RIVALS FOR
                               THE TEAM




[Illustration: “‘Go it, you Winslow.’”]




                              RIVALS FOR
                               THE TEAM

                           A STORY OF SCHOOL
                           LIFE AND FOOTBALL


                                  BY
                          RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

           AUTHOR OF “DANFORTH PLAYS THE GAME,” “THE PURPLE
                            PENNANT,” ETC.


                            [Illustration]


                            ILLUSTRATED BY
                             C. M. RELYEA


                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                         NEW YORK      LONDON
                                 1916




                          Copyright, 1916, by
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


                Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                                   PAGE

     I. AFTER PRACTICE                        1
    II. PLAYERS AND COACH                    12
   III. A MOONLIGHT PLUNGE                   22
    IV. “I’M ORDWAY”                         29
     V. HUGH FINDS A WORD                    42
    VI. THE AWKWARD SQUAD                    54
   VII. HIS GRACE, THE DUKE                  65
  VIII. BATTLE!                              77
    IX. CATHCART, PROCTOR                    90
     X. HANRIHAN PROMISES                   106
    XI. THIRTEEN TO TEN                     118
   XII. TWO IN A CANOE                      136
  XIII. BACK TO THE FOLD                    149
   XIV. BERT CONFIDES                       164
    XV. GRAFTON SCORES                      178
   XVI. A BROKEN RIB                        192
  XVII. FRIENDS IN NEED                     203
 XVIII. BENCHED                             220
   XIX. BEHIND THE BOATHOUSE                234
    XX. “HOBO” WINS FAME                    248
   XXI. HUGH MOVES AGAIN                    260
  XXII. POP ELUCIDATES                      270
 XXIII. IN THE LIME-LIGHT                   283
  XXIV. HUGH GOES TO THE VILLAGE            298
   XXV. BOWLES ATTENDS A FOOTBALL GAME      311
  XXVI. HUGH IS UNMASKED                    326




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


 “‘Go it, you Winslow’”                           _Frontispiece_

                                                         FACING
                                                          PAGE

 “‘I’m Ordway’”                                              38

 “That avenue of escape was out of the question”             92

 “‘You’re off,’ said Hugh. ‘May I have that, please?’”      288




RIVALS FOR THE TEAM




CHAPTER I

AFTER PRACTICE


“I’d hate to live up here in summer, Bert,” said Ted Trafford,
carefully easing his five feet and ten inches of tired, aching body to
the window-seat and turning a perspiring face to the faint breeze that
entered. “It must be hotter than Tophet.”

“Well, it’s up high enough to get the air, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s high enough, all right! If I had to climb those three flights
of stairs a dozen times a day――――”

“Wonder why slate stairs seem harder than others,” said Nick Blake,
fanning himself with a magazine.

“Because they _are_ harder, naturally.” Ted looked about the study. “It
isn’t so bad, though, when you get here. And I dare say it’ll be fine
in winter. You haven’t an open fireplace, though.”

“I had one last year in 19. It was only a bother. If I had a fire the
ashes got all over the shop. Besides, it was always so warm in the room
that when I wanted one I had to keep all the windows open. There’s
dandy steam heat in Lothrop.”

“There is in Trow, but――――”

“Oh, get out, Ted!” interrupted Nick. “I’ve been in your study when the
thermometer wasn’t over fifty! Everyone knows that Trow’s a regular
barn in cold weather.”

“Well, some days, when the wind’s a certain way――――”

“Trow’s older than this, isn’t it?” asked Bert Winslow. He had yielded
the window-seat to his visitors and was stretched out on the leather
cushions of a Morris chair, the back of which he had lowered to the
last notch. It was very warm in Number 29, for the study was on the
top floor of the building and overhead the September sun had been
shining all day on the slate roof. Then, too, since the Fall Term did
not begin for two days yet, all but a few of the rooms were closed and
what little breeze there was found scant circulation. Bert had opened
the door and windows of 32, across the corridor, and that helped to
some extent, but Lothrop Hall seemed to have caught all the heat of the
past summer and to be bent on hoarding it on the top floor.

“Why, yes,” Ted was replying. “Trow was the first of the new buildings.
It’s been built about twelve years, I think. I dare say the heating is
better here and in Manning. Still, I never have any trouble keeping
warm. You chaps over here are a pampered lot, anyway, with your common
room and your library and your recreation room and――and your shower
baths and all the rest of it! Sybarites, that’s what you are!”

“Don’t judge us all, Ted, by this palatial suite,” begged Nick. “Some
of us live in monastic simplicity, in one bare little room.”

“I’ve seen your bare little room,” replied Ted, smiling. “You’re a lot
of mollycoddles, the bunch of you. What time is it?”

Nick, stretched at the other end of the seat, his cheek on the
windowsill and his gaze fixed on the shadowed stretches of the campus
below, moved his hand toward his fob only to let it fall idly again.

“Look yourself, you lazy beggar,” he murmured.

“Seventeen to five,” said Bert, dropping his watch back with a sigh.
Ted digested the information in silence for several minutes. Nick
continued his somnolent regard of the campus and Bert thoughtfully
tapped together the toes of his rubber-soled shoes.

“More than an hour to supper,” said Ted finally. “Not that I’m
particularly hungry, though. It’s too hot to eat. Honest, fellows, I
believe it’s hotter up here than it is in New York! If this last week
is a sample of New England summer weather I don’t see why folks come
here the way they do.”

“It’s the fine, pure air,” muttered Nick.

“Air! That’s the trouble. There isn’t any. This place is hotter than
Broadway on the Fourth of July!”

“There’s a breeze now,” said Nick. “Get it?”

“Sure; it almost blew out the door,” replied Ted sarcastically. “Come
on over to my place. It’s a heap cooler, I’ll bet.”

“I’m too tired to move,” protested his host. “We can go downstairs, if
you like. I dare say it’s cooler in the common room.”

“Who’s with you this year?” asked Ted, his gaze traveling to the open
door of the bedroom at the left.

“Fellow by the name of Ordway, or something. Comes from Maryland. Upper
middler, I think.”

“How’d you happen to go in with him? Thought you liked rooming alone.”

“So I do, but I’ve had my eye on this suite ever since I came over from
Manning. Gus Livingstone and I had it all fixed to take it together and
applied last fall for it. Then, when Gus didn’t come back after winter
vacation, I tried to get Nick to come in with me, and――――”

“I wanted to hard enough,” said Nick, without turning, “but my dad
kicked like a steer. He said seven hundred was too much for his pocket.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Ted. “Is that what this stands you? Seven hundred
each?”

Bert nodded. “Yes, it’s high in price and elevation too.”

“What do you pay downstairs, Nick?”

“Three hundred. That’s what you pay, isn’t it?”

“Two-fifty. Seven hundred for room and board, a hundred and fifty for
tuition and a couple of hundred for incidentals; total, ten hundred and
fifty a year! Say, Bert, I’ll bet your old man will be mighty glad when
you’re through here!”

“Then it’ll be college,” answered Bert, “and I guess that won’t be much
cheaper. We do cost our folks a lot of money, though, don’t we?”

“We’re worth it, though,” said Nick. “At least, some of us are.”

Ted Trafford laughed. “I’m worth two-fifty and you’re worth three, eh?
And Bert’s worth seven. Well, it’s a peach of a suite, all right, Bert,
but I’d just as lief have my dive. Besides, I’ve got it to myself. When
you have another chap with you he always wants to cut up when you want
to plug. Not for mine, thanks!”

“Single blessedness for me, too,” murmured Nick. “When I was in Manning
in junior year I roomed with young Fessenden and we nearly got fired
because we were always scrapping. He was a quarrelsome little brute!”

“What happened to him? Did you kill him finally?”

“No, but I wanted to lots of times. He quit the next year. Went to some
school in Pennsylvania. His folks wanted him nearer home, he said. I
don’t see why they should!”

“Hope you like your new chum, Bert,” said Ted. “Broadway’s a funny
name, though, eh?”

“Ordway,” Bert corrected. “I dare say we’ll get along. I have a nice
disposition.”

Nick giggled and Bert gazed across at him speculatively. “Of course
everyone knows why Nick rooms alone,” he added. “He’s too mean to live
with.”

Nick raised his head to answer, but thought better of it. A vagrant
breeze crept through the windows and the boys said, “A-ah!” in
ecstatic chorus.

“Listen,” said Nick, suddenly propping himself up on the cushions.
“I’ve got a good scheme!”

“Shoot!” replied Ted, yawning widely.

“After supper we’ll beat it down to the pool and go in! Will you?”

“Ugh! Mud and frogs!” said Bert.

“Mud and frogs your eye! It’s dandy if you don’t go to wading around.
We don’t have to stay in the pool, anyway. Rules don’t apply before
term begins. We can go in the river. No one will see us.”

“Safest thing,” said Ted, “is to find a canoe and upset, the way we did
a couple of years ago. Pete used to go crazy and threaten to report us,
but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t an accident.”

“Aren’t any canoes out yet, I guess,” said Bert. “And the boat house is
locked.”

“Never mind your old canoes,” said Nick. “That’s an underhand scheme,
anyway. Fair and open’s my motto! Oh, say, but that water’s going to
feel good!”

“That isn’t such an awfully rotten idea,” said Ted. “I’m blessed if I
know where to look for my trunks, though.”

“You don’t need ’em. It’ll be dark by half-past seven.”

“Not with a moon shining, you silly chump,” said Bert. “You can take
a pair of running trunks of mine, Ted. Only, worse luck, I’ll have to
unpack that box over there.” He pulled himself from the chair with a
sigh of resignation and kicked experimentally at the lid of the packing
case. “Wonder where I can find a hatchet,” he muttered. “Got anything I
can bust this lid off with, Nick?”

“Got a screwdriver I use on my typewriter,” responded Nick helpfully.

“What time is it?” inquired Ted again.

“Find out, you lazy beast,” replied Bert. “Tell me how to get this
thing open, you chaps.”

“Pick it up and drop it on the floor a few times,” said Ted.

“Bore a hole and put a dynamite cartridge in,” suggested Nick.

“Oh, all right, then you go without the trunks,” said Bert, returning
to his chair. “I’d like to know why I pounded a million dollars’
worth of nails into it, anyway.” There was no solution forthcoming,
it seemed. Nick had returned to his study of the world outside and
Ted had picked up the discarded magazine and was idly looking at the
pictures. Bert sighed again and stretched his arms overhead. Then he
said “_Ouch!_” suddenly and loudly and ruefully rubbed a shoulder. Ted
looked over and grinned.

“Sore?” he asked.

“Sore as a boil! You wouldn’t think a fellow would get so soft in
summer, swimming and playing tennis and everything. I wish Bonner would
let us off tomorrow. I think he might. It wouldn’t hurt him to give us
a day’s rest.”

“He’s going to give us the afternoon off,” replied Ted. “Only morning
practice tomorrow. You can thank me for it, Bert. It was my pretty
little thought.”

“He wouldn’t have seen me on the field tomorrow, anyway,” remarked
Nick. “I’m going down to the junction to meet Guy at three-something.
Come on with me.”

“I wouldn’t make that trip in this weather for the King of England,
much less Guy Murtha,” responded Bert impressively.

“I’ll buy you ice cream,” tempted Nick. Bert shook his head.

“Will you come, Ted?” asked Nick.

“I will――not! I love Guy like a brother, _but_――――”

“Oh, you fellows make me weary!” sighed Nick. “No sporting blood at
all! No――――”

“Is that your idea of sporting?” jeered Ted. “Get on a hot, stuffy
little one-horse train and dawdle down to Needham Junction, four miles
away, in something like half an hour? I’ve made that trip once this
fall and, Fortune aiding me, I shan’t make it again!”

“Come on to supper,” said Bert. “It’s almost a quarter of. It will be
cooler over there on the steps than it is here, too.”

“Just when I was beginning to get comfortable,” mourned Nick. “Say,
Ted, did you do this last year?”

“Sure! Do what?”

“Come up for early practice.”

“I did. And we had ten days of it last fall instead of only a week. You
fellows needn’t kick!”

“I do kick, though, Teddy, old scout! Look here, you! I gave up a
whole week of the best sort of fun at Deal Beach to come up here and
frizzle and fry in my juices and chase a contemptible football over
a sun-smitten cow-pasture! Needn’t kick, eh? Why, man, back there
there’s a nice cool breeze off the ocean and a band playing moosics and
piles of eats and――and nothing to do but play around! And just because
I’m――I’m patriotic enough and unselfish enough to leave all that you
lie there like a ton of bricks and tell me I needn’t kick! I do kick!
I’m kicking!”

“I hear you,” murmured Ted. “Go on kicking. Nobody’s going to miss you
if you go back to Deal Beach tomorrow. We could have got on well enough
without you, anyhow. You were simply asked because we thought you’d
feel hurt if you weren’t.”

“I like your nerve!” gasped Nick. “My word! Who’s been doing the work
for five days out there? Trying to get drive into you chaps is like
pulling teeth! Why, you miserable sandy-haired――――”

“Oh, come on,” begged Bert. “I’m getting hungry. Anyone want to wash
up? Come along if you do. You’ll have to wipe your hands on your
handkerchiefs, though. They haven’t given us any towels yet.”

