue of the tilting sky rushed into the reeling earth, confounded together. He no longer saw the being he was fighting, a white film slipped over everything and then all went out in blank unconsciousness.

When he opened his eyes again he was on his back, looking up through the willows at a puffy cloud that turned against the blue. At his side the brook went softly, singing in whispers the note that stirred the leaves.

Something wet fell on his face and trickled uncomfortably down his neck. Some one was applying a dripping cloth.

"Coming to?" said Cheyenne Baxter.

Then Dink remembered.

"Where is he?" he cried, trying to spring up. "Fight him,—fight him to the end!"

A strong hand pressed him down.

"There, there, you fire-eater!" said Cheyenne. "Go easy. You've had enough blood for one afternoon. Lie back. Shut your eyes."

He heard whispering and the sound of voices going, and lost consciousness again.

When he saw the face of the day once more he was alone with Cheyenne, who was kneeling by his side, smiling as he watched him.

"Better now?"

"I'm all right."

"Let me carry you."

"I can stand."

Cheyenne's good right arm caught him as he tottered and held him.

"I'm all right," said Dink gruffly.

Aided by Cheyenne, he went weakly back to the Green. At the steps Tough McCarty sprang up and advanced with outstretched hand, saying:

"Put her here, Dink; you're dead game!"

Stover put his hand behind his back.

"I don't want to shake hands," he said, flushing and gazing at Tough McCarty until the pupils of his eyes seemed to dwindle, "with you or any of you. I hate you all; you're a gang of muckers. I'll fight you now: I'll fight you to-morrow. You're too big for me now; but I'll lick you—I'll lick you next year—you, Tough McCarty—or the year after that; you see if I don't!"

Tough McCarty stood back, rightfully offended. Cheyenne led Dink up to his room and lectured him.

"Now, young bantam, listen to me. You've shown your colors and we respect you for it. But you can't fight your way into being liked—put that in your pipe and smoke it. You've got to keep a civil tongue in your head and quit thinking this place was built for your special benefit. Savez? You've got to win your way if you want to be one of us. Now, when you get your head clear, go down and apologize to Tough McCarty and the Angel, like a man."

The advice, which a day later would have been gratefully received, came inopportunely for Dink's overwrought nerves. He gave an angry answer—he did not want to be friends—he hated them all—he would never apologize—never.

When Butsey White came with friendly offers he cut him short.

"Don't you come rubbering around now," he said scornfully. "You went back on me. You thought I was afraid. I'll do without your friendship now."

When a calmer view had come to him he regretted what he had done. He eliminated Tough McCarty—that was a feud of the instincts—but it certainly had been white of the Coffee-colored Angel to offer to be his second; Cheyenne was every inch a leader, and Butsey really had been justified. Unfortunately, his repentance came too late; the damage had been done. Only one thing could right him—an apology to the assembled House; but as the courage to apologize is the last virtue to be acquired—if it ever is acquired—Dink in his pride would rather have chopped off his hand than admit his error. They had misjudged him; they would have to come to him. The breach, once made, widened rapidly—due, principally, to Dink's own morbid pride. Some of the things he did were simply ridiculous and some were flagrantly impudent.

He was one against eight—but one who had learned his strength, who feared no longer the experiences he knew. He stood ready to back his acts of belligerency with his fists against any one—except, of course, Butsey White; for roommates do not fight unless they love one another.

He had always in him the spirit of the rebel. To be forbid a thing, with him, was to do it instantly. He refused all the service a Freshman should do. At table he took a malignant delight in demanding loudly second and third helps of the abhorrent prunes—long after he had come to feel the universal antagonism. He would not wake Butsey in the morning, fill his basin or arrange his shoes. He would run no errands. He refused to say sir or doff his hat to his superiors in the morning; and, being better supplied with money, he took particular pleasure in entering the House with boxes of jiggers or tins of potted meats and a bottle of rootbeer, with which he openly gorged himself at night, while Butsey squirmed over the unappetizing pages of the Gallic Wars.

Finally, the blow came. Cheyenne Baxter, as president of the House, appeared one evening and hurled on him the ban of excommunication—from that hour he was to be put in Coventry.

From that moment no one spoke to him or by the slightest look noticed his existence. Dink at first attempted to laugh at this exile.

At every opportunity he joined the group on the steps. No one addressed him. If he spoke no one answered. At table the Coffee-colored Angel no longer asked him to pass his plate, but passed it around the other way. He went out in the evenings and placed his cap in line with the other boys', but the ball never went into his hat. If he stood, hoping to be hit, no one seemed to notice that he was standing there. For several days he sought to brazen it out with a miserable, sinking feeling, and then he gave it up. He had thought he cared nothing for the company of his House mates—he soon discovered his error and recognized his offending. But apology was now out of the question. He was a pariah, a leper, and so must continue—a thing to be shunned.

The awful loneliness of his punishment threw him on his own resources. At night he lay in his bed and heard Butsey steal out to a midnight spread behind closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic in the none too fragrant waters.

In the morning he could not join the group that congregated to listen to Beekstein—Secretary of Education—straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots at the plate.

This enforced seclusion had one good result: left to his own devices his recitations improved tremendously, though this was scant consolation.

He kept his own company proudly, reading long hours into the land of Dumas and Victor Hugo; straying up to the 'Varsity diamond, where he cast himself forlornly on the grass, apart from the groups, to watch Charlie DeSoto dash around the bases, and wonderful Jo Brown on third base scrape up the grounders and shoot them to first.

He was too proud to seek other friends, for that meant confession. Besides, his own classmates were all busy on their own diamonds, working for the success of their own House nines.

Only when there was a 'Varsity game and he was swallowed up in the indiscriminate mass that whooped and cheered back of first, thrilling at a sudden crisis, did he forget himself a little and feel a part of the great system. Once when, in a game with the Princeton Freshmen, Jo Brown cleared the bases with a sizzling three-bagger, a fourth-former he didn't know thumped him ecstatically on the back and he thrilled with gratitude.

But the rest was loneliness, ever recurrent loneliness, day in and day out. His only friends were Charlie DeSoto and Butcher Stevens at first, whom he could watch and understand—feeling, also, the fierce spirit of battle cooped up and forbidden within him.

One night in the second week of June, when Butsey White had gone to a festal spread in Cheyenne Baxter's rooms, Dink sat cheerlessly over the Latin page, seeing neither gerund nor gerundive.

The windows were open to the multiplied chorus of distant frogs and the drone of near-by insects. The lamp was hot, his clothes steamed on his back. He thought of the rootbeer and sarsaparilla being consumed down the hall and, going to the closet, consulted his own store of comforting things.

But to feast alone was no longer a feast at all. He went to the window and sniffed the warm air, trying to penetrate the outer darkness. Then, balancing carefully, he let himself out and, dropping on the yielding earth, went hungrily up to the campus.

He had never been on the Circle before at night, with all the lights about him. It gave him a strange, breathless feeling. He sat down, hugging his knees, in the center of the Circle, where he could command the blazing windows of the Houses and the long, lighted ranks of the Upper, where the fourth-formers were singing on the Esplanade. The chapel at his back was only a shadow; Memorial Hall, a cloud hung lower than the rest.