“What’s the good of washing if we’re going in swimming later?” asked
Nick, sprawling off the window-seat.

“Because for once, old son, you’re dining with gentlemen,” Ted
answered, gripping the smaller youth by the shoulders and propelling
him towards the door in the wake of Bert.

“Honest?” wailed Nick. “I’d much rather dine with you, Ted!”




CHAPTER II

PLAYERS AND COACH


A few minutes later the three boys were crossing the campus unhurriedly
and with an impressive disregard of “Keep Off the Grass” signs. And
three good-looking, healthy, well-set-up youths they were. Their bare
heads――there wasn’t a hat among them――showed three distinctly different
colors. Ted Trafford’s hair was sandy, Bert Winslow’s black, Nick
Blake’s reddish-brown. Between sandy hair and brown lay a matter of
four inches in height, with black hair halving the difference. In build
the trio were again at variance. Ted was a big, broad-bodied chap,
Bert was slenderer, without being thin, and Nick was at once short and
slight. Although Nick was only five months Bert’s junior――and Bert was
seventeen――his smallness made him appear much younger. He had a thin
face, deeply tanned, and gray eyes. Nick’s usual expression was one of
intense, even somber, thoughtfulness. He had, in fact, the appearance
of a boy with a deep and secret sorrow. But in his case appearances
were deceptive, or, if he had a sorrow, it was merely that there are
only a certain number of ways to create mischief and that he had pretty
well exhausted them all.

Bert Winslow was a very normal-looking fellow with good features, a
healthy color under his tan and a pair of eyes so darkly blue that
they seemed black. Ted’s features were more rugged, like his body,
and, if such a thing is possible, his complexion was as sandy as his
hair. He had a wealth of freckles and two rather sleepy-looking brown
eyes very far apart. Ted’s countenance expressed good nature first,
and after that a sort of quiet purposefulness. One wouldn’t have
expected brilliant mental feats of Ted, but one would have expected
him to succeed where physical strength and dogged determination were
demanded. Ted thought slowly, reached conclusions only after some
effort, and then stuck immovably to his conclusions. He had been three
years at Grafton School and during that time his great ambition had
been to captain the football team in his senior year. He had attained
that ambition and had now substituted another, which was, to put it in
his own words, “Knock the tar out of Mt. Morris in November!” Having
accomplished or failed in that, Ted would undoubtedly drag another
ambition from the recesses of his mind. But at present that was
enough. With Ted it was always “one thing at a time.”

Between them, the three boys loitering across the grass represented
just three-elevenths of the Grafton School Football Team. Captain
Trafford played right tackle, Bert Winslow was left half-back and
Nick Blake was quarter. Ted had played on the School Team ever since
he had entered the lower middle class, which meant two years. Bert,
who was now an upper-middler, had made his position only last season,
beating out Siedhof in the final contests. Nick had been second-string
quarter-back last year and now, owing to the graduation of Balch,
had automatically succeeded to the position. Barring unforeseen and
unexpected accidents, each of the trio was certain of playing the
coming season through as first-choice.

At Grafton the school buildings stood in a row midway across the
campus, a three-acre expanse of level turf intersected by gravel paths
shaded by elms and surrounded by an ancient fence of granite posts and
squared timbers, the latter thoughtlessly set with an angle uppermost.
In shape the campus was a square with one corner rounded off where
Crumbie Street changed its mind about continuing northward and swung
westward to River Street and, a half mile beyond that, the station.
River Street marked the westerly limits of the school property all the
way to the river, which, in its turn, formed the southerly boundary.
The campus proper ended at School Street, but successive purchases
had added many more acres between it and the Needham River, so that
now the school property extended in an unbroken strip some two blocks
wide from Needham Street, at the back, all the way down to the river.
What was virtually a continuation of the campus lay to the south of
School Street, but, since it was of later acquisition, it was, for some
unknown reason, called “the green.” A tree-bordered path led through
the middle of the green to Front Street, and, across that quiet road,
an ornamental gateway of old brick and sandstone and lacy ironwork. Set
in the right-hand pillar was a bronze tablet bearing the inscription:
“Lothrop Field. In Memory of Charles Parkinson Lothrop, Class of 1911.”

Beyond the gateway the land sloped gently to the river, and here was
the Field House, near at hand as one entered, the tennis courts to the
right, the diamond beyond them, the running track to the left of the
gate, with the School Team gridiron inclosed in the blue-gray ribbon,
and, further toward the river, the practice field. Beyond that again,
near where Crumbie Street crossed by an old covered bridge on its way
to Needham, stood the boat house.

But we are too far afield, for our present destination is that of
the three boys whom we left crossing the campus. At one corner of
the green, where River and School Streets intersect, stood two
old-fashioned white dwelling houses. The one nearer River Street
had been just there when the land was bought by the School, but the
second had stood at the other end of the green and had been moved to
its present location to make room for tennis courts. When, however,
a few years later, Lothrop Field had been presented to the School
the tennis courts were transferred thither and now, save for the two
white-clapboarded, many-dormered houses, the green was only a pleasant,
shady expanse of close-cropped sward. The old houses, used now as
dormitories since the buildings in the campus failed to meet the
requirements of the ever-increasing student body, still retained the
names of their former owners. The larger one, nearer the side street,
was known as Morris House, the other as Fuller.

At a few minutes before six this afternoon the front steps and the
adjacent turf――there was no such thing as a porch or piazza on either
dwelling――were sprinkled with boys. There seemed to be at least two
dozen of them. As a matter of fact, until Ted, Bert and Nick joined
them, they numbered exactly seventeen. In age they varied from sixteen
to twenty, although only one of them, John Driver, commonly known
as “Pop,” had attained the latter age. Pop was, as he laughingly
explained it, “doing the four-year course in six.” That was a slight
exaggeration, for Pop had been at Grafton only four years, was now a
senior and would undoubtedly be graduated next June whether he was
willing or not! He was big and slow; slow to move, slow to speak and
slow to anger. He played right guard in a steady, highly-satisfactory
if not brilliant fashion.

Since this was Tuesday, the fellows who had gathered from various and,
in some instances, distant parts of the country for early football
practice, had been at Grafton six days. Those six days had been busy
ones. There had been morning and afternoon sessions on each day and
the weather had been almost unreasonably hot. More than one of the
candidates showed the result of those strenuous days in his tired face
and fagged movements. Not one of the twenty who had been bidden had,
however, failed to respond. Those summons meant a week less of vacation
time and an added week of hard labor, but it also meant honor, for only
the most likely of last year’s first and second players had been called
on. While the fellows were occupying their rooms in the dormitories,
neither of the big dining halls in Lothrop and Manning were open and so
they were being served with meals at Morris where, in a room and at a
table designed to accommodate only the dozen or fourteen residents of
the two houses, they were packed in like sardines in a box.

However, none minded that so long as there was plenty of food on the
dishes and plenty of milk in the big pitchers. Mr. Bonner, the coach,
arrived just as the crowd had squeezed themselves to the two tables
and had begun their onslaught. Somehow he didn’t look quite like the
popular conception of a football coach. He was of only medium size and
height and had the preoccupied expression of a business man with his
mind on the day’s sales. In age he was twenty-eight or -nine, had a
somewhat narrow face, brown hair and eyes and wore a closely-trimmed
mustache that was several shades lighter than his hair. The reason for
the mustache was apparent when, on close observation, what seemed at
first to be a natural crease running from one corner of his mouth was
seen to be a deep, white scar. The mustache didn’t hide the whole of
that scar but it concealed the most of it. David Bonner had acquired it
in a certain hard-fought game when he was playing end in his junior
year at Amherst, and there was a story at Grafton to the effect that
his opponent in that contest had subsequently fared much worse than Mr.
Bonner had. However, as the coach was a remarkably even-tempered man,
that may have been merely an invention of someone’s imagination.

Supper proceeded with as much and probably no more noise than is
usual when twenty fairly hungry youths are left to their own devices
at table. There was a good deal of loud talk, some far from silent
mastication, much rattling and clashing of dishes and, it is not to
be denied, some horse-play toward the end of the meal. Two capable
if not over-neat waitresses flitted in and out and did their best to
supply the demands on the kitchen. Now and then Coach Bonner’s voice
was raised in warning, but for the most part that gentleman attended
closely to the business of consuming his supper, and it was not until
cold rice pudding had appeared as the final course that he entered
into the conversation to any extent. By that time many of the fellows,
having either picked the raisins from their portion of the dessert or
engulfed it with the aid of much milk and sugar, had moved back from
the tables to loll more comfortably half in, half off their chairs.
The four windows were wide open and a slight breeze was swaying the
curtain-cords, but the heat of the day still lingered.

“I’ll trouble you for the milk, Willard,” said the coach, eyeing his
pudding with but slight enthusiasm. “Thanks. Traf, I’ve been thinking
that maybe it would be well to cut out practise tomorrow. You fellows
have been at it pretty hard and this weather is trying. I thought it
might be cooler tomorrow, but that sunset says not. What do you think?”

“Oh, we ought to be able to stand a little work in the morning, if we
don’t do any in the afternoon. Still, it’s just as you like, Coach. It
is awfully hot for football, and that’s a fact.”

“Have a heart, Ted!” implored Derry.

“That’s the scheme, sir,” exclaimed Nick Blake. “It’s going to be
hotter than ever tomorrow.” Nick expertly thrust some bread crumbs down
Pop Driver’s neck. “We’d all be better for a rest, sir. Just look at
Pop here! Overcome by the heat, Mr. Bonner!”

Pop, squirming and muttering, really looked as if something was vastly
wrong with him, but the coach didn’t seem inclined to accept Nick’s
theory. He studied Pop’s spasms a moment in thoughtful silence and then
pushed back his chair.

“We’ll cut it out for tomorrow, then,” he announced as he stood up.
“And, by the way, Mrs. Fair will give us our breakfasts in the
morning, but we’ll have to shift for ourselves at noon.”

“They’re going to serve cold lunch in Manning at noon, sir,” said one
of the boys. “I guess we can get in on that.”

“All right. Next practise, then, will be Thursday at three-thirty.
Traf, you look me up tomorrow evening, will you? There are one or two
things――and bring Quinn along with you, please. Don’t stay around here,
fellows. Give Mrs. Fair a chance to get these tables cleaned off. Good
night.”




CHAPTER III

A MOONLIGHT PLUNGE


Coach Bonner passed out briskly and the fellows, with much scraping
of chairs and good-natured horseplay, followed. Twilight was settling
over the world. The sun had just dropped behind the distant spires
and tree-tops of the village and on Mt. Grafton, the sugar-loaf hill
behind the school, its last rays rested on the spindley observatory
crowning the rocky summit. The campus was fast filling with shadows,
and along the streets and walks the lamps made lemon-yellow points in
the purple dusk. In Manning and Trow and Lothrop lights glowed wanly at
the entrances, but School Hall and the gymnasium were dark. Doubtless
there were lights, too, in the Principal’s residence, far to the right,
but the clustering maples hid all of that but the roof. A faint breeze
fluttered from the southwest, but the evening was still oppressively
hot. By twos and threes and in larger groups the fellows wandered away,
some turning their steps toward the village, a half-mile distant,
others seeking the dormitories. Bert, Nick and Ted, however, still
loitered on the steps of Morris, waiting for the moon to rise, and with
them loitered Pop Driver.

“It’s frightfully hot over in my room,” observed the latter, sprawling
his big form over the steps. “I’m on the wrong side of the building
tonight.”

Bert prodded Nick with his foot. “Guess I’ll bunk in with you, old
man,” he said.

“You’ll bunk on the window-seat, then. Why don’t you sleep in one of
the rooms across the hall? No one would care.”

“Perhaps I will. Where’s that moon? Coming along with us, Pop?”

“I guess so. I’d like to stay in the water all night.”

“There’s the moon now, isn’t it?” asked Ted lazily.

“Someone lighted up in Fuller,” replied Bert. “Let’s go along down. We
don’t have to have the moon, anyhow.”

“It’s a lot more fun,” said Nick drowsily, settling back against Bert’s
knees. “Say, fellows, isn’t it nice that school begins day after
tomorrow? Aren’t you all tickled to death?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” yawned Pop.

“No, come on and get that swim,” agreed Ted, getting to his feet and
ungently tousling Bert’s hair. “If we wait for the moon we never will
get in. And I’m hot and uncomfortable and――――”

“Something’s happened to the moon,” murmured Nick. “Probably got a
hot-box.”

“What about towels?” Bert got up, letting Nick subside violently
against the steps.

“We can dry off on the float,” said Ted. “Come on. All in!”

Nick, rubbing the back of his head, arose with groans and protests and
draped himself against Pop Driver.

“Nick wants to be carried,” he whimpered. “Pop, please carry Nick. He’s
so ’ittle!”

Pop complacently gathered the other in his big arms and bore him away
around the corner of the house, Nick babbling nonsense. “Pop likes to
carry his ’ittle Nick, doesn’t he? Pop loves his ’ittle Nick.”