From his position of vantage he could hear scraps of conversation through the open windows, and see dark figures flitting before the mellow lamps. The fellowship in the Houses, the good times, the feeling of home that hung about each room came to him with acute poignancy as he sat there, vastly alone. In the whole school he had made not a friend. He had done nothing; no one knew him. No one cared. He had blundered from the first. He saw his errors now—only too plainly—but they were beyond retrieving.

There was only a week more and then it would be over. He would never come back. What was the use? And yet, as he sat there outside the life and lights of it all, he regretted, bitterly regretted, that it must be so. He felt the tug at his heartstrings. It was something to win a place in such a school, to have the others look up to you, to have the youngsters turn and follow you as you passed, as they did with Charlie DeSoto or Flash Condit or Turkey Reiter or a dozen of others. Instead, he would drop out of the ranks, and who would notice it? A few who would make a good story out of that miserable game of baseball. A few who would speak of him as the freshest of the fresh, the fellow who had to be put in Coventry—if, indeed, any one would remember Dink Stover, the fellow who hadn't made good.

The bell clanged out the summons to bed for the Houses. One by one the windows dropped back into the night; only the Upper remained ablaze.

At this moment he heard somewhere in the dark near him the sound of scampering feet. The next moment a small body tripped over his legs and went sprawling.

"What in the name of Willie Keeler!" said a shrill voice. "Is that a master or a human being?"

"Hello!" said Stover gruffly, to put down the lump that had risen in his throat. "Who are you."

"Me? Shall we tell our real names?" said the voice approaching and at once bursting out into an elfish chant:

Wow, wow! Wow, wow, wow! Oh, me father's name was Finnegan, Me mother's name was Kate, Me ninety-nine relations To you I'll now relate.

"Oh, you're Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, are you?" said Dink, laughing as he dashed his cuff across his eyes. "The kid that wrote the baseball story."

"Sir, you do me honor," said Finnegan. "Who are you?"

"I'm Stover."

"The Dink?"

"Yes, the Dink."

"The cuss that translates at sight?"

"You've heard of it?"

"Cracky, yes! They say The Roman was knocked clean off his pins, first time in his life. I say——"

"What?"

"Then you're the fellow down in the Green, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Dink, thinking only of the ban of excommunication.

"Why, you're a regular cross-sawed, triple-hammered, mule-kick, beef-fed, rarin'-tearin' John L. Sullivan, ain't you?" said the exponent of the double adjective in rapid admiration.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, you're the cuss that smeared the Angel, swallowed the Canary, and bumped Tough McCarty, all at once."

"Oh, yes."

"My dear boy, permit me—you're it, you're the real thing."

Dink, with a feeling of wonder, shook hands, saying:

"Well, they don't think so much of it at the Green."

"Anything wrong?"

"Nothing much."

Finnegan, perceiving the ground was shaky, switched.

"I say, you want to get into the Kennedy next year; we've got the A No. 1 crowd there. I'm there, the Tennessee Shad, the Gutter Pup—he's the president of the Sporting Club, you know; prize-fights and all that sort of thing—and King Lentz and the Waladoo Bird, the finest guards Lawrenceville ever had. And say, you'n I and the Tennessee Shad could strike up a combine and get out a rip-snorting, muzzle-off, all-the-news, sporting-expert, battle-cry-of-freedom newspaper that would put the Lawrence out of biz. I say, you must get in the Kennedy."

"I'm not coming back."

"What!"

"I guess my par-ticular style of talent isn't suited around here."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, everything."

"I say, Dink, confide in me!"

Stover, at that moment, in his loneliness, would have confided in any one, especially the first human being who had given him a thrill of conscious pride.

"It's just this, youngster," he said, wondering how to begin: "they don't like me."

"You like the school, don't you?" said Finnegan in alarm.

Dink had never had the question put to him before. He was silent and his look went swiftly over to the coveted House of Lords. He drew a long breath.

"You bet I do. I love it!"

"What then?"

"I started wrong; didn't understand the game, I guess. They've put me in Coventry."

"You must have been pretty fresh."

"What!"

"Oh, don't mind me," said Dennis cheerfully. "I'm fresher than you ever thought of being. I was the freshest bit of verdure, as the poet says, that ever greened the place. I'm the freshest still. But I'm different. I'm under six inches—that's the cinch of it."

"Yes, I was fresh," said Dink, intensely relieved.

"You're always fresh if you're any good, the first term," said Finnegan. "Don't mind that. Next year you'll be an old boy, and then they'll follow you around for sugar."

"I hadn't thought of that," said Dink slowly.

"Keep a-thinking. I'm off now. Ta-ta! Got to slink in Fatty Harris' room before The Roman makes his rounds. Proud to have met you. Au revoir!"

Dink sat a long while thinking, and a lighter mood was on him. After all, he was not a blank. Some one had recognized him; some one had taken his hand in admiration. He rose and slowly made his way toward the singers on the Esplanade, and by the edge of the road camped under the shadows of an apple tree and leaned his back against the trunk.

The groups of the Esplanade stood out in cut outlines against the warm windows of the Reading-room. Above, the open windows were tenanted by boys who pillowed their heads on one another and sent their treble or bass notes down to swell the volume below.

Led by a tenor voice that soared clear and true above the rest came the melody to Stover huddled under the apple tree:

At evening, when twilight is falling And the birds to their nests are all gone, We'll gather around in the gloaming, And mingle our voices in song. Yes, in song. The bright stars are shining above us, Keeping their watch and ward. We'll sing the old songs that we love, boys. Out on the Esplanade.

Stover listened, pressing his knuckles to his lips, raised out of himself by the accord of voices and the lingering note of melancholy that was in the hour, the note of the dividing of the ways.

Again in deeper accents a song arose:

We sing the campus, green and fair. We sing the 'leven and nine Who battle for the old school there And guard the base and line. No cause for fear when they appear And the school flag floats above our head. When the game begins 'tis Lawrence wins, While we cheer the Black and Red. When the game begins 'tis Lawrence wins, While we cheer the Black and Red.

The song ended in lingering accents. Dink shut his eyes, clenching his fists, seeing wonderful days when the school should gather to cheer him, too, and lay its trust in him.

Suddenly near him in the road came the crunching sound of footsteps, and a voice said:

"Is that you, Bill?"

"Yes."

"Bill, I wanted to say a word to you."

"Well?"

"We've only got a few days more in the old place. I don't want to go out with any hard feelings for anybody, do you?"

"No."

"Let's call it off! Shake hands."

Stover listened breathless, hearing little more, understanding only that a feud had ceased, that two enemies on the verge of the long parting had held each other's hands, slapped each other's backs with crude, embarrassed emotion, for the sake of the memories that lived in the shadow of a name. And something like a lump rose again in Dink's throat. He no longer thought of his loneliness. He felt in him the longing to live as they had lived through the glorious years, to know the touch of a friend's arm about his shoulders, and to leave a name to stand with the names that were going out.