“Pop loves him to death,” grunted Pop, depositing him suddenly in a
barberry hedge. There arose a piercing wail from Nick as he came into
contact with the thorns, the sound of cracking shrubbery and the thud
of Pop’s feet as he hurried off into the darkness.

“Oh, you big brute!” shouted Nick. “You wait till I get hold of you!
I’m full of stickers! Which way did that big, ugly hippopotamus go,
Ted?”

“Straight on into the engulfing gloom,” answered Bert. “Look out for
that clothes-line, Nick.”

“Pop!” called Nick sweetly. “Pop, come back to me, darling! Honest,
Pop, I haven’t a thing in my hands! I just want to love you!”

“I’m busy,” responded Pop from the darkness ahead. “I got some of those
old thorns myself.”

“Oh, Pop, I’m _so_ sorry! Do they hurt, Pop? Come back here and let me
drive them in for you!”

Peace was restored by the time they were passing the tennis courts.
Eastward, above the trees beyond the little river, a silvery radiance
heralded the moon. They skirted the running track and made their way
to where, dimly, the dark form of the boathouse loomed ahead of them.
When they reached it Pop experimentally tried all the doors, but found
them fast. They disrobed in the shadow of the building and then, making
certain that there were no passers on the road, a few rods distant,
they raced down the float and plunged into the water with whoops of
glee. When their heads emerged the moon had topped the trees and,
save where the shadow of the covered bridge lay across it, the stream
was bathed in silver. The water was warm, but far cooler than the
air, and Pop grunted ecstatically as he rolled over on his back and
floated lazily, blinking at the moon. It was then that Nick obtained
his revenge. Sinking very quietly, he swam across under water, emerged
behind the unsuspecting Pop, and――

“_Glug-gug-gug!_” observed Pop, as his head went suddenly under and his
feet flashed white in the radiance. When he arose again, sputtering and
gasping, Nick was far across the stream, paddling gently and crooning a
little song.

    “There was an old man and his name was Pop.
     His head went down and his feet went up!”

Stirring moments then, ending in the terrestrial flight of Nick, Pop
begging him to come back and be drowned! Finally they all gathered
under the bridge and lolled on a crosspiece and dabbled their legs in
the cool water and talked. Once a team went past overhead, and once an
automobile sped across, roaring fearsomely and threatening to bring the
old structure down on top of them. Then quiet again, and the winding
stretch of the river below, black and silver. With the rising of the
moon the little breeze had found courage and now blew cooler from the
west. Nine o’clock struck in the village and they splashed back into
the water and swam to the float. Half an hour later they parted in
front of Trow, Ted and Pop turning in there and Bert and Nick going on
to Lothrop.

Nick turned off at the top of the second flight and Bert continued to
his room. But when he had donned pajamas the latter descended again,
the slate steps gratefully cool to his bare feet, and he and Nick
stretched out on the window-seat and talked while the breeze blew past
them and softly rustled the papers on the table. Ten o’clock struck.
The conversation became fitful. Once Nick snored frankly and then
jerked himself awake again, and replied brightly to an observation of
Bert’s made five minutes before. Through the window they could look for
nearly a mile over fields and tree-bordered roads. A little way off the
buildings of a small farm were clustered about the black shadows of a
group of elms. Beyond that two streaks of silver glittered where the
moon glinted on the railroad tracks. Bert wondered if, after all, the
view from this side of the building was not more attractive than that
from the front, wondered what sort of a chap this new roommate of his
would turn out to be, wondered if he had not taken a pretty big chance
in accepting him sight-unseen, wondered why Nick didn’t wake himself
up with his own snoring, wondered――

Some time in the early morning he disentangled himself from the
encumbering Nick and groped his way down to his own room. He didn’t
remember much about it afterwards, though.




CHAPTER IV

“I’M ORDWAY”


Bert, for one, found himself at a loose end the next morning. He
lingered as long as possible over breakfast, but the day promised to be
even hotter than the one before, and his appetite was soon satisfied.
He and Nick sat for a while in the shade of the trees near the middle
gate, but the heat soon drove them indoors, and Bert climbed up to
Number 29 and unenthusiastically wrenched the lid from the packing case
there and set about the distribution of the contents. The few pictures
were deposited against a wall, since it was best to see what his
roommate was bringing before deciding as to the disposition of them.
His books he found place for and he laid some extra clothing in the
dresser drawers in the bedroom on the right. He had selected that room
in preference to the one on the other side since Lothrop stood at right
angles to the other buildings in the row and from “29b” one had an
uninterrupted view along the fronts of Trow, School and Manning. Only
the gymnasium, hiding behind the shoulder of the last dormitory, was
out of sight. From the other bedroom, “29a,” much of this view was cut
off by a corner of Trow, and Bert acted on the basis of “first come,
first served.”

The study was a good-sized square room, lighted by two windows
set in a dormer, beneath which was a wide and comfortable seat. A
bright-hued rug occupied the center of the floor and the walls were
papered attractively to the height of the picture molding in tones of
golden-brown. Above the molding was a foot of white plaster, and two
plastered beams ran the length of the ceiling. The furniture was of
brown mission; two study desks, a table in the center of the room, a
Morris chair upholstered in brown leather beside it, two armchairs, two
sidechairs, and a settle. The desks were supplied with green-shaded
droplights.

The bedrooms were identical. Each had a single dormer window. Blue
two-tone paper covered the walls and a rug flanked the single white
iron bed. A dresser, a washstand and a chair completed the furnishings.
There was generous closet room.

Bert was glad when Nick came in at eleven and gave him an excuse for
stopping his half-hearted labors. Nick was down to a pair of soiled
flannel trousers, supported by a most disreputable leather strap that
scarcely deserved the name of belt, a white tennis shirt, open at the
throat, and a pair of brown canvas “sneakers.” And he looked as though
he thought he still had far too much on as he stretched himself out on
the window-seat, sprawled one foot over the edge, and hung the other
across the sill.

“Four or five fellows came a while ago,” he announced. “Leddy and Ayer
and some others. Hairwig, too. Hairwig looks like he’d been sitting in
the sun all summer. Tanned to beat the band.”

Hairwig’s real name was Helwig, and he was instructor in physics and
chemistry. Being a German, the boys had at first called him Herr
Helwig, and later had shortened it to Hairwig. The news of his advent
didn’t, however, greatly interest Bert, who inquired:

“Any of our masters shown up?”

“Haven’t seen any. I told you, didn’t I, that I ran across Smiles in
New York one day? He was all dolled up. Said he was going out west
somewhere to teach at a summer school. He seemed real glad to see me,
too. Smiles is a good old sport.”

“He isn’t old.”

“N-no, but Latin instructors always seem old. They know so plaguey
much! Who do you think will be proctor up here this year?”

“Cathcart, I suppose. He’s the only senior on the floor. Wonder if
we’re going to have a big junior class.”

“Whopping, I heard; eighty-something. Know anyone coming up?”

Bert shook his head. “No, and I’m glad I don’t. You always have to look
after them, and they’re nuisances.”

“You’ll have to do the guide and mentor act for your friend Ordway,”
reminded Nick, with a malicious grin. “Did you say he was an upper
middler?”

“Yes.”

“I’d hate to enter a school in the middle like that,” reflected Nick.
“I should think it would be hard.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Well, you don’t know anyone, in the first place. It would take most
of the year to get acquainted, and then you’d only have one year left.
Going to put him up for Lit?”

“I suppose so, if he wants me to. You have to do that much for a
roommate, I guess.”

“When’s he coming?”

“Don’t know and don’t care. Want to buy a good racket?”

“How much?”

“Dollar and a half.”

Nick accepted the proffered article and viewed it dubiously.

“I’d have to have it restrung.”

“Why would you? There’s only one string gone. Take it along and try it.”

“Give you a dollar.”

“I guess you would! It cost seven. Hand it over here, you Shylock.”

“Dollar and a quarter, then.”

“Cash?”

“Dollar down and the balance――――”

“Some time?”

“No, next month; honest.”

“All right, but you’re getting it dirt cheap. Where’s the dollar?”

“Downstairs. You don’t think I carry all that money around with me, do
you?”

“All right, but we’ll stop in for it before you forget it. Are you
really going over to the Junction to meet Guy?”

“Surest thing you know! Want to come along?”

“I wouldn’t make the trip on that hot, dusty old train for a thousand
dollars!”

“You ought to, though. You ought to go over and meet your new chum.”

Bert grunted. “I’m likely to! I’ve been wondering if he will bring any
pictures and truck like that. I hope, if he does, he won’t have the
usual rot. This is too good a study to fill up with chromos. Something
tells me, Nick, that I’m an awful idiot to go in with some fellow I’ve
never seen. Bet you anything he will be a fresh kid.”

Nick chuckled. “I decline the wager, Bert. Also, I agree with you that
you’re taking a chance. Still, you can’t tell. Where does he come from?”

“Somewhere in Maryland.”

“Baltimore? I knew a fellow who lived in Baltimore, and he was a
crackajack.”

“No, some place I never heard of. I forget it now. I suppose that makes
him a Southerner, doesn’t it?”

“Of course. Anything against Southerners?”

“No, only they’re a bit stuck up. If he tries it with me I’ll shut him
up mighty quick!”

“Bert, your disposition is entirely ruined. I guess it’s the weather.
I’m glad I’m not What’s-his-name, Ordway.”

“If you’d had the decency to come in with me――――”

“Don’t blame me, old scout. Write to dad about it. I wanted to, all
right. Put something on and let’s do something.”

“What is there to do?”

“I’ll play you a set of tennis. It won’t be bad if we take it easily.”

“Tennis! I see myself racing around a court a day like this! How hot is
it, anyway?”

“About two hundred in the shade. Then why stay in the shade? Say, Bert,
what sort of a captain is Ted going to make?”

“Good.”

“I wonder!”

“Don’t see why not. He’s popular, and he’s a good player――――”

“Yes, but he isn’t awfully――oh, you know what I mean; he isn’t exactly
brilliant, eh?”

“He doesn’t need to be. Bonner will look after that part of it.”

“Well, I never saw any sparks flying from Bonner, for that matter,”
returned Nick dryly.

“What’s the good of being brilliant, as you call it? In football, I
mean. It’s knowledge of the game that does the business. And Bonner
certainly knows football; and so does Ted.”

“Yes, that’s so. All right. We’ll hope for the best. Come on down and
I’ll find that old dollar. Then we’ll go over and see Leddy. He’s
probably trying to unpack, and he oughtn’t to do it in this weather.”

They managed to kill time until luncheon was served in Manning, and
after that they joined a crowd in the common room there and remained
until it was time for Nick to go to the station to take the train for
Needham Junction. Mr. Russell, Greek instructor, having arrived, Bert
went over to Trow to consult him about his new work. Greek had been
hard sledding for Bert the year before and he viewed the first four
books of Hellenica with misgiving. The consultation in the master’s
study in Trow took up the better part of a half hour, for “J. P.,” as
Mr. Russell was called, was not to be hurried. When he finally got away
Bert climbed up to Pop Driver’s room on the floor above and found Ted
Trafford and Roy Dresser in possession. Roy was Pop’s roommate. Pop, he
explained, had gone to the village to buy some lemons. They had drawn
lots and Pop had lost. If he didn’t die of sunstroke before he got back
there was going to be a lemonade of magnificence. Bert decided to wait
around.

But Pop tarried and after awhile Ted discovered that it was after four
o’clock and hurried out. They could hear him taking the stairs three
at a time. Bert abandoned hope of that lemonade and followed Ted, Roy
Dresser apologizing for Pop and adding that if Bert would keep his ears
open he, Roy, would yell across when the lemons arrived.

It seemed a trifle cooler in the campus and the shadow of Lothrop
stretched far along the red brick walk that ran, the main artery of
travel, along the fronts of the buildings. A locomotive shrieked
despairingly a mile or so away and Bert knew that the first of the two
trains on which the bulk of the returning students would arrive was
nearing the station. Again his thoughts reverted to Ordway and again he
wondered pessimistically what sort of a youth fate was going to impose
upon him. Ordway might not come until six-thirty, however; many fellows
didn’t; and Bert rather hoped he would be of their number. He was
disposed to postpone the inevitable.

The rooms in Lothrop had been thrown open, doors and windows alike,
and the corridors were far cooler than they had been since he had
taken possession of Number 29. Quite a draft of air was blowing down
the staircase well. In the study, he put away the last few belongings,
placed the packing-case outside for removal to the store-room, and
finally, lowering the shades at the windows through which the afternoon
sun was shining hotly, took up his schedule and, stretching himself
on the window-seat, studied it dubiously. Mathematics 4, Greek 3,
English 4, French 1, History 3a; eighteen hours altogether, aside
from Physical Training. From the latter, however, he was exempt so
long as he was in training with the football team. Eighteen hours was
the least required for the third year, and he was expected to select
another study. He mentally pondered the respective merits of physics
and chemistry. Physics was known as a “snap course,” but Bert was in
favor of leaving it for his senior year. The same with chemistry. He
rather leaned toward German, but Mr. Teschner, or “Jules,” as he was
usually called, was a hard taskmaster and his classes were not viewed
with much enthusiasm. Still, unless he took physics or chemistry it
would have to be German, and after a few minutes of cogitation he wrote
German 1 on the card in his hand. The schedule had yet to be approved
and he wondered whether he would be allowed to go in so heavily for
languages. The schedule was a bit top-heavy in that way, with thirteen
hours of the twenty-one given to Greek, German, and French. Probably
they would make him substitute physics for German. He slipped the
card in his pocket, with a sigh for the vexations of life, and became
aware that Lothrop Hall was at last inhabited. Steps scuffed on the
stairs, voices sounded, bags and trunks thumped. The invasion had
begun in earnest. Half inclined to go down and see if Guy Murtha had
arrived, he nevertheless found himself too lazy to stir and so when, a
few moments later, footsteps drew near the open door he was still
sprawled on his back.