He raised his fists grotesquely, unconsciously, and swore an oath:

"No, I won't give up; I'll never give up. I'll come back. I'll fight it out!" he said almost aloud. "I'll make 'em like me. I'll make 'em proud of me."



X

My father sent me here to Lawrenceville, And resolved that for college I'd prepare; And so I settled down In this ancient little town, About five miles away from anywhere.

Five miles away from anywhere, my boys, Where old Lawrenceville evermore shall stand. For has she not stood since the time of the flood. About five miles away from anywhere?

The school was returning after the long summer vacation, rollicking back over the dusty, Trenton highway, cheering and singing as they came.

Jimmy, on the stage, was swallowed up in the mass of exultant boyhood that clustered on the top like bees on a comb of honey, and clung to step and strap. Inside, those who had failed of place stuck long legs out of the windows, and from either side beat the time of the choruses.

"Next verse!" shouted Doc Macnooder as leader of the orchestra.

The First Form then I gayly entered, And did so well, I do declare, When they looked my record o'er All the masters cried "Encore!" About five miles away from anywhere.

"Chorus!" cried Macnooder. "Here, you legs, keep together! You're spoiling the effect."

Dink Stover sat quietly on the second seat, joining in the singing, but without the rollicking abandon of the others. He had shot up amazingly during the vacation and taken on some weight, but the change was most marked in his face. The roundness was gone and with it the cherubic smile. The oval had lengthened, the mouth was straighter, more determined, and in the quiet set of eyes was something of the mental suffering of the last months. He had returned, wondering a little what would be his greeting. The first person he had met was the Coffee-colored Angel, who shook hands with him, pounded him on the back and called him "Good old Dink." He understood—the ban was lifted. But the lesson had been a rude one; he did not intend to presume. So he sat, an observer rather than a participant, not yet free of that timidity which, once imposed, is so difficult to shake off.

The stage, which was necessarily making slow progress, halted at the first hill, with a sudden rebellion on the part of the long suffering horses.

"All out!" shouted Macnooder.

In a jiffy every boy was on the ground.

"All push!"

The stage, propelled by dozens of vigorous hands, went up the hill on a run.

"Same places!"

"All ready?"

"Let her go!"

Mamie Reilly, being discovered on the roof and selfishly claimed below, was thrust kicking and wriggling over the side and into the ready hands at the window.

"All ready, orchestra?" said Macnooder.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"All legs in the air!"

"Aye, me Lord!"

"One, two, three!"

And then the Second Form received me, Where I displayed such genius rare, That they begged me to refrain, It was going to my brain. About five miles away from anywhere!

Meanwhile, at the approach of the astounding coach, which looked like a drunken centipede, the farmers stopped their plows or came to the thresholds, shading their eyes; while the cattle in the fields put up their tails and bolted, flinging out their heels, amid triumphant cheers from the students.

All the while, the bulk of the school in two seaters, and three seaters, the Fifth Formers, the new Lords of Creation, in buggies specially retained, went swirling by exchanging joyful greetings.

"Oh you, Doc Macnooder!"

"Why, Gutter Pup! You old son-of-a-gun!"

"Look at the Coffee-Colored Angel!"

"Where's Lovely Mead?"

"Coming behind."

"Hello, Skinny."

"Why, you Fat Boy!"

"See you later."

"Meet me at the Jigger Shop."

"There's Stuffy!"

"Hello, Stuffy! Look this way!"

"Look at the Davis House bunch!"

"Whose legs are those?"

Hallegenoo, nack, nack! Hallegenoo, nack, nack! Hooray! Hooray! Lawrenceville!

"Next verse," shouted Doc Macnooder. "Legs at attention. More action there! La-da-da-dee! One, two, three!"

In course of time, I reached the Third Form, But was caught in examination's snare. Reassignment played its part, And it almost broke my heart, About five miles away from anywhere.

"What house are you in?" said the Coffee-Colored Angel to Stover, between breaths.

"Kennedy."

"The Roman, eh?"

"Yes, he reached out and nabbed me," said Stover, who was persuaded that his new assignment was a special mark of malignant interest.

"Who are you rooming with?"

"The Tennessee Shad."

"Well, you'll be a warm bunch!"

A shout burst out from the back of the coach.

"A race, a race!"

"Here come the Tennessee Shad and Brian de Boru."

"Turn out, Jimmy!"

"Give 'em room!"

"Go it, Dennis!"

"Go it, Shad!"

Two runabouts came up at a gallop, neck and neck, four boys in each, the Tennessee Shad standing at the reins in one, Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan in the other, each firmly clutched about the waist by the boy on whose knees he jolted and jostled.

"Push on the reins!"

"Home run, Dennis!"

"Swim out, you Shad!"

"Pass him, Dennis! Pass him!"

"Shad wins!"

"Look at his form, will you!"

"Oh, you jockey!"

"Shad wins!"

"Hurrah!"

"Hurray!"

"Hurroo!"

But at this moment, when it seemed as though the race was to go to the Tennessee Shad's nag, which had that superiority which one sacrificial horse in a Spanish bullfight ring has over another, Dennis de Brian de Boru suddenly produced the remnants of a bag of cream puffs and, by means of three well-directed, squashing shots on the rear quarters of his coal-black steed, plunged ahead and won the road, amid terrific cheering.

"Dennis forever!"

"Oh, you, Brian de Boru!"

"Get an eclair, Shad!"

"Get an omelet!"

"Get a tomato!"

"Get out and push!"

The racers disappeared in mingled clouds of dust.

Macnooder, whirling around like a dervish on the stage top, conducted the next verse. Suddenly another shout went up.

"Here comes Charlie DeSoto and Flash Condit."

"Three cheers for the football team!"

"How are you, Charlie?"

"Flash, old boy!"

"What do you weigh?"

"Pretty fit?"

"Too bad you can't run, Flash!"

"What'll we do to Andover?"

DeSoto and Condit passed, acknowledging the salutations with joyful yelps.

"Give 'em the Fifty-six to Nothing, boys," shouted Macnooder. "All you tenor legs get into this. Oom-pah! Oom-pah! Oom-pah! One, two, three!"

There is a game called football, And that's the game for me. And Lawrenceville can play it, As you will shortly see. She goes to all the schools about, And with them wipes the ground. For it's fifty-six to nothing, boys, When Lawrenceville's around.

She has a gallant rush-line That wears the Red and Black. Each man can carry the ball through With six men on his back. They carry it through the middle And then they touch it down. For it's fifty-six to nothing, boys, When Lawrenceville's around.

Little by little Stover was drawn into the spirit of the song. He forgot his aloofness, he felt one of them, thrilling with the spirit of the coming football season.

"Gee, it's great to be back," he found himself saying to Butcher Stevens next to him.

"You bet it is!"

"Charlie DeSoto looks fit, doesn't he?"

"He's eight pounds heavier, Doc tells me."

"By George, that's fine!"

They stopped to sing the third verse.

"It won't be any fifty-six to nothing when Andover comes around," said Butcher gruffly.

"We've got to hustle?" asked Stover respectfully of the 'Varsity left tackle.

"We certainly have!"

"What's the prospects?"

"Behind the line, corking. It's the line's the trouble—no weight."

"There may be some new material."

"That's so." Stevens looked him over with an appraising eye. "Played the game?"

"No, but I'm going to."

"What do you strip at?"

"Why, about 140—138."

"Light."

"I thought I might try for the second eleven."

"Perhaps. Better learn the game, though, with your House team."

Hearing them talk football the crowd eagerly began to ask questions.

"Who's out for center?"

"Will they move Tough McCarty out to end?"

"Naw, he's too heavy."

"I'd play him at center, and stick the Waladoo Bird in at tackle."

"You would, would you? Shows what you know about it."

"Butcher, you'll be in at tackle, won't you?"

"Hope so," said Stevens laconically.

Stover, who had entered the observant stage of his development, noted the laconic, quiet answer and stored it away for classification and meditation among the many other details that his new attitude of watchful analysis was heaping up.

"There's the water tower! I see the water tower!" cried a voice.

"I see the Cleve!"

"All up!"

"Long cheer for the school!"

"All together!"

"Rip her out!"

They gave a cheer and then two more.

"Now, fellows," said Doc Macnooder shrilly, as master of ceremonies, "we want to pull this off in fine shape. We're going to drive around the Circle. And I want this orchestra to keep together. Whose legs are those with the cannon-cracker socks?"

"Beekstein's," cried several voices from inside.

"Well, he's rotten. He gums the whole show. Now, get together, fellows, will you?"

"We will!"

As they turned to enter the campus the voice of the master spoke, clanging its inexorable note from the old Gym. Instantly a shout broke out:

"Hang the old thing!"

"Drown it!"

"Down with the Gym bell!"

"Murder!"

"Oh, Melancholy!"

"Silence!" cried the bandmaster. "Give 'em The Gym Bell—all ready below! La-da-da-dee!"

"Too high!"

"La-da-da-dum. Slow and melancholy. One, two, three!"

When the shades of night are falling Round our campus, green and fair, All the drowsy sons of Lawrence To their couches then repair. Soon the slumber god has bound them With his spell of magic power, And he holds them thus enchanted Till the early morning hour.

"Up legs and at 'em now, Rip her out—chorus!"

Till awakened By the clanging And the banging And the whanging From the cupola o'erhanging, Of that ancient Gym bell!

Cheered by the new fifth-formers, who came laughing to the windows to hail them, the stage went gloriously around the Circle and came to a stop.

"Here we are back at the same old grind," said Butcher Stevens.

"Frightful, isn't it?" said Stover; and the rest made answer:

"Back at the grindstone!"

"Hard luck!"

"We're all slaves!"

"Nothing to eat!"

"Nothing to do!"

"Stuck in a mudhole!"



XI

At the Kennedy steps The Roman was waiting for him. Stover shook hands or, rather, allowed The Roman to pump him, as was the custom.

"Why, dear me—dear me—this is actually Stover!" said The Roman. "Well, well! How you have grown—shouldn't have known you. Had a pleasant vacation? Yes? Glad to have you in the Kennedy. It's a good House—good boys—manly, self-reliant, purposeful. You'll like 'em."

The Roman released Stover's hand, which had grown limp in the process, and said with a twinkle to his quick little eyes:

"Don't put too much ginger into them, Stover."

This remark confirmed Stover's darkest suspicions.

"I'll scatter a little ginger around all right," he said under his breath, as he climbed the stairs to his room. "He thinks he has the laugh on me, does he? Well, we'll see who laughs last!"

On the third floor the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, from their respective trunks, were volubly debating the merits of Finnegan's victory—the Tennessee Shad claiming that the external application of cream puffs was equivalent to doping and invalidated the result.

"Hello!" said Dink.

"Why, it's my honorable roommate," said the Tennessee Shad, emerging with a load of flannels.

"It's the Dink himself," said Dennis, gamboling up. "Welcome to our city!"

"I hear I'm rooming with you," said Stover, shaking hands with the Shad.

"You certainly are, my bounding boy."

"Where's the room?"

"Straight ahead, turret room, finest on the campus, swept by ocean breezes and all that sort of thing."

"Why, Dink," said Dennis de Brian de Boru in affectionate octaves, "you old, slab-sided, knock-kneed, baby-cheeked, wall-eyed, battling Dink. You've grown ee-normously."

"How's your muscle?" said the Tennessee Shad, with an ulterior motive.

"Feel it," said Stover, who had consecrated the summer to the same.

"Hard as a goat," said Dennis after an admiring whistle. "All nice little cast-iron, jerky bunches, ready and willing. Been in training, Dink?"

"Yes, just so."

"Feels sort of soft to me," said the Tennessee Shad pensively.

"Oh, it does?"

"Question: what can you do with it? Lift a trunk as heavy as this?"

"Huh!" said Stover, bending down. "Where do you want it?"

"Gee! I do believe he can carry it almost to the room," said the Tennessee Shad, whose theory of life was to admire others do his work for him.

Stover bore it proudly on his shoulders and set it down. Dennis, planting himself arms akimbo, surveyed him with melancholy disapproval.

"Too bad, Dink! I had expected better things from you. You're still green, Dink. Been too much with the cows and chickens. Don't do it; don't do it!"

Stover glanced at the Tennessee Shad, who, satisfied, had curled himself up on the bed, to rest himself after the exertion of walking.

"I guess I am still a sucker," he said, scratching his head with a foolish grin, "I'll not be so easy next time."

"Never mind, Dink," said Dennis comfortingly. "Your education's been neglected, but I'm here. Remember that, Dennis is here, ready and willing."

Presently the Gutter Pup and Lovely Mead came tumbling in, and then the lumbering proportions of P. Lentz, King of the Kennedy, crowded through the doorway, and the conversation continued in rapid crossfire.

"Who's seen the Waladoo Bird?"

"Jock Hasbrouck's dropped into the third form."

"What do you think of the electric lights they've given us?"

"They've stuck an arc light in the Circle, too."

"We'll fix that."

"How's the new material, King?"

"Rotten!"

"Think we've a chance for the House championship?"

"A fine chance—to finish last."

"Say, who do you think they've stuck us with?"

"Who?"

"Beekstein."

"Suffering Moses!"

"Never mind. We've got the Dink."

"What's he do?"

"He's the champion truckman—carry your trunk for you anywhere you want."

Dink, thus brought unwillingly into the conversation, blushed a warm red.

"Truckman?" said P. Lentz, mystified.

"Champion," said Finnegan. "The mysterious champion truckman of Broad Street Station, Philadelphia. Stand up, Dink, my man, and twitch your muscles."

Stover squirmed uneasily on his chair. There was no malice in the teasing, and yet he was at a loss how to turn it.

The Gutter Pup, as president of the Sporting Club and chief authority on the life and works of the late Marquis of Queensberry, examined the embarrassed Stover, running professional fingers over his legs and arms.

"You're the fellow who tried to fight the whole Green House, aren't you?" he said, immensely interested.

"Why, yes."

"Good nerve," said the Gutter Pup. "You've got something the style of Beans Middleton, who stood up to me for ten rounds in the days of the old Seventy-second Street gang. I'll train you up some time. You'd do well with the crouching style—good reach, quick on the trigger and all that sort of thing. Like fighting?"