“This must be it, Bowles,” said a voice. “Yes, twenty-nine. Oh, I beg
your pardon!”

Bert sat up and slid his feet to the floor. In the doorway stood a
slim, pleasant-faced youth, and behind him a very serious-looking
man held an extremely large kit-bag, an umbrella, and a folded gray
overcoat. The youth advanced toward Bert, smiling and removing a gray
glove.

“I fancy you are Winslow,” he said. “I’m Ordway. I believe we share
these quarters, eh?”

[Illustration: “‘I’m Ordway.’”]

Bert shook hands. “Glad to know you,” he replied. “Beastly hot, isn’t
it? That’s your room over there.” He glanced inquiringly at the second
arrival who, still holding his burdens, had paused just inside the
door. But if he looked for an introduction none was forthcoming.
Ordway, who had now removed both gloves and tossed them nonchalantly to
the table, evidently had no thought of making his companion known.

“Ripping view from here,” he said, glancing from the window. Then,
turning: “In there, Bowles,” he directed, and nodded toward the open
door of the bedroom. “Just dump them, will you? I’ll look after them
myself.”

Bag and coat and umbrella disappeared, Bert’s gaze following their
bearer curiously. Ordway had thrust his hands in his pockets and was
leisurely examining the study. His manner was a queer mixture of quiet
assurance and diffidence. When he had shaken hands he had reddened
perceptibly, but now he was looking the place over just as though, as
Bert silently told himself, he had ordered the whole thing. “I like
this,” he said, after a moment. “Rather jolly, isn’t it?”

Bert was spared a reply, for just then the mysterious Bowles appeared
in the bedroom doorway. “Shan’t I unpack the bag, sir?” he asked.

“No, never mind it, thanks.” Ordway consulted a watch. “I fancy you’d
better beat it, Bowles. Your train leaves in fifteen minutes, you know.”

“Yes, sir, but there’s another one, sir, a bit later.”

“Are you sure of that?” Ordway glanced inquiringly at Bert. “He’s
wrong, eh?”

“Yes, the next one doesn’t go until seven-five. If he wants to get
this one he will have to hustle. It’s a good ten minutes’ walk to the
station.”

“Thanks. This gentleman’s right, Bowles. You’d better start along. You
know your way, eh? Tell mother I’m quite all right; everything’s very
jolly.” The boy walked to the door with the man and pulled a leather
purse from his pocket. “Better treat yourself to a bit of a jinks when
you get to town. You’ll have four hours to wait, you know. Good-by,
Bowles.”

“Thank you, Master Hugh. Good-by, sir. I hung the coat in the closet,
sir, and the keys are on the dresser.”

“Right, Bowles. Now beat it or you’ll miss that train. Good-by.”

Ordway sauntered back to the study, smiling. “Bowles always gets
time-tables twisted,” he chuckled. “Rum chap that way. Bet you anything
you like he will miss that train.”

“He’s got twelve minutes,” said Bert. “Is he a――a servant?”

“Bowles? Yes, he’s been looking after me ever since I was out of the
nursery. He’s a little bit of all right, Bowles.” Ordway seated himself
on the farther end of the seat, looked interestedly about the campus,
no longer silent and empty, and finally turned his gaze to Bert.
Again the color crept into his cheeks and he said diffidently, almost
stammeringly:

“I say, Winslow, I hope you’re going to like me, you know.”




CHAPTER V

HUGH FINDS A WORD


Half an hour later, having left his new roommate to the business of
unpacking his trunk, Bert was in Number 12, and he and Nick and Guy
Murtha, their host, were talking it over.

“We saw him on the train just after we left the city,” Guy was saying.
“Some of us had been in the diner and when we came back through the
parlor car we saw this chap and the man with him. They had a table
and the kid was eating a lunch out of a box and the chap in the derby
hat was waiting on him, or, anyway, that’s how it looked. He’d take a
sandwich out of the box and put it on the kid’s plate and then he’d
move the mustard nearer and sort of fuss over the table. He wasn’t
eating a thing himself. I suppose he ate at second table!”

Guy was a tall fellow of eighteen, a senior and captain of the nine.
He was not a handsome youth; rather plain, in fact; but he had so many
likable qualities that one soon forgot that his nose was short and
broad, that his heavy eyebrows met above it, that his mouth was large
and somewhat loose and that his pale eyes, of a washed-out blue, were
too small. He had a jolly laugh and a pleasant, deep voice that won
friends.

Nick chuckled. “When they got off at the Junction the man got confused
and tried to get back on the express again, and your friend stood in
the middle of the platform, with his hands in his pockets, and shouted:
‘Bowles, you silly ass, came back here!’ Everyone laughed like the
dickens.”

“He’s English,” said Bert dismally.

“Bowles? Rawther!”

“Ordway, too. I asked him. He was born in England; I forget where; is
there a place called Pants?”

“Not in England, dear boy,” remonstrated Nick. “It would be Trousers.”

“Hants, you mean,” said Guy. “Somewhere in the south of England.”

“That’s it, Hants. His father is English, he says, and his mother
American. They live in Maryland now.”

“Nice-looking chap,” said Guy.

Bert nodded. “Yes,” he agreed doubtfully. “Yes, he’s a nice-looking
kid, but――――” His voice dwindled to silence. Nick laughed.

“Cheer up, old scout! He can’t be awfully British if he has an American
mama and lives in ‘Maryland, my Maryland.’ Bet you the sodas he will be
singing ‘Dixie’ when you get back!”

“More likely ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘God Save the King,’” replied Bert
ruefully. After a moment: “He’s got awfully smooth manners,” he added
grudgingly. “Makes me feel like a――an Indian.”

“Wish he might have kept Bowles here with him,” said Nick regretfully.
“It would have given Lothrop a lot of class!”

“I liked what I saw of him,” said Guy, “and I guess you’ll take to him
when you know him better, Bert. Anyway, he’s a gentleman. You might
have been saddled with a regular mucker, you know. We get one now and
then.”

“Stop looking at me,” said Nick.

“Oh, he’s a gentleman, all right,” laughed Bert. “That’s the trouble.
I’ve got to live up to him, don’t you see? I dare say he will put on
a dinner jacket and stuff his handkerchief up his sleeve. He makes me
feel like an awfully rough, uncivilized sort of fellow.”

“Does he wear a wrist watch?” asked Nick.

“No, he has it on a fob. And, say, fellows, if you want to see some
swell things, come up and give his dresser the once-over! Solid silver
everything! Crest, too. Oh, we’re going to be pretty classy in 29 this
year, I can tell you!” And Bert sighed.

“I’ll have to look up my crest,” observed Nick thoughtfully.

“Your crest!” jeered Bert.

“That’s what I said. I’ve got a peachy one. Dad had someone make
it for him and put it on the automobile doors. It was the proper
caper that year to have your crest on your auto, and Dad doesn’t let
anyone put anything over on him. I told him I thought a cake of soap,
rampant, surrounded by the motto, ‘Won’t dry the skin,’ would be rather
appropriate, but he didn’t like it. Dad makes soap, you know.”

“Yes, I do know,” replied Guy. “I tried some of it once. And it didn’t
dry the skin, either. It took it off.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to wash your hands with laundry soap,” said
Nick. “Of course, if you’re used to that sort, though, and don’t know
any better――――”

“I suppose,” said Guy gravely, “you’ll have to sort of look after
Ordway, Bert, now that he hasn’t any valet; lay out his things in the
morning, you know, and put his studs in, and all that.”

“Fine!” approved Nick. “Maybe he will give you a tip now and then. Say,
did you pipe the gray suede gloves he wore? Think of gloves on a day
like this! Still, _noblesse oblige_, eh, what?”

“I noticed the stunning Norfolk suit he wore,” said Guy. “I’ll bet that
wasn’t cut out by any village tailor down in Maryland.”

“Rawther not!” drawled Nick. “I fawncy he goes across every year and
gets togged out in Bond Street. What ho, old top!”

“Well, I guess I’ll go back and pilot him down to supper,” said Bert.
“Mind if I bring him down here afterwards, Guy? Or, say, you fellows
come up, will you? I――I sort of funk the job of talking up to his level
all evening!”

“You bet we’ll come,” agreed Nick. “I want to meet him. Something tells
me that he and I have a lot of mutual acquaintances amongst royalty in
dear old England.”

“Well, don’t come up there and act the fool,” warned Bert. “He’s new
yet and not used to our simple, democratic ways.”

“Oh, I won’t shock him,” chuckled Nick. “Nothing like that, dear boy,
’pon honor. You’ll see that he and I will get along like a house on
fire. Say, what’s his front name, the one you take hold by?”

“Hugh,” answered Bert from the doorway, “Hugh Brodwick Ordway. Some
name, what?”

“Rawther!”

“Cut it,” laughed Guy, “or we’ll all be talking that way! I feel it
coming on. We’ll come up after supper, Bert, and help you entertain,
although when I’m going to get my things unpacked――――”

“I’ll help you, Guy,” Nick volunteered. “I’m a remarkable little
unpacker. A misplace for everything and everything misplaced, is my
motto. Bye-bye, Bert. Give my love to Broadway――I should say Ordway.
Tell him I’ll be around later and cheer him up!”

Hugh Ordway was not, however, singing either ‘Dixie’ or anything else
when Bert got back to Number 29. He was sitting at the window, attired
principally in a bathrobe, gazing a trifle disconsolately, or so Bert
thought, out over the campus. He turned as Bert entered.

“I say, Winslow, what about a bath?” he asked. “Is there a tub on this
floor?”

“Yes, but it’s five minutes to supper time, Ordway. You’d better leave
it till afterwards.”

The other reflected. “Very well,” he said. “And, another thing.” He
hesitated. “Do I put on――er――do I dress, you know?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go down in that thing,” said Bert gravely.

“No, but just regular things, eh? You see, I really don’t know much
about American prep schools. I dare say I’ll make an awful ass of
myself,” he added ruefully.

“Wear whatever you like. Sweaters are the only things barred. I’ll wait
for you and show you the way.”

“Thanks,” was the grateful reply. “That’s decent of you. I won’t be
a minute.” He disappeared into the bedroom and, judging from the
sounds, managed a very good substitute for that prohibited bath. Still,
although he wasn’t back in a minute, Bert didn’t have long to wait.
Ordway returned in a blue serge suit and patent leather shoes. He was
certainly, thought Bert, a mighty good-looking chap; straight, well
formed, with a clear, fair complexion, nice brown eyes and hair of the
same color. His nose was a bit aquiline and his chin was at once round
and strong looking. Bert, studying him as he paused to make certain
that he had placed a handkerchief in his pocket, decided that he was
far more American than English in appearance, whatever his character
might prove.

Bert moved to the door, while Ordway was securing the missing article
of attire, and pulled it open. “All right?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks.”

Bert unconsciously stepped aside for the other to pass out first.
Afterwards, going down the stairs, he was angry with himself for
having done so.

“I’m just as good as he is, for all his airs,” he told himself, “and
I’m the older, too.”

The big dining hall which ran across the north end of the building and
accommodated one hundred students and faculty members at its fourteen
tables, was well filled when they entered. Bert led Ordway toward the
table at the far end of the room at which he had sat last term only
to find that, in the confusion incident to the beginning of school,
all the seats there had been taken. There were not two empty chairs
together anywhere near by and, in the end, Bert and Ordway were obliged
to sit at separate tables, the latter, as Bert saw, being sandwiched in
between Pop Driver and a lower middle boy named Keller. Bert’s own seat
placed him amongst fellows whom he knew only well enough to speak to,
and he was frankly bored and left the room as soon as he had satisfied
a not enthusiastic hunger. Ordway, however, was still at table when
Bert went out, and the latter, desiring to accept Nate Leddy’s
invitation to go canoeing, nevertheless listened to the voice of duty
and waited in the corridor for his friend’s appearance. Ordway came out
finally and Bert suggested that they take a stroll around the grounds.

“Did you get enough feed?” he asked politely.

“Yes, thanks. Awfully good chow, too, I think.”

“Chow?” asked Bert.

“Food, I meant. I say, Winslow, I wish you’d help me break myself of
using――er――English expressions like that, you know. I want to talk like
the rest of you chaps. Of course, I know a lot of American slang now,
but I don’t seem to always get it in right, someway. Now what do you
say for ‘chow’?”

“‘Eats,’ I guess,” laughed Bert. “You’ll be talking like the rest of us
quick enough. Don’t worry. Besides, what’s it matter?”

“Well, a chap doesn’t like to seem _different_, if you know what I
mean. And, anyway, I’m as much American as English.”

“You’re not if you were born in England.”

“Oh, I say, Winslow, a chap can’t control that! I might have been born
in France, you know. Fact is, I came rather near it! But that wouldn’t
have made me a Frenchie, eh?”

“No, but your father’s English and you were born in England. That makes
you a British citizen, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, but――――” He paused. Then, confidentially: “Fact is, Winslow,
I’m awfully fond of this country, don’t you know, and as long as I’m
going to be here at Grafton two years I’d like to――to be like the rest
of you, if you know what I mean. Of course, I _am_ English. There’s no
getting around that. But my mother’s American as anything. Her family
has lived in Maryland for a hundred and fifty years, I think it is, and
I always consider myself about half American, too. On the other side,
now, they’re always taking me for a Yankee.”

Bert laughed. “They might on the other side, but they wouldn’t here,
Ordway! This is School Hall. The recitation rooms and offices are on
the first two floors. On the third floor there’s the assembly room
where you attend chapel in the morning and hear lectures and things. On
the floor above are the clubrooms: The Forum, the Literary, the Glee,
and the Banjo and Mandolin. And the _Campus_, the monthly paper, has
its rooms there, too. The building beyond is Manning. That’s where the
juniors live. It’s about like Lothrop, only it has ten more rooms.”

“The juniors live by themselves, eh? How young are they?”

“Oh, we have ’em as young as twelve now and then, but that’s unusual.
They’re thirteen and fourteen, mostly. The rooms downstairs on this
end are Jules’s. That’s Mr. Teschner, French and German instructor. He
and Mrs. Teschner have four rooms there, separate from the rest of
the hall. Then Mrs. Prouty, the matron, lives on the floor above, just
over them. ‘Mother Prouty,’ the fellows call her. Mr. Gring is on that
floor, and Mr. Sargent on the floor above. They call Gring ‘Cupid’ and
Sargent ‘Pete.’ All the faculty have pet names. Doctor Duncan――that’s
his cottage there behind the trees――is ‘Charlie.’ Then there’s ‘Nell’;
you’ll have him in math; his name is Nellis; and Mr. Smiley is called
‘Smiles,’ and Mr. Gibbs is ‘Gusty,’ and Mr. Rumford is ‘Jimmy,’ and Mr.
Russell is ‘J. P.,’ and so on.”

“I’ll have to learn them, won’t I?” asked Ordway soberly. “That’s the
gymnasium there, isn’t it? I fancy it isn’t open, eh?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I had a lot of fun in the summer looking at the catalogue and
wondering what things would really be like. You know, you Americans
have――――”

“‘You Americans’?” asked Bert quizzically.

Ordway laughed and colored. “I mean, _we_ Americans have a way of
laying it on a bit thick, if you know what I mean. Can’t always believe
all you read in the advertisements, you know. That’s why I fancied
this place might not be quite up to specifications. It is, though.
Everything’s just about the way the catalogue gives it.”

“I guess so. Let’s go back to the room. That’s about all there is to
see. Except Morris and Fuller over there. The two white houses at the
corner. They’re dormitories, too. Morris has twelve fellows and Fuller
eight. Some chaps like them, but I never thought I’d care for them.
It’s getting a lot cooler, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the breeze is bully. You’d say ‘bully,’ wouldn’t you?” he added
doubtfully.

“I guess so,” laughed Bert. “Or ‘great,’ or ‘fine and dandy.’ What
would you say?”

“Oh,” replied the other vaguely, “we might say it was ‘ripping,’ or
‘topping,’ or ‘a little bit of all right.’ ‘Bully’ wasn’t the word I
meant, though. It was――――” He hesitated. Then, “Corking!” he exclaimed
triumphantly. “That’s the word!”

“You’ll do,” Bert laughed. “Come on up.”




CHAPTER VI

THE AWKWARD SQUAD


The school year began the next morning at half past seven when the
bell on School Hall rang its imperative summons to chapel. Hugh
Ordway, sitting beside Bert in one of the yellow settees in the back
of assembly hall――precedent gave the back seats to the upper-class
fellows at chapel and to the lower-class boys at other times――observed
everything with lively interest. When, the short service over, the
fellows rustled back into their seats to listen to the Principal’s
talk, Bert whispered to Hugh: “You’d better try for the Glee Club, old
man, if you can sing like that.”

Hugh flushed, but made no answer.

Doctor Duncan, middle-aged, tall, sallow, bearded, and near-sighted,
arose to the clapping of hands and moved to the front of the platform.
His little speech was the same, almost word for word, that the
seniors had heard three times already, but the juniors huddled in
the front rows listened with flattering attention and were, we will
trust, properly impressed. The Principal’s advice was excellent and
they certainly couldn’t do better than follow it. Then came a few
announcements: Mr. Gibbs had been detained at home by illness and
pending his return to duty his classes in History would be taken by
Mr. Gring; German 1 would be held in Room F instead of H, as formerly;
seniors and upper middlers whose courses had not been as yet approved
would submit them to Mr. Rumford during the morning; the reception to
students would be held that evening at the Principal’s residence, and
it was hoped that all would attend.

Dr. Duncan bowed, removed his spectacles and substituted his
shell-rimmed glasses, and said, “Dismissed,” and the hall emptied.
Breakfast was at eight o’clock and the first recitation period was
at nine. Neither Bert nor Hugh had a first-hour class and they took
advantage of that to wait on Mr. Rumford, Assistant Principal and
instructor in history, with their schedules. Bert’s misgivings proved
not idle, for the German course was changed to physics. Hugh had
elected physics, chemistry, and history in addition to the regular
studies for his year and his card was promptly approved. At ten they
went into Mathematics 4 together and at eleven they had Greek. In the
afternoon there were two more periods for Bert――French and History,
and one, the latter, for Hugh.

They came out of Mr. Gring’s class together and hurried to the room
to leave their books and change to football togs. Hugh, who had
the evening before announced his desire to play football and been
unblushingly encouraged by Nick, had provided himself with a most
complete supply of clothing and paraphernalia, including a head-guard
and a football! He confessed that he hadn’t been certain about the
necessity for the last article, but had decided to be on the safe side.
He looked remarkably spick-and-span in his brand-new regalia when they
sallied forth again, a violent contrast to his companion, whose togs
were battle-scarred and weather-worn and not, it must be confessed,
overclean.

All Grafton, in togs or out, was flocking toward Lothrop Field, and
Hugh’s immaculate costume was no longer spectacular once they had
joined the throng, since at least half the entering class appeared
to have donned football attire quite as fresh and unsullied as his.
The juniors were not allowed to try for the School Team but, under
the direction of Mr. Sargent, Athletic Director, were trained in the
science of the game and later herded into a first or second junior
eleven and held notable contests. Still later, the upper-middle and
lower-middle classes formed teams and they and the first juniors
battled for the class championship, a much-coveted prize.

Already a few tennis enthusiasts were busy on the courts as Bert and
his companion passed through the gate, and Hugh stopped a moment to
watch. “I dare say a chap doesn’t have much time for tennis if he plays
football,” he remarked questioningly.

“None at all,” said Bert. “Do you play?”

“A bit. It’s a rip――a corking game, I think. If I don’t have any luck
with football I’ll have to go in for it. I saw a notice up about a Fall
Tournament, I think.”

“Yes, they have one in a week or two. We’ve got some rather decent
players here. Last year we didn’t do a thing to Mount Morris.”

“You mean to say you beat them, eh?”

“We certainly did! They didn’t have a chance. By the way, have you a
racket?”

“Oh, yes; thanks.”

“I sold a peach to Nick yesterday for a dollar and a quarter. I was
thinking maybe you might have liked it.”

“That’s awfully good of you,” replied the other gratefully, “but I’m
fixed very well for rackets. I brought three along.”

“Three! Then I guess you wouldn’t have needed that one. There’s your
crowd over there, Hugh. You wait with them, and Bonner will be after
you in a few minutes.”

“They’re the rookies, eh? Right, old chap. See you later, then.”

What happened to Hugh that afternoon Bert didn’t have much time to
discover, for the regulars had a pretty busy session. But afterwards,
back in 29, Hugh recounted his experiences with a quiet drollery that
brought many chuckles from Bert.

“It was all rather different from what I’d thought,” said Hugh,
reflectively rubbing a sore knee. “A chap named Hannigan――――”

“Hanrihan,” corrected Bert. “Sub tackle.”

“Well, he took a lot of us over on the other side of the tennis courts
and made us do the most astonishing things, do you know? We’d chuck the
ball around, one to another, and then when someone would drop it, you
know, instead of picking it up he’d have to fall over on the wobbly
thing!” He rubbed his knee again. “I had to do it myself a number of
times. A bit awkward I felt, too. The silly ball had a way of not being
there when you dropped down for it. And this chap Hanrihan was most
awfully impatient with us, do you know? Some of the things he said
were quite rude. I fancy he didn’t mean anything, though. I dare say
we were a bit trying. There was a fat Johnnie with us who was always
trying to catch the ball in his mouth and, of course, his mouth wasn’t
big enough. Hannigan――I should say Hanrihan――told me he was a tub of
butter. Queer thing to call him, I think. I wondered why a tub of
butter. Because he was fat, eh?”

“Yes. You mustn’t mind what they say to you, Hugh. It’s part of the
game.”

“I didn’t. Of course, I understood that. Then he had us line up and
start off when he rolled the ball and run like a ballywhack. But you’ve
been through with all that, eh?”

“Yes. Not just what you expected, then?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Bert. You see, on the other side we don’t
practise quite that way. I mean we――well, we don’t――aren’t so serious
about it, if you know what I mean. Take rugger, for instance――――”

“I beg your pardon?” interrupted Bert, puzzled.

“Eh? Oh, rugger――Rugby, you know. We rather make play of it. Of course,
we do practise, but not the way you American――I should say _we_
American――chaps do. But I dare say it isn’t so hard when you’ve learned
a bit, eh?”

“I’m afraid it is,” replied Bert. “The more you know and the better
player you are the harder grind you have to go through. If you make
the School Team you work like a slave for a good six weeks.”

“Really? But what for?”

“Why to beat Mount Morris, of course. And any others we can before
that.”

“Yes, of course, but――――” Hugh hesitated, with a perplexed frown on his
face. “Mind you, I’ve seen football played, and I got beastly nervous
and excited about it, but what I’m trying to get at is this, old chap:
suppose, now, you didn’t work so hard in getting ready for the other
chap, what would happen?”

“We’d get licked, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t like that, eh?”

“Like it? I should say not! Mount Morris beat us last year, twelve to
three, and this place was like a――a morgue for a week afterwards. This
year we’re going to rub it into her.”

“That’s what I gathered,” said Hugh. “I mean, those fellows I saw play
last Autumn didn’t seem to be having much sport, you know; didn’t
appear to be there for――for the fun they’d get out of it, if you know
what I mean. It looked to me very much like hard work. The only time
they showed any pleasure was when they scored on the other chaps. Then
they’d wave their arms and jump up and down like mad. And a thousand
or so Johnnies in the seats would cheer themselves hoarse. But that was
’varsity football, and I fancied you fellows here at prep school would
go in more for the fun of it.”

“Oh, we get plenty of fun out of it,” said Bert. “We all like it, or
we wouldn’t do it. That is――――” He hesitated. “Maybe some of us do
go in for football more for the glory than the sport,” he went on
thoughtfully. “I guess it’s got to be rather a――a fashion. It’s like
this, Hugh. A fellow who makes his School Team is a bit important and
he gets some reputation and fellows like to know him. And then, when he
goes up to college he finds it easier. If he keeps on making good he
meets fellows he wants to know, fellows who can help him, you see, and
he probably makes one of the sophomore societies and――there he is.”

“Yes?” said Hugh questioningly.

“I don’t mean that all the fellows who try for the team think about all
that. They don’t. Lots of them play football because they love it. But
now, take Ted Trafford, for instance. Ted’s a bully sort of a fellow,
but he isn’t――well, brilliant. Ted started out with the intention of
doing just what he has done, that is, being captain of the team in his
senior year. Ted’s going to Princeton next fall. He will get there with
the――the prestige of having captained the Grafton School Football
Team, and it’s going to be a lot easier for him. If Ted went up there
unknown he would have hard work getting anywhere, probably. He’s just
a big, good-looking, good-natured fellow, and he isn’t a smart student
and he wouldn’t shine at anything outside of football. His folks aren’t
wealthy, although I guess they have enough money to live on, and they
haven’t any special social position in New York, I suppose. But that
won’t matter in Ted’s case because he will go up there and make the
freshman team and then get on the ’varsity and make a name for himself.
He will meet fellows of money and position that way, have a good time
in college and fall into something soft when he gets through.”

“I see,” said Hugh. “It’s that way to some extent, I fancy, on the
other side. I mean that if a chap makes a name for himself at school
he finds it easier getting in when he goes up to Oxford or Cambridge.
It’s quite natural.” He was silent a moment. Then: “I dare say that
explains why you chaps go in for sports so seriously. You’re working
for something, eh?”