"Why, I—I don't know," said Stover helplessly, unable to make out whether the Gutter Pup spoke in jest.

"Modest and brave!" said the irrepressible Finnegan.

The conversation drifted away; Stover, with a sigh of relief, obliterated himself in a corner, feeling immense distances between himself and the laughing group that continued to exchange rapid banter.

"Dennis, they tell me you're fresher than ever."

"Sir, you compliment me."

"Say, Boru, have they put you on the bottle yet?"

"Not yet, Lovely. Waiting for you to drop it."

It was not particularly brilliant, but it was good-natured, and there was a certain trick to it that he had lost in the long weeks of Coventry.

Presently the group departed to take the keen edge off the approaching luncheon pangs by a trip to the Jigger Shop, the center of social life.

"Coming, Dink?" said the Gutter Pup.

"I—I'll be over a little later," said Stover, who did and did not want to go.

Left alone, half angry at his own enforced aloofness, and yet desiring solitude, Stover stood among the litter of boxes and gaping trunks and surveyed the four bare walls that spelled for him the word home.

"It's a bully room—bully," he said to himself with a tender feeling of possession. "The Shad's a bully fellow—bully! Dennis is a corker! I'm going to make good; see if I don't! But I'm going slow. They've got to come to me. I won't break in until they want me. Gee! What a peach of a room!"

He went to the window and looked out at the whole panorama of the school that ran beneath him, from the long, rakish lines of the Upper, by Memorial Hall, to the chapel and the circle of Houses that ended at the rear with the Dickinson. Below, boys were streaking across the green depths like water-bugs over limpid surfaces, or hallooing joyfully from window to terrace, greeting one another with bearlike hugs, tumbling about in frolicking heaps. He was on the mountain, they on the plain. His was the imaginative perspective and the troubled vision of one who finds a strange city at his feet.

"It's all there," he said lamely, confused by his own impressions. "All of it."

"Homesick?" said a thin voice behind him.

He turned to find Finnegan eyeing him uncertainly.

"Why, you wild Irishman," Dink said, surprised. "Thought you'd gone with the crowd. Hello, what's up now?"

Finnegan, with an air of great mystery, locked the door, extracted the key and, returning, enthroned himself on a chair which he had previously planted defiantly on a trunk.

"That's so you can't throw me out."

"Well?"

"I'm going to be fresh as paint."

"You are?" said Stover, mystified and amused.

"Fact," said Finnegan, who, having crossed his legs, plunged his hands into his pockets and cocked one eye, said impressively: "Dink, you're wrong."

"I am—am I?"

"But never mind; I'm here. Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan—ready and willing."

"Irishman, I do believe you're embarrassed," said Stover, surprised.

"I'm not," said Finnegan indignantly. "Only—only, I want to be impressive. Dink, you're getting in wrong again."

"What in thunder——"

"You are, Dink, you are. But don't worry; I'm here. In the first place, you can't forget what every one else has forgotten."

"Forget what?"

"The late unpleasantness," said Finnegan, with an expelling wave of his hand. "That's over, spiked, dished, set back, covered up, cobwebbed, no flowers and no tombstone."

"I know."

"No, you don't—that's just it. You've got it on your mind—brooding and all that sort of thing."

Stover sat down and stared at the Lilliputian philosopher.

"Well, I like your nerve!"

"Don't—don't start in like that," said Finnegan, rolling up his sleeves over his funny, thin forearms, "cause I shall have to thrash you."

"Well, go on," said Stover suddenly.

"You're not in Coventry—you never have been. You're one of us," said Dennis glibly. "BUT—I repeat BUT—you can't be one of us if you don't believe in your own noddle that you are one of us! Get that? That's deep—no charge, always glad to oblige a customer."

"Keep on," said Stover, leaning back.

"With your kind permission, directly. It's all in this—you haven't got the trick."

"The trick?"

"The trick of conversation. That's not just it. The trick of answering back. Aha, that's better! Scratch out first sentiment. Change signals!"

"There's something in that," said Stover, genuinely amazed.

"You blush."

"What?"

"The word was blush," said Finnegan firmly. "I saw you—Finnegan saw you and grieved. And why? Because you didn't have the trick of answering back."

"Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan," said Stover slowly, "I believe you are a whole-hearted little cuss. Also, you're not so far off, either. Now, since this is a serious conversation, this is where I stand: I went through Hades last spring—I deserved it and it's done me good. I've come back to make good. Savez? And that's a serious thing, too. Now if you have one particular theory about your art of conversation to elucidate—eluce."

"One theory!" said Finnegan, chirping along as he perceived the danger-point passed. "I'm a theorist, and a real theorist doesn't have one theory; he has dozens. Let me see; let me think, reflect, cogitate, tickle the thinker. Best way is to start at the A, B, C—first principles, all that sort of thing. Supposin', supposin' you come into the room with that hat on—it's a bum hat, by the way—and some one pipes up; 'Get that at the fire sale?' What are you going to answer?"

"Why, I suppose I'd grin," said Stover slowly, "and say: 'How did you guess it?'"

"Wrong," said Finnegan. "You let him take the laugh."

"Well, what?"

"Something in this style: 'Oh, no, I traded it for luck with a squint-eyed, humpbacked biter-off of puppy-dog tails that got it out of Rockefeller's ashcan.' See?"

"No, Dennis, no," said Stover, bewildered. "I see, but there are some things beyond me. Every one isn't a young Shakspere."

"I know," said Finnegan, accepting the tribute without hesitation. "But there's the principle. You go him one better. You make him look like a chump. You show him what you could have said in his place. That shuts him up, makes him feel foolish, spikes the gun, corks the bottle."

"By Jove!"

"It's what I call the Superiority of the Superlative over the Comparative."

"It sounds simple," said Stover pensively.

"When you know the trick."

"You know, Dennis," said Stover, smiling reminiscently, "I used to have the gift of gab once, almost up to you."

"Then let's take a few crouching starts," said Dennis, delighted.

"Go ahead."

"Room full of fellows. You enter."

"I enter."

"I speak: 'Dink, I bet Bill here a quarter that you used a toothbrush.'"

"You lose," said Stover; "I use a whisk-broom."

"Good!" said Dennis professionally, "but a little quicker, on the jump, get on the spring-board. Try again. 'Why, Dink, how do you get such pink cheeks?'"

"That's a hard one," said Dink.

"Peanuts!"

"Let me think."

"Bad, very bad."

"Well, what would you say?"

"Can't help it, Bill; the girls won't let me alone!"

"Try me again," said Stover, laughing.

"Say, Dink, did your mamma kiss you good-by?"

"Sure, Mike," said Stover instantly; "combed my hair, dusted my hands, and told me not to talk to fresh little kids like you."

"Why, Dink, come to my arms," said Dennis, delighted. "A Number 1. Mark 100 for the term. That's the trick."

"Think I'll do?"

"Sure pop. Of course, there are times when the digestion's jumping fences and you get sort of in the thunder glums. Then just answer, 'Is that the best you can do to-day?' or 'Why, you're a real funny man, aren't you?' sarcastic and sassy."

"I see."

"But better be original."

"Of course."

"Oh, it's all a knack."

"And to think that's all there is to it!" said Stover, profoundly moved.

"When you know," said Dennis in correction.

"Dennis, I have a thought," said Stover suddenly. "Let's get out and try the system."

"Presto!"

"The Jigger Shop?"

"Why tarry?"

On the way over Dink stopped short with an exclamation.

"What now?" said Finnegan.

"Tough McCarty and a female," said Stover in great indignation.

They stood aside, awkwardly snatching off their caps as McCarty and his companion passed them on the walk. Stover saw a bit of blue felt with the white splash of a wing across, a fluffy shirtwaist, and a skirt that was a skirt, and nothing else. His glance went to McCarty, meeting it with the old, measuring antagonism. They passed.

"Damn him!" said Stover.

"Why, Dink, how shocking!"

"He's grown!"

In the joy of his own increased stature he had never dreamed that like processes of Nature produce like results.

"Ten pounds heavier," said Dennis. "He ought to make a peach of a tackle this year!"

"Bringing girls around!" said Stover scornfully, to vent his rage.

"More to be pitied than blamed," sang Dennis on a popular air. "It's his sister. Luscious eyes—quite the figure, too."

"Figure—huh!" said Stover, who hadn't seen.

At the Jigger Shop the Gutter Pup, looking up from a meringue entirely surrounded by peach jiggers, hailed them:

"Hello, Rinky Dink! Changed your mind, eh? Thought you were homesick."

"Sure I was, but Dennis came in with a bucket and caught the tears," said Stover gravely. "I'll call you in next time. Al, how be you? Here's what I owe you. Set 'em up."

"Tres bien!" said Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan.

That night, as they started on the problem of interior decorations, Stover threw himself on the bed, rolling with laughter.

"Well, I'm glad you've decided to be cheerful; but what in blazes are you hee-hawing at?" said the Tennessee Shad, mystified.

"I'm laughing," said Stover, loud enough for Dennis down the hall to hear, "at the Superiority of the Superlative over the Comparative."



XII

"Why, look at the Dink!" said Lovely Mead the next afternoon, as Stover emerged in football togs which he had industriously smeared with mud to conceal their novelty.

"He must be going out for the 'Varsity!" said Fatty Harris sarcastically.

"By request," said the Gutter Pup.

"Why, who told you?" said Stover.

"You trying for the 'Varsity?" said Lovely Mead incredulously. "Why, where did you play football?"

"Dear me, Lovely," said Stover, lacing his jacket, "thought you read the newspapers."

"Huh! What position are you trying for?"

"First substitute scorer," said Stover, according to Finnegan's theory. "Any more questions?"

Lovely Mead, surprised, looked at Stover in perplexity and remained silent.

Dink, laughing to himself at the ease of the trick, started across the Circle for the 'Varsity football field, whither already the candidates were converging to the first call of the season.

He had started joyfully forth from the skeptics on the steps, but once past the chapel and in sight of the field his gait abruptly changed. He went quietly, thoughtfully, a little alarmed at his own daring, glancing at the padded figures that overtopped him.

The veterans with the red L on their black sweaters were apart, tossing the ball back and forth and taking playful tackles at one another. Stover, hiding himself modestly in the common herd, watched with entranced eyes the lithe, sinuous forms of Flash Condit and Charlie DeSoto—greater to him than the faint heroes of mythology—as they tumbled the Waladoo Bird gleefully on the ground. There was Butcher Stevens of the grim eye and the laconic word, a man to follow and emulate; and the broad span of Turkey Reiter's shoulders, a mark to grow to. Meanwhile, Garry Cockrell, the captain, and Mr. Ware, the new coach from the Princeton championship eleven, were drawing nearer on their tour of inspection and classification. Dink knew his captain only from respectful distances—the sandy hair, the gaunt cheek bones and the deliberate eye, whom governors of states alone might approach with equality, and no one else. Under the dual inspection the squad was quickly sorted, some sent back to their House teams till another year brought more weight and experience, and others tentatively retained on the scrubs.

"Better make the House team, Jenks," said the low, even voice of the captain. "You want to harden up a bit. Glad you reported, though."

Then Dink stood before his captain, dimly aware of the quick little eyes of Mr. Ware quietly scrutinizing him.

"What form?"

"Third."

The two were silent a moment studying not the slender, wiry figure, but the look in the eyes within.

"What are you out for?"

"End, sir."

"What do you weigh?"

"One hundred and fifty—about," said Dink.

A grim little twinkle appeared in the captain's eyes.

"About one hundred and thirty-five," he said, with a measuring glance.

"But I'm hard, hard as nails, sir," said Stover desperately.

"What football have you played?"

Stover remained silent.

"Well?"

"I—I haven't played," he said unwillingly.

"You seem unusually eager," said Cockrell, amused at this strange exhibition of willingness.

"Yes, sir."

"Good spirit; keep it up. Get right out for your House team——"

"I won't!" said Stover, blurting it out in his anger and then flushing: "I mean, give me a chance, won't you, sir?"

Cockrell, who had turned, stopped and came back.

"What makes you think you can play?" he said not unkindly.

"I've got to," said Stover desperately.

"But you don't know the game."

"Please, sir, I'm not out for the 'Varsity," said Stover confusedly. "I mean, I want to be in it, to work for the school, sir."

"You're not a Freshman?" said the captain, and the accents of his voice were friendly.

"No, sir."

"What's your name?" said Cockrell, a little thrilled to feel the genuine veneration that inspired the "sir."

"Stover—Dink Stover."

"You were down at the Green last year, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir," said Stover, looking down with a sinking feeling.

"You're the fellow who tried to fight the whole House?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Dink, this is a little different—you can't play football on nothing but nerve."

"You can if you've got enough of it," said Stover, all in a breath. "Please, sir, give me a chance. You can fire me if I'm no good. I only want to be useful. You've got to have a lot of fellows to stand the banging and you can bang me around all day. I do know something about it, sir; I've practiced tackling and falling on the ball all summer, and I'm hard as nails. Just give me a chance, will you? Just one chance, sir."

Cockrell looked at Mr. Ware, whose eye showed the battling spark as he nodded.

"Here, Dink," he said gruffly, "I can't be wasting any more time over you. I told you to go back to the House team, didn't I?"

Stover, with a lump in his throat, nodded the answer he could not utter.

"Well, I've changed my mind. Get over there in the squad."

The revulsion of feeling was so sudden that tears came into Stover's eyes.

"You're really going to let me stay?"

"Get over there, you little nuisance!"

Dink went a few steps, and then stopped and tightened his shoelaces a long minute.

"Too bad the little devil is so light," said Cockrell to Mr. Ware.

"Best player I ever played against had no right on a football field."

"But one hundred and thirty-five!"

"Yes, that's pretty light."

"What the deuce were you chinning so long about?" said Cheyenne Baxter to Dink, as he came joyfully into the squad.

"Captain wanted just a bit of general expert advice from me," said Dink defiantly. "I've promised to help out."