“No, that isn’t quite right,” objected Bert. “I didn’t mean you to
think that every fellow has that idea in his head. I guess more than
half of us take part in athletics because we want to. I know that in
my case I never thought of getting any advantages by it. In fact, I
don’t believe I ever thought the thing out before. I play football just
as I play tennis or hockey or anything else, because I like the game,
like mixing with a lot of good fellows, like to do what I can for the
School.”

“And like to beat Mount Morris,” said Hugh, smiling.

“You bet!”

“That’s the part of it that seems a bit odd, now. As I make it out you
don’t care so much for playing football as you do for winning from the
other chap, the rival school, you know. If you do win it’s all awfully
jolly and everyone’s as happy as a lark. If you lose, why, you all draw
long faces and feel sort of disgraced.”

“That’s rather exaggerated, but you get the idea. And why not? Don’t
you like to win when you start out to?”

“Oh, rather! But playing a game is playing a game, old chap. It isn’t
business or war, is it? Why not play for the fun of it? Try as hard as
you like and then if you don’t win――er――forget it!” Hugh was palpably
proud of his bit of slang.

“That’s all right,” replied Bert. “I’ve heard a lot about your English
sportsmanship and all that, but I notice that when we go over to your
side of the pond and beat you, you don’t like it a bit and you come
back at us with charges of professionalism.”

“I didn’t know we did,” said Hugh. “If we do, maybe it’s because you go
into it so hard that――that you look like professionals! You know you do
go a pretty long way sometimes to beat the other chap.”

“Oh, rot! If you’re out to beat a fellow, beat him. That’s my idea.”

“Yes, I know, but there are some things a chap wouldn’t do to win,
aren’t there? He wouldn’t cheat, for instance, and he wouldn’t take
advantage of――of technicalities, if you know what I mean. Oh, I dare
say I’ll come around to your way of looking at it after a bit,” Hugh
added cheerfully. “Anyway, I’m going to keep on plugging along at
football, because, maybe, you know, after a while I’ll really think
it’s fun!”

“Meaning that you don’t now?” laughed Bert.

Hugh smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t――yet. Beastly
grind, I’d call it now. I say, isn’t it time for eats?”




CHAPTER VII

“HIS GRACE, THE DUKE”


Hugh Ordway was a success from the start. Everyone who met him found
him interesting and attractive. They didn’t put it in just that way.
Nick said: “His Grace, the Duke of Glyndestoke, is a little bit of
all-right.” Pop Driver said, “A clever lad, that Ordway. Bring him over
some evening, Bert.” Tom Hanrihan said, “Ordway’s got the stuff in
him, Coach. He’ll bear watching. Doesn’t know a thing about football,
but he’s a regular wonder at doing what he’s told to. Makes some of
the others over there look like regular bone-heads.” Mr. Rumford,
House Master at Lothrop Hall, confided to Mrs. Rumford at dinner one
evening during the first week of school that “Ordway, in 29, is a most
interesting boy, my dear. I wish you’d remember to have him in for
dinner some Sunday. The fellow actually thinks for himself.”

Perhaps of equal importance, however, was Bert’s verdict, since,
willy-nilly, the two boys were doomed to daily companionship. Bert’s
verdict was delivered to himself three days after Hugh’s advent. “He’s
a queer duffer, but I like him,” said Bert. What was doubtless equally
fortunate was the fact that Bert’s liking was returned and perhaps with
more enthusiasm. Hugh had felt rather strange, and, although he had
tried not to show it, a little bit homesick at first, and Bert, more
from a sense of duty than from affection at that stage, had taken him
under his wing and done everything possible to make things easy for
him. As Nick had remarked, entering school in the third year had its
difficulties. Your classmates had formed their associations and your
position was a good deal like that of a fifth hand at whist. You were
not especially needed, and, while welcome enough to look on, there was
no place for you at the table. But Bert’s efforts, coupled with Hugh’s
personality, had succeeded, to continue the metaphor, in squeezing the
newcomer up to the table. If at present Hugh was not actually taking
part in the game, at least he was where he could enjoy seeing it. And
for this Hugh was grateful.

As a matter of fact, he had come to Grafton with many misgivings. He
had spent most of his sixteen years in England, only coming across
to this country at long intervals and for brief stays. At such times
his mother’s house on the East Shore in Maryland had been opened up
for two or three months, infrequently for a longer period, and Hugh
had lived a life not greatly different from his life in England. His
father, a member of Parliament, and holding a position under the
government, seldom accompanied them across. Within the last three
years Hugh’s visits in the United States had occurred annually and had
lasted longer, for his mother, whose idea it was to have Hugh educated
in America, thought it well for him to know the country better than he
did. Consequently, they had traveled a good deal last year and the year
before, accompanied invariably by a tutor. That would not have been
an American youth’s notion of ideal sight-seeing, but Hugh had been
brought up with, first a governess, and, subsequently, a tutor at his
elbow, and was thoroughly used to having them around. Nevertheless,
when, last year, the Balliol College tutor had been left behind and
a young, red-headed, and extremely energetic graduate of Yale had
appeared at Shorefields and taken the boy in charge, Hugh had welcomed
the change.

That fall and during part of the following winter Hugh had been coached
for Grafton School. He had, for instance, a far more mature outlook
but Mr. Fairway wouldn’t hear of it. Why waste a year, he asked, when,
with a little harder work, he could enter the upper middle? Hugh, who
had no great enthusiasm for the program in any case, agreed that to
waste a year would be a criminal matter and set diligently to work
unlearning not a little of what his English tutor had taught him. When,
in January, they had returned to London he was pronounced ready for
Grafton, his name was entered for admission the next September and he
had contracted a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation, most of
which, however, evaporated before he was once more headed across the
ocean in August. By that time a realization of the fact that this New
England preparatory school for which he was booked was quite dissimilar
to any school of which he had knowledge, that the fellows he would meet
there were different from him in manners and point of view, that, in
short, he was taking a plunge into a strange pool filled with strange
fishes, filled him with alarm. That he managed to conceal any sign of
it was creditable. But he had found the school not so different, after
all, from those he knew of, and the fellows were far less strange in
their ways, views and speech than he had expected. Perhaps he did not
actually give Bert the credit for bringing all this about, but he did
somehow arrive at the conclusion that his roommate had worked something
in the nature of a miracle in his behalf, and his gratitude, although
not expressed in words, was deep and evident. Gratitude even when out
of proportion to benefits bestowed is pleasant to the recipient, and
doubtless the fact that Hugh was grateful and wanted Bert to know it
had something to do with the latter’s liking for the younger boy.

That difference in age――it was in reality a matter of eight months――was
not greatly apparent. In some ways Hugh seemed older than Bert. He
had expected to enter the lower-middle class, on life and things in
general. Bert sometimes felt annoyingly young and thoughtless during
their discussions. Hugh had studied so many things out that Bert had
never even considered, and studied them out, too, to a conclusion
which, right or wrong, was at least something to tie to. Bert’s
convictions were few and concerned matters close at hand. Hugh’s
had to do with the most extraordinary things: American politics,
the British foreign policy, income taxation, home rule for Ireland,
back-court versus net play in tennis, woman suffrage, the abolition
of the stymie in golf, fancy waistcoats, farming as a profession, and
many, many more. Once Bert asked curiously if all English fellows
bothered themselves with as many things as Hugh did and failed to get
any information because Hugh forgot the question in trying to establish
himself as only a half-Englishman. (“Fifty-fifty,” suggested Bert,
which expression on being explained was seized on joyfully by Hugh and
added to his rapidly increasing collection of slang phrases.)

Next to Bert, Hugh’s liking was given to Nick Blake, and then to Pop
Driver, and after that, I suspect, to Guy Murtha. But Hugh had a
fine capacity for liking everyone he met, finding, often to Bert’s
amusement, qualities worthy of admiration in the fellows whom Bert
had long since set down as utterly hopeless. Nick and Guy were daily
visitors at Number 29, and many quite remarkable discussions took place
up there under the roof, discussions usually conducted principally by
Hugh and Guy, with Nick supplying a light comedy seasoning and Bert
acting the rôle of audience and, generally, deciding the matter in the
end. For, although frequently Bert found the argument too deep for him,
he could sum up and award a verdict like a judge of the Supreme Court!

That study up there was a very attractive room now. Hugh had not
brought a great deal with him in the way of pictures, but what he
had brought were interesting and, as Nick said, gave tone. Bert’s
wall decorations ran to “shingles” and framed posters, although he
was the proud possessor of a good etching of sheep by Monks, and a
rather jolly coaching print. Then there was a six-foot silk banner
of vivid scarlet, with the word “Grafton” in gray letters, along
one wall, and a captured Mount Morris pennant, green and white, and
showing battle marks, over the window-seat. The pillows were the usual
strange collections of all hues and styles, many of them, of course,
running to scarlet-and-gray. Hugh’s contributions were photographs,
some quite large and all handsomely framed. The one that produced the
most interest on the part of visitors was the picture of his home in
England. It was just like the baronial manors and lordly castles you
read about, Nick declared, and when he got enormously rich he was going
to buy one just like it. It was a stone building, with the stones set
in a peculiarly haphazard fashion, and it rambled over the best part
of an acre, or seemed to. There were turrets and battlements, and much
very orderly ivy, and the remains of a moat, and many stately trees
and a “front yard,” as Nick called it, that looked like two or three
perfectly level golf links thrown into one! That photograph was a
never-ceasing source of joy to Nick, and if he was there when a new
visitor arrived he always haled the latter up to see it.

“Our ancestral home,” he would explain, to Hugh’s embarrassment,
“Lockley Manor, Glyndestoke, Hants, England, by Jove!”

There was a smaller photograph of the home in Maryland, but that was
less impressive and more like what Nick had seen. The two or three
English country views interested him more. “This,” he would inform the
newcomer, “is a view of the spinney back of the home farm. And here we
have the bridge at Glyndestoke, with the Old Inn in the distance. Right
there is where Ordway catches his salmon for breakfast. Every morning
when it’s rainy enough he saunters down that road there accompanied by
the head gamekeeper and two or three assistant gamekeepers and a few
dozen gillies and fishes up a salmon. That is, he gets the salmon on
the hook, but, bless your simple heart, he doesn’t pull him in. Oh,
dear no! Rather not! I should say otherwise and vastly to the contrary.
That’s where the first assistant gamekeeper has his innings, d’ye see?
The first assistant gamekeeper takes the rod and plays the fish while
the head gamekeeper stands ready with the landing-net. It’s all very
simple, you see. Nothing irksome about it all. Ordway seldom gets tired
fishing. He――――”

“Oh, I say, Nick, cut it out, like a good chap!” Hugh would beg. “Stuff
a pillow in his mouth, someone, please!”

Nick had various sobriquets for Hugh. Sometimes he was “Your Grace,”
sometimes “The Duke of Glyndestoke,” sometimes just “’Ighness.”
Eventually, though, it was Nick who discovered in the school catalogue,
when that was issued in October, that Hugh’s full name as there set
down was Hugh Oswald Brodwick Ordway, and, in consequence of the
initials, promptly dubbed him “Hobo!”

Possibly it was its absolute incongruity that made that nickname
instantly popular. At all events, while Hugh’s more intimate friends
did not ordinarily call him “Hobo,” others and the school in general
did. But that was later, when Hugh, greatly to his surprise, found
himself a rather important person at Grafton.

Meanwhile, in that first fortnight of the fall term, Hugh was a very
busy youth. He pegged away unfalteringly at football and began to like
it, in spite of the drudgery. He weathered two cuts in the squad and
saw other fellows with far more experience released to private life
or their class teams. When, the second Saturday after the opening of
the term, Grafton played the local high school and won without trouble
by the score of 26–0, Hugh saw the game from the stand, and, with Guy
Murtha to elucidate obscure points, enjoyed it vastly. High School
presented a team badly in need of practice and Grafton ran rings about
her and could have scored at least twice more had Coach Bonner thought
fit to let her do so. But when the third period was a few minutes old
and the score was 20–0, he began to send in second-string players, with
the result that Grafton’s offensive powers waned perceptibly. One more
touchdown was secured against the opponent in the last few minutes of
the final period when Siedhof, who had substituted Bert Winslow at
left half, secured the ball after High School had blocked Nate Leddy’s
try-at-goal. Siedhof picked the ball literally from a High School
forward’s hands and in some miraculous manner swung around and dodged
and feinted his way through a crowded field and over six white lines
to a score. Leddy missed the goal and play ended soon after. Grafton
showed the benefit of those ten days of ante-season practice so long
as her first-string men were in the line-up, and, on the whole, coach,
captain, players, and supporters were well satisfied with the showing
made in that first contest.

Hugh gained more knowledge of the finer points of football that
evening when Nick, Pop Driver, Guy and Bert threshed it all out in
Number 29. Much of the discussion went over his head, but he awoke to
the realization that there was a great deal more to football than
meets the eyes of the spectator. Nick and Bert argued for ten minutes
over one play which had gone awry. Bert declared that it shouldn’t
have been called for in the circumstances and Nick proved, to his own
satisfaction at least, that it was fundamentally, psychologically,
scientifically correct. Whereupon Pop, who had listened without
comment, informed Nick that he was wrong. And, for some reason, Nick
and everyone else accepted the dictum without question. Much technical
talk followed, and Hugh was soon beyond his depth, but he tried hard
to understand and stored up a fine collection of questions to ask Bert
later.