The squad, dividing, practiced starts. Stover held his own, being naturally quick; and though Flash Condit and Charlie DeSoto distanced him, still he earned a good word for his performances.

Presently Mr. Ware came up with a ball and, with a few words of introduction, started them to falling on it as it bounded grotesquely over the ground, calling them from the ranks by name.

"Hard at it, Stevens."

"Dive at it."

"Don't stop till you get it."

"Oh, squeeze the ball!"

Stover, moving up, caught the eye of Mr. Ware intently on him, and rose on his toes with the muscles in his arms strained and eager.

"Now, Stover, hard!"

The ball with just an extra impetus left the hand of Mr. Ware. Stover went at it like a terrier, dove and came up glorious and muddy with the pigskin hugged in his arms. It was the extent of his football knowledge, but that branch he had mastered on the soft summer turf.

Mr. Ware gave a grunt of approval and sent him plunging after another. This time as he dove the ball took a tricky bounce and slipped through his arms. Quick as a flash Dink, rolling over, recovered himself and flung himself on it.

"That's the way!" said Mr. Ware. "Follow it up. Can't always get it the first time. Come on, Baxter."

The real test came with the tackling. He waited his turn, all eyes, trying to catch the trick, as boy after boy in front of him went cleanly or awkwardly out to down the man who came plunging at him. Some tackled sharply and artistically, their feet leaving the ground and taking the runner off his legs as though a scythe had passed under him; but most of the tackling was crude, and often the runner slipped through the arms and left the tackler prone on the ground to rise amid the jeers of his fellows.

"Your turn, Stover," said the voice of the captain. "Wait a minute." He looked over the squad and selected McCarty, saying: "Here, Tough, come out here. Here's a fellow thinks all you need in this game is nerve. Let's see what he's got."

Dink stood out, neither hearing nor caring for the laugh that went up. He glanced up fifteen yards away where Tough McCarty stood waiting the starting signal. He was not afraid, he was angry clean through, ready to tackle the whole squad, one after another.

"Shall I take it sideways?" said Tough, expecting to be tackled from the side as the others had been.

"No, head on, Tough. Let's see if you can get by him," said Cockrell. "Let her go!"

McCarty, with the memory of past defiances, went toward Stover head down, full tilt. Ordinarily in practice the runner slackens just before the tackle; but McCarty, expecting slight resistance from a novice, arrived at top speed.

Stover, instead of hesitating or waiting the coming, hurled himself recklessly forward. Shoulder met knee with a crash that threw them both. Stunned by the savage impact, Stover, spilled head over heels, dizzy and furious, instinctively flung himself from his knees upon the prostrate body of McCarty, as he had followed the elusive ball a moment before.

"That's instinct, football instinct," said Mr. Ware to Cockrell, as they approached the spot where Dink, still dazed, was clutching Tough McCarty's knees in a convulsive hug.

"Let go! Let go there, you little varmint," said Tough McCarty, considerably shaken. "How long are you going to hold me here?"

Some one touched Dink on the shoulder; he looked up through the blur to see the captain's face.

"All right, Dink, get up."

But Stover released his grip not a whit.

"Here, you young bulldog," said Cockrell with a laugh, "it's all over. Let go. Stand up. Sort of groggy, eh?"

Dink, pulled to his feet, felt the earth slip under him in drunken reelings.

"I missed him," he said brokenly, leaning against Mr. Ware.

"H'm, not so bad," said the coach gruffly.

"How do you feel?" said Garry Cockrell, looking at him with his quiet smile.

Dink saw the smile and misjudged it.

"Give me another chance," he cried furiously. "I'll get him."

"What! Ready for another tackle?" said the captain, looking at him intently.

"Please, sir."

"Well, get your head clear first."

"Let me take it now, sir!"

"All right."

"Hit him harder than he hits you, and grip with your hands," said the voice of Mr. Ware in his ear.

Dink stood out again. The earth was gradually returning to a state of equilibrium, but his head was buzzing and his legs were decidedly rebels to his will.

The captain, seeing this, to give him time, spoke to McCarty with just a shade of malice.

"Well, Tough, do you want to take it again?"

"Do I?" said McCarty sarcastically. "Oh, yes, most enjoyable! Don't let me interfere with your pleasure. Why don't you try it yourself?"

"Would you rather watch?"

"Oh, no, of course not. This is a real pleasure, thank you. The little devil would dent a freight train."

"All ready, Stover?" said Cockrell.

The players stood in two lines, four yards apart. No one laughed. They looked at Stover, thrilling a little with his communicated recklessness, grunting forth their approval.

"Good nerve."

"The real stuff."

"Pure grit."

"Little devil."

Stover's face had gone white, the eyes had dwindled and set intensely, the line of the mouth was drawn taut, while on his forehead the wind lifted the matted hair like a banner. In the middle of the lane, crowding forward, his arms out, ready to spring, his glance fixed on McCarty, he waited like a champion guarding the pass.

"All right, Stover?"

Some one near him repeated the question.

"Come on!" he answered.

McCarty's one hundred and seventy pounds came rushing down. But this time the instinct was strong. He slacked a bit at the end as Stover, not waiting his coming, plunged in to meet him. Down they went again, but this time it was the force of Stover's impact that threw them.

When Cockrell came up, Dink, altogether groggy, was entwined around one leg of McCarty with a gaunt grin of possession.

They hauled him up, patted him on the back and walked him up and down in the cool breeze. Suddenly, after several minutes, the mist rose. He saw the fields and heard the sharp cries of the coaches prodding on the players. Then he looked up to find Garry Cockrell's arm about him.

"All right now?" said the captain's voice.

Stover hastily put the arm away from him.

"I'm all right."

"Did I give you a little too much, youngster?"

"I'm ready again," said Stover instantly.

Cockrell laughed a short, contented laugh.

"You've done enough for to-day."

"I'll learn how," said Dink doggedly.

"You know the real things in football now, my boy," said the captain shortly. "We'll teach you the rest."

Dink thought he meant it sarcastically.

"You will give me a chance, won't you?" he said.

"Yes," said the captain, laying his hand on his shoulder with a smile. "You'll get chance enough, my boy. Fact is, I'm going to start you in at end on the scrub. You'll get all the hard knocks you're looking for there. You won't get any credit for what you do—but you boys are what's going to make the team."

"Oh, sir, do you mean it?"

"I'm in the habit of meaning things."

"I'll—I'll——" began Stover, and then stopped before the impossibility of expressing how many times his life should be thrown to the winds.

"I know you will," said the captain, amused. "And now, you young bulldog, back to your room and shake yourself together."

"But I want to go on; I'm feeling fine."

"Off the field," said the captain with terrific sternness.

Dink went like a dog ordered home, slowly, unwillingly, turning from time to time in hopes that his captain would relent.

When he had passed the chapel and the strife of the practice had dropped away he felt all at once sharp, busy pains running up his back and over his shoulders. But he minded them not. At that moment with the words of the captain—his captain forever now—ringing in his ears, he would have gone forth gratefully to tackle the whole team, one after another, from wiry little Charlie DeSoto to the elephantine P. Lentz.

Suddenly a thought came to him.