But other interests besides football demanded Hugh’s attention. He was
nominated for election to “Lit” by Bert and seconded by Nick and Pop.
The Literary Society and The Forum were the rival social and debating
clubs. Secret organizations of any sort were tabooed at Grafton,
although there was, or was said to be, a certain lower middle-class
society known as “Thag” which was supposed to exist in defiance of the
law. If it really existed outside the imaginations of lower middlers
it was of such slight consequence that faculty winked at it. Hugh
might have been put up for The Forum instead of “Lit” had he wished,
for Guy was an enthusiastic member of the older club and did his best
to get Hugh’s permission to nominate him. Hugh, though, with no real
preference, felt that he ought to allow Bert to decide the matter for
him, and Bert naturally claimed his chum for his own society.

Hugh was also elected, much less formally, to the Canoe Club, and, at
Bert’s urging, attended several trials for the Glee Club, to which he
was eventually admitted. The elections to The Forum and the Literary
Society took place in January, but candidates were meanwhile admitted
to a quasi-membership that gave them the use of the club rooms and
allowed them to attend meetings, without participation in debates or
affairs.

In the class rooms Hugh progressed well, for the fiery-locked Mr.
Fairway had done his work thoroughly. In fact, Hugh began his career at
Grafton most satisfactorily, and progressed serenely and pleasantly and
without especial incident along the stream of school life until, just
two weeks to a day after his arrival, he struck his first snag.




CHAPTER VIII

BATTLE!


It was the custom for the juniors to hold a meeting shortly after the
beginning of the school year and elect class officials, and it was
also the custom of the lower middle and upper middle fellows to take
quite a flattering interest in the affair. Perhaps it would be more
correct to say that the lower middlers were interested in the meeting
and the upper middlers were interested in the lower middlers. Just why
the second-year boys held it incumbent to do all in their power to
prevent the juniors from getting together successfully it is difficult
to say; but they did. The upper middlers’ part in the proceedings was
theoretically to see that the first-year fellows had fair play, but
what they actually did was to have a good-natured mix-up with the lower
middlers. Consequently the evening of junior meeting was looked forward
to with pleasurable anticipation by the whole school, unless we omit a
portion of the junior class whose disposition was entirely peaceable.

The juniors did their best to hold the meeting in secret, but someone
outside the class invariably got wind of it in time to give the alarm.
Faculty had on one or two occasions, when the fun had become rather
too noisy, threatened to prohibit the ceremony, but at the time of
this story it was still observed. This fall it was arranged among the
juniors that they were to meet at five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon
in assembly hall. But the watchful lower middlers prevented that by
the simple expedient of locking both doors on the inside and leaving
the keys in, departing by way of a window and by means of a rope. By
the time Mr. Crump, the head janitor, had pushed out one of the keys
and fitted a new one it was too late for the meeting and the juniors
retired in defeat. Subsequently they allowed it to leak out that the
postponed assembly would take place in the same room on Saturday
evening, and, for some reason, their story was believed.

But on Thursday evening at about eight o’clock cries of “Lower middle,
all out!” echoed through the dormitories and books were abandoned
and green eye-shades tossed aside. In a few minutes it became known
that the juniors had stolen a march and were safely barricaded in the
gymnasium! Lower middle hastened to the scene in force, and upper
middle followed swiftly. The seniors, forgetting dignity, likewise
repaired to the gathering to play the part of spectators. As Roy
Dresser remarked to Ted Trafford as they secured positions of vantage
against the end wall of Manning, it looked very much as though, in the
words of the country newspapers, “a good time was to be had by all.”

Lower middle tried doors and windows and found them impregnable. They
were denied even a glimpse of the proceedings inside, for the juniors
had carefully draped blankets against the windows. Lower middle held
a conference of war and upper middle jeered. Upper middle not only
jeered but made remarks calculated to displease the enemy. Lower middle
replied in kind and the seniors applauded both sides. And there the
matter would have rested until the juniors had finished their meeting
and sallied forth had not an ambitious lower middler taken it into his
head to try to reach the second story by means of a copper rain-spout.
Why that should have annoyed upper middle I don’t know, but upper
middle resented the trespass and surged forward. The attack was so
unexpected that lower middle gave way and the ambitious climber was
pulled, struggling, from his place halfway up the metal pipe. He reached
the ranks of his friends no worse for the adventure, but lower middle
felt that her rights had been interfered with and the fun commenced.

Up and down in front of the gymnasium the battle waged, the two classes
fairly even in numbers. For the first few minutes it was a mere matter
of pushing and shoving, one throng against the other, lower middle
giving way only to close ranks again and force upper middle back. The
seniors, laughing and impartially encouraging the belligerents, watched
appreciatively. And in the meanwhile, quite forgotten, the juniors
proceeded undisturbed with their election.

Afterwards lower middle declared that upper middle had started the
real trouble, and upper middle stoutly laid the blame on her opponent.
At all events, what was to be expected happened and someone, losing
his temper for the instant, struck a blow. His adversary accepted
the challenge. Others at once adopted the new tactics and cries of
“Fight! Fight!” arose from both factions, and those behind surged
eagerly forward. At first it was only those in the front ranks who
became engaged, but the others soon got into action and presently some
ninety-odd youths were hard at it. More than one old score was settled,
doubtless, in the ensuing five minutes. The seniors, scattering away
from the field of battle, viewed proceedings dubiously. This was
more than precedent called for, and if a master happened to put in an
appearance there would be trouble for all concerned.

It was Ted Trafford and Joe Leslie, the latter senior class president,
who finally, calling for volunteers, attempted to put an end to
hostilities. It was no easy task, however, for while many of the
belligerents were fighting for the sheer love of it, keeping their
tempers in check, there were others who were mad clear through and who
had to be literally dragged apart. Pop Driver performed lustily for the
peace party, his simple way of tripping up one adversary and holding
the other proving peculiarly efficacious. But at that it is doubtful if
the seniors could have ended the battle for a long time if Guy Murtha,
who had intercepted a blow meant for someone else and was ruefully
nursing a bruised cheek, had not hit on the expedient of raising the
warning cry of “_Faculty, fellows, faculty!_” Fortunately, there was no
truth in the announcement, but it did the business. Panting for breath,
upper and lower middlers drew apart, searching the half-darkness with
anxious gaze, ready to disappear as soon as they discovered from which
direction danger threatened. Leslie took advantage of the lull to read
the riot act and his words of counsel had effect. Upper middle bitterly
laid the onus on lower middle and lower middle indignantly returned
the charge.

“Never mind who started it,” said Leslie impatiently. “You fellows beat
it to your rooms before you get caught. You’re a lot of silly idiots to
do a thing like this, anyway, and it would serve you all right if you
got what you deserve. Hanrihan, you ought to know better than to let
this happen!”

“Someone jumped on me,” replied Tom Hanrihan cheerfully. “I didn’t
start it, Joe.”

“Well, get away from here before anything happens. Come on, seniors.”

Nursing bruised faces and knuckles, holding handkerchiefs to bleeding
noses, the participants in the recent fracas began to disperse, slowly,
however, since neither side wished to be the first to withdraw. Still,
the incident would have been closed there and then had not the juniors
seen fit to throw open the gymnasium door at that moment and burst
triumphantly forth. That was too much for the sore and smarting lower
middlers to endure with equanimity. There was a murmur of displeasure
and then a howl of rage and the lower middlers surged up the steps and
literally crushed the juniors back through the portals.

“You like it so well in there you can stay there!” they shouted.
“It’s all night for you fellows! You don’t get out! Keep ’em in, lower
middle!”

But that was not so easy, since there were plenty of windows, and it
didn’t take the juniors long to remember the fact. The sight of figures
skulking away in the darkness soon apprised the guardians of the portal
of what was happening and shouts of “Windows, fellows, windows!” was
heard and half their number left the portico to intercept the escaping
prisoners. That presented upper middle with an excellent opportunity to
take a hand again and she seized it eagerly. In a twinkling the doorway
was cleared of lower middlers and the juniors came forth. Lower middle,
resenting upper middle’s interference, again rallied and tried to force
the portico, only to be thrice hurled back before superior numbers.
As occasion occurred, the juniors fled to the safety of Manning, or
tried to, for not a few were caught and held prisoners by the enemy.
Jeers and taunts were exchanged, while the seniors once more attempted
to persuade the warring factions to cease hostilities. Finally upper
middlers and such juniors as remained with them sallied down the steps
in force and the battle broke forth again. It was a running fight
now, for the juniors fled helter skelter for the nearby dormitory,
protected by upper middlers, while the lower middlers tried to capture
them. Confusion reigned supreme.

Hugh, who had taken part in the proceedings with zest and had sustained
a lump as large as a bantam’s egg over one eye and a set of sore
knuckles, became separated from his friends somewhere between Manning
and School Hall. A minute before he had been battling with Nick at his
side and his back against the rubbish barrel at the corner, but now
Nick had disappeared and although the combat waged behind and before
him, he was alone and unchallenged. That, thought Hugh, would never
do. For the glory of upper middle he must find an adversary. So he
raced down the bricks toward the steps of School Hall, where he could
discern under the lamplight a group of fellows struggling strenuously.
He slowed up as he approached in order to distinguish friend from foe,
but, to his surprise, someone pinioned his arms from behind and he was
thrust rudely into the group in front of the door.

“Here’s another, fellows!” panted his captor. “Get him!”

Before he knew it he was being forced up the steps and through the door
of School Hall, struggling but helpless, someone holding his arms at
his sides and someone’s hand gripped chokingly about his neck. Down the
corridor to the stairs, up the stairs, along another corridor and, at
last, into a classroom. Then the uncomfortable grasp on his neck was
removed, the door slammed, a key turned outside and Hugh, breathless
and dizzy but still unconquered, wheeled around with ready fists.

The room, one of the smaller ones, was unlighted save for what radiance
came through the window from the lamps along the path below, but Hugh
could see two other figures in the gloom and he was eager for battle.

“Come on,” he challenged. “I’ll take you both!”

“I――I don’t want to fight, thanks,” said a mild voice from the
darkness. “I――I――――”

“Are you a junior?” asked the other occupant of the gloom.

“No, are you?” replied Hugh.

“Yes, they collared me and Twining just as we were coming around the
corner. We climbed out of a window in the gym and were trying to get to
Manning. Do you suppose they mean to keep us here long?”

“So that’s it, eh?” mused Hugh. “I thought you were upper middle
fellows when I saw you scuffling down there. Well, they’ve got us to
rights, haven’t they?” He made his way to the window, raised the lower
sash and looked out. Everything was quiet below, a fact explainable by
the unmistakable presence on the walk further along near Manning of two
masters in conference. Hugh pulled his head in quickly for fear they
might look up and see him.

“They’ve all gone,” he announced to his fellow prisoners, “and Mr.
Smiley and one of the other masters are down there.”

“Then if we call to them they’ll let us out,” said the youth who wasn’t
Twining.

“Yes, but――――” Hugh thought a moment. Then: “All right,” he agreed.
But when he put his head through the window again the masters had
disappeared. “They’ve gone now,” he reported. “Try that door and see if
it’s really locked, one of you chaps.”

“Yes, it is,” was the answer from Twining, who had a thin, piping voice
and sounded as though he might be only about thirteen. “Don’t you think
they’ll come back pretty soon and let us out?”

“I fancy so. They’ll wait until things quiet down, I dare say. All we
can do is wait.” Hugh felt his way to a chair and seated himself and
the others followed his example. There was silence for a minute or two
during which Hugh felt admiringly of the lump over his left eye. Then
Twining spoke with something like a sniffle.

“I don’t think it’s fair for them to do this,” he complained. “We
juniors have to be in by nine o’clock and I guess it must be more than
that now, isn’t it?”

“Must be,” agreed Hugh. “Can’t you get in without being seen?”

“No,” replied the other junior disgustedly. “They lock the door about a
quarter past and you have to ring. We’ll get the dickens!”

“Well, it’s all in a lifetime,” returned Hugh philosophically. “Anyway,
you chaps held your meeting. That ought to comfort you, eh?”

“I dare say, but it isn’t very nice to have to spend the night up here.”

“That’s the idea,” exclaimed Hugh. “Stay up here and they won’t know
you weren’t in, will they?”

They seemed doubtful about that. Twining was of the opinion that Mr.
Gring, who was master on his floor, would somehow learn of his absence.
“He finds out everything, Cupid does,” he sniffled. “Besides, I can’t
sleep here in this hard seat all night.”

“Try the floor then, old chap. That’s what I shall do if they don’t
come back and let us out.”

“But they will, of course,” said the other of the two. “They wouldn’t
dare not to, would they?”

“I really can’t――――” Then Hugh amended his answer. “Search me,” he
said. They talked desultorily for a while. Hugh learned that the second
and presumably older boy was named Struthers. Struthers boasted of
the junior class’s success in pulling the meeting off and told how he
had put lower middle off the track by writing a note to one of their
members announcing the affair for Saturday night and purposely dropping
it in the corridor of School Hall. Struthers chuckled a lot about that,
but Twining appeared incapable of seeing humor in anything just now. He
was all for putting his head out the window and calling for help, but
Hugh vetoed that plan and threatened to punch the first one who tried
it.