"Gee, I bet I shook up Tough McCarty, anyhow," he said grimly. And refreshed by this delightful thought he went briskly across the Circle.

At the steps Finnegan, coming out the door, hailed him excitedly:

"Hi, Dink, we've got a Freshman who's setting up to jiggers and eclairs. Hurry up!"

"No," said Dink.

"What?" said Dennis faintly.

"I can't," said Dink, bristling; "I'm in training."



XIII

The Tennessee Shad, reclining in an armchair softened by sofa cushions, gave critical directions to Dink Stover and Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, to whom, with great unselfishness, he had surrendered all the privileges of the hanging committee.

"Suppose you agitate yourself a little," said Dink, descending from a rickety chair which, placed on a table, had allowed him to suspend a sporting print from the dusty moulding.

"The sight of you at hard labor," said Finnegan, from a bureau on the other side of the room, "would fill me with cheer, delectation and comfort."

The Tennessee Shad, by four convulsive processes, reached his feet.

"Oh, very well," he said carelessly. "Thought you preferred to run this show yourselves."

Picking up a poster, he selected with malicious intent the most unsuitable spot in the room and started to climb the bureau, remarking:

"This is about it, I should say."

The artistic souls of Dink and Dennis protested.

"Murder, no!"

"You chump!"

"Too big for it."

"Well, if you know so much," said the Tennessee Shad, halting before the last upward struggle and holding out the poster, "where would you put it?"

Stover and Dennis indignantly bore the poster away and with much effort and straining tacked it in an appropriate place.

"Why, that is better," said the Tennessee Shad admiringly, regaining his chair, not too openly. "Much better. Looks fine! Great! Say, I've got an idea. Stick the ballet girl under it."

"What?"

"You're crazy!"

"Well, where would you put it?"

"Here, you chump."

"Why, that's not half bad, either," said the Tennessee Shad, once more back among the cushions. "A trifle more to the left, down—now up—good—make fast. First rate; guess you have the best eye. Now where are you going to put this?"

By this process of self-debasement and generous exterior admiration the Tennessee Shad successfully perceived the heavy hanging and arranging brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

The vital touches were given, the transom was hung with heavy black canvas; a curtain of the same was so arranged as to permit its being drawn over the telltale cracks of the door. Dennis and Stover, sent to reconnoiter from the hall, waited while the Tennessee Shad passed a lighted candle back and forth over the sealed entrance. One traitor crack was discovered and promptly obliterated.

"Now we're secure," said the Tennessee Shad. "Cave of Silence and all that sort of thing. The Old Roman would have to smell us to get on."

"How about the windows?" said Dink.

"They're a cinch," said the Shad. "When you get the shade down and the shutters closed a blanket will fix them snug as a bug in a rug. Now, at nine o'clock we can go to bed without suffering from drafts. Ha, ha—joke."

"Burn the midnight oil, etceteray—etcetera."

"To-morrow," said the Tennessee Shad, "Volts Mashon is going to install a safety light for us."

"Elucidate," said Dink.

"A safety light is a light that has a connection with the door. Shut door, light; open door, where is Moses? Midnight reading made a pleasure."

"Marvelous!"

"Oh, I've heard of that before," said Finnegan.

The Tennessee Shad, meanwhile, had been busy stretching a string from his bed to the hot-air register and from a stick at the foot of his bed to a pulley at the top.

Stover and Finnegan waited respectfully until the Shad, having finished his operations, deigned to give a practical exhibition.

"This thing is simple," said he, stretching out on his bed and pulling a string at one side. "Opens hot-air register. No applause necessary. But this is a little, comforting idea of my own. Protection from sudden change of temperature without bodily exposure." Extending his hand he pulled the other rope, which, running through the pulley over his head, brought the counterpane quickly over him. "How's that? No sitting up, reaching down, fumbling about in zero weather."

"That's good as far as it goes," said Dennis, whose natural state was not one of reverence; "but how about the window? Some one has to get up and shut the window."

"Simple as eggs," said the Shad, yawning disdainfully. "A string and a pulley do the trick, see? Down comes the window. All worked at the same exchange. Well, Dink, you may lead the cheer."

Now, Stover suddenly remembered a device he had been told of, and, remembering it, to give it the appearance of improvisation he pretended to deliberate.

"Well," said the Tennessee Shad, surprised, "my humble little inventions don't seem to impress you."

"Naw."

"They don't, eh! Why not?"

"Oh, it's the right principle," said Stover, assuming a deliberate look; "but crude, very crude, backwoods, primitive, and all that sort of thing."

The Tennessee Shad, amazed, looked at Finnegan, who spoke:

"Crude, Dink?"

"Why, yes. All depends on whether the Shad wakes up or not. And then, why hand labor?"

"I suppose you have something more recherche to offer," said the Tennessee Shad cuttingly, having recovered.

"Why, yes, I might," said Stover coolly. "A real inventor would run the whole thing by machinery. Who's got an alarm clock?"

Dennis, mystified, returned running with his.

Stover, securing it with strings, fastened it firmly on the table, which he moved near the scene of operations. He then lowered the upper half of the window, assuring himself that a slight impetus would start it. To the sash he attached a stout string which he ran through a pulley fixed to the top of the window frame; to the string he fastened a weight which he carefully balanced on the edge of a chair; to the weight, thus fastened, he attached another string which he led to the clock and made fast to the stem that wound the alarm. Then he straightened up, cast a glance over the Shad's handiwork and went to the register.

"When the window shuts it should open the register, of course—first principles," he said crushingly. He disconnected the string from the bed and arranged it on the window. Having wound the clock he addressed his audience:

"It's a simple little thing," he said with a wave of his hand. "I happened to remember that the key of an alarm clock turns as the alarm works. That's all there is to it. Set the alarm when you want to wake up—see—like this. Alarm goes off, winds up spring, throws weight off balance, weight falls, shuts the window, opens the register and you stay under the covers. Practical demonstration now proceeding."

The mechanism worked exactly as he had predicted. The Tennessee Shad and the Wild Irishman, transfixed with awe, watched with dropped mouths the operation. Finnegan, the first to recover, salaamed in true Oriental fashion.

"Mr. Edison," he said in a whisper, "don't take advantage of two innocent babes in the wood. Did you honestly just work this out?"

"Oh, no, of course not," said Dink loftily. "My father told me,—it cost him a fortune; he gave years of his life to perfecting it!"

"And this to me!" said the exponent of the superlative reproachfully.

The Tennessee Shad rose and offered his hand with a gesture worthy of Washington.

"Sir to you. I am your humble servant. Wonderful! Marvelous! Smashing! Terrific! Sublime!"

"Do it again," said Dennis de Brian de Boru.

The alarm being wound and set, the operation was repeated with the same success, while Dennis danced about excitedly and the Tennessee Shad contemplated it with dreamy absorption.

"Jemima!" said Dennis. "And it works for any time?"

"Any time," said Dink, with one hand gracefully resting on his hip.

"Cracky!" exclaimed Dennis, prancing excitedly toward the door. "I'll get the whole House up."

"Dennis!"

Finnegan stopped, surprised at the note of authority in the Tennessee Shad's voice.

"Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan; back and sit down."