“A silly-looking lot we’d be,” he said disgustedly, “if the masters had
to come up here and free us! We’d be laughed at all over school. If
they don’t let us out pretty soon I’ll see if I can climb around to the
next window. It’s only about four or five feet from this one, and if
there’s anything to hold on to I can do it.”

“You might fall and hurt yourself,” sniffed Twining.

“I don’t think so. It isn’t far to the ground, for that matter. If we
could find a rope or something I might be able to drop. Anyone got a
vesta?”

“A vest on?” asked Struthers. “No, but we could tie our jackets
together and――――”

“I said a vesta, a match,” laughed Hugh. “Tying our jackets together
isn’t a bad idea, though. If I can’t make it by the window――――”

He stopped and listened. Ten o’clock was sounding.

“Now we’ll all be hung together,” he said cheerfully. “If I get caught
coming in after ten I’ll get ballywhack too. I’m going to have a look
at that window.”




CHAPTER IX

CATHCART, PROCTOR


Hugh thrust his body through the window again. No one was in sight
along the front. By leaning well out he could see the lighted windows
of Number 29 Lothrop, and he smiled as he reflected that Bert was
probably wondering what had become of his roommate. Then he viewed the
next window, some five feet distant.

The sills were broad and extended a few inches beyond the casements,
but Hugh doubted that he would be able to stretch his legs far enough
to reach, even could he find anything to hold on to. He crawled out on
the sill, to the alarm of the hysterical Twining, and, while keeping
a firm hold of the window sash, felt about over the bricks in search
of some projection to cling to. In the end he had to return to the
classroom defeated. That avenue of escape was out of the question. The
distance to the ground didn’t look far, but it must be, he realized,
about twenty feet, and that meant a drop of fifteen feet, enough to
shake one up considerably. But by knotting their coats together it
might be done.

[Illustration: “That avenue of escape was out of the question.”]

“Let me have your coats, fellows,” he said, pulling his own off.
They emptied the pockets first, stowing the treasures away in their
trousers, and then handed the garments over. Hugh tied the three sleeve
to sleeve, testing each knot, but when the task was completed the
result was disappointing, for the improvised rope measured only about
five feet in length, a portion of which would have to remain across the
sill and, since there was nothing to tie it to, be held by the juniors.
Hugh studied a moment. Then he unbelted his trousers.

“I don’t know how strong these things are,” he said, “but I fancy
they’ll stand the strain all right.”

He made a pile of his pocket contents on the floor and knotted the end
of one leg to a sleeve of a coat, adding another three feet to the
length of the whole.

“Now,” he said cheerfully, “you chaps lay hold of this end, d’ye see?
Pull it tight across the sill and you won’t have any trouble. Better
sit down on the floor, the two of you, eh? That’s the idea. If you
happen to find you can’t hold on, or the thing starts to rip, shout out
to me so I can drop. All right now?”

“Y-yes,” replied Struthers doubtfully. “I hope we can hold it!”

“So do I,” replied Hugh grimly as he squirmed his body across the sill.
“If you can’t I’ll get down quicker than I fancy. Hold tight now. I’m
going to put my weight on it.”

There was a breathless moment of suspense, a moment during which the
garments made threatening sounds of giving at the seams, and then
Hugh’s head disappeared from sight, the two boys on the floor, feet
braced against the wall, held on for dear life and――――

“All right!” called a cautious voice from outside. There was a sound of
a thud on the bricks and the two juniors simultaneously toppled over
backwards.

There was one thing, though, which Hugh had neglected to take into
consideration, and that was the probability of the door of School Hall
being locked. And when, a bit jarred but quite unhurt, he climbed the
steps and tried it, he realized the fact, for the portal was fast.
Flattening himself against the door in the shadow, he wondered how
he had bettered the condition of his fellow prisoners. They couldn’t
follow him by the window, of course, and he, it seemed, was unable to
unlock the door to the corridor for them! And, to add interest to the
situation, he was sensible of being most unconventionally clad――or,
rather, unclad――and didn’t at all relish standing down there in the
light and calling up for his trousers to be thrown to him! Meanwhile it
was quite within the possibilities that one of the masters might come
prowling past and find him!

But something had to be done, and the only thing that occurred to
him was to try the windows in the hope of finding one unlatched. So,
making certain that no one was in sight, he scuttled from his place
of concealment and fled around to the back of the building, where the
possibility of being observed at his burglarous task was not so great.
It was as dark as pitch back there, but after waiting a minute to
accustom his sight to the gloom he was able to discern a window. The
sill was at the height of his chin and he wondered whether, even if he
was lucky enough to find one unlatched, he could get through it.

The first resisted all his pushing and heaving, and so with the second
and third, but when he thrust upward on the next the sash gave readily,
but with a fearsome screech that brought his heart to his mouth. After
waiting a moment there in the darkness, however, he pushed the window
as high as he could reach and then set about the next step. There was
nothing to put his feet on, but by getting his arms over the sill he
finally managed to work his body up and was soon inside.

The first thing he did was to walk squarely into a desk, and after that
it seemed to him hours before he found the door into the corridor. Once
outside, his troubles were by no means over, for when he had at last
discovered the stairway and descended the first flight he couldn’t
think in which direction the room he sought lay. He found it at last,
though, turned the key and entered to be greeted by exclamations of
mingled relief and displeasure. It was Struthers who expressed relief,
and Twining who voiced displeasure.

“Seems to me you took your time,” said the latter. “You must think it’s
lots of fun waiting up here――――”

“Stow it!” interrupted Hugh, his temper not improved by the adventures
of the past ten minutes. “It would serve you jolly right to make you
shin down the coats and trousers!”

Twining subsided to mutters and Hugh clothed himself again and rescued
his treasures from the floor. When he had finished, the two juniors
were already outside.

“You can’t get out the door,” said Hugh. “It’s locked. Keep with me and
we’ll slip out a window at the back.”

Twining again demurred, but Struthers promptly sat on him, and a
minute later they were outside.

“Now you chaps see if you can find a window unlocked. That’s what I’m
going to do. I don’t fancy having it known that I was locked up in
School Hall by a lot of fresh lower class chaps. Good night.”

“Good night,” replied Struthers, “and much obliged, Ordway.”

Twining, however, was already creeping off in the darkness, wasting no
time on amenities. Hugh felt a strong desire to overtake the youngster
and cuff him, but in the end he only shrugged his shoulders and
considered his own plight. He carefully closed the window before he
turned away to seek Lothrop, and when he did he kept along at the back
of Trow to avoid the lights in front. It was well after ten o’clock now
and most of the windows were dark, but here and there a light still
shone. Mr. Russell’s study on the first floor of Trow was illumined and
the curtains were raised, and as Hugh, bending low, passed beneath them
he fervently hoped that the Greek master would not take it into his
head to approach a casement just then.

The ground floor of Lothrop was given over to public rooms save where,
at the farther end, Mr. Rumford had his suite of five rooms and bath.
Along the front, between the two entrances, were the library, the
common room and the recreation room. At the back were rooms occupied by
the superintendent of buildings, Mr. Craig, and by the head janitor,
Mr. Crump, a store room and a serving room. The nearer end of the
building was taken up by the big dining hall. There were ten windows in
the latter and Hugh hoped to find one of the number unlatched. He kept
away from the front of the building, for it was disconcertingly light
there, and tried the first window on the end. It was fast, however,
and so was the next one. Then, to his consternation, the ground began
to slope away to the level of the basement floor at the rear of the
building, for the kitchen and laundry and various other service rooms
were above ground at the back. This brought the third window almost
head-high and placed the fourth beyond his reach, and the third window
was locked as fast as the others!

He knew nothing of the lay of the land below-stairs and feared to
try his fortunes there. Consequently there was nothing to do but
risk detection while trying the windows along the front or to ring a
door-bell and be reported by Mr. Crump. He had little liking for either
alternative and hesitated a moment in the shadow at the corner before
emerging into the publicity of the walk which, while deserted, was in
plain view of Trow. After all, though, it was, he reflected, no hanging
matter, and so he presently emerged quite boldly and, as he passed
along the front of the dormitory, tried each window. He had progressed
as far as the library when his perseverance was at last rewarded. A
sash gave readily to his pressure and in a twinkling he was inside.

Lights in the corridor shone through the open doors and he had no
trouble, after he had silently closed the window again and fastened it,
in making his way between chairs and tables. At the door nearest to the
stairs he paused and looked out. No one was in sight and he swiftly
stepped into the corridor, around the corner and through the swinging
door that gave on the stairs. He stepped lightly, for he knew that
on each floor a master’s bedroom was separated from him by only the
thickness of a wall. It was when he had reached the fourth floor and
had his hand on the door there that he recalled the fact that directly
across the hallway was Number 34, inhabited by Cathcart. Cathcart was
a proctor and, so it was said, a most conscientious one. He would
have done better, as he now realized, to have gained the floor by the
other stairway. However, Cathcart’s door was tightly closed and it
was more than likely that Cathcart was sound asleep. So Hugh pushed
the swinging portal softly ajar, slipped through and turned along the
corridor toward 29. Halfway, he thought he heard a sound behind him,
but he didn’t stop or turn. He scuttled into 29――Bert had thoughtfully
left the door unlocked――and the instant the latch had slipped into
place behind him tore off his coat and fumbled at his belt. The study
was empty and dark, but a light shone from Bert’s bedroom and as Hugh
hurried into his own apartment a sibilant voice came to him.

“That you, Hugh?”

“Yes.” Hugh was slipping out of his trousers. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
He kicked off his shoes and tugged at his tie.

“Where the dickens have you been?” demanded Bert, more loudly. Hugh
heard his bed creak and a moment later his bare feet on the floor. And
that instant there was a gentle knock on the door.

Hugh flung things from him wildly and dived for his bed. There was
silence. Then the knock was repeated, and:

“Winslow!” came Cathcart’s cautious voice from beyond the portal.

After a moment’s hesitation Bert, making a good deal of noise about it,
went to the door and flung it open. Hugh, the covers pulled to his
chin, held his breath and listened.

“Hello, Wallace.” That was Bert’s voice, surprised and sleepy. “What’s
up?”

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Cathcart, pushing past Bert and closing
the door behind him, “but someone just came up the stairs and entered
this room.”

“Nonsense,” replied Bert, suppressing a yawn. “You probably heard me
coming from the bathroom.”

“I didn’t only hear, I saw,” said Cathcart quietly. “You don’t usually
visit the bathroom with all your clothes on, I suppose.”

“Not usually, old man, but I couldn’t find my bathrobe. I suppose it’s
somewhere around――――”

“Is Ordway here?” demanded the proctor.

“I suppose so. We went to bed rather early. Oh, Hugh!”

“Yes?” asked Hugh startledly. “Did you call, Bert?”

“Yes, Cathcart asked if you were here. It’s all right, I guess.”

“If you don’t mind,” murmured Cathcart. He crossed to Hugh’s room and
looked in. “Would you mind turning on a light, please, Bert?”

Bert obeyed grumblingly and Cathcart viewed the bedroom. Hugh’s coat
lay on the floor near the foot of the bed, his trousers were in front
of the dresser, one shoe was on top the trousers and the other a yard
away and his shirt hung limply from the footrail. Cathcart took it all
in silently and gravely. Then:

“How long have you been in bed, Ordway?” he asked.

“Eh? In bed? Oh, really, I can’t say. What time is it now?”

“You just came in, as a matter of fact, didn’t you?”

“Now look here, Cathcart,” interrupted Bert persuasively. “You’re all
wrong, old man. You were dreaming, probably. You can see easily enough
that Ordway and I have been in bed for a long time.”

“Does he usually leave his things around like that?” asked the proctor.

“I’m afraid he does. He’s an untidy beggar. You are, aren’t you, Hugh?”

“Perfectly rotten,” replied Hugh cheerfully. “Still, you know, they’re
awfully easy to find in case of――er――fire or anything.”

Cathcart smiled wanly. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ordway,” he
said, “but I’ll have to report you. Good night, fellows.”

“But, I say――――” began Hugh.

“Look here, Cathcart, have a heart,” pleaded Bert. “You can’t prove
anything against him. Why, look at him! You say someone came in here
a minute ago. Now you know very well Ordway couldn’t undress in that
time!”

“I don’t think I said he entered a minute ago, Bert. However, if Ordway
cares to get out of bed and show me that he has his pajamas on――――” He
viewed Hugh inquiringly.

“Pajamas,” said Hugh indignantly. “Why, I say, I never wear ’em, you
know. Beastly uncomfortable things, pajamas.”

“Indeed? May I look in here?” Cathcart opened the closet door. On a
hook inside hung a pair of white pajamas with broad blue stripes.
“Yours, I think, Ordway?”

Hugh nodded. “Right-o, Cathcart,” he said. “You win. What’s the
penalty?”

“I can’t say,” replied the proctor. “I guess it won’t amount to much.
I wouldn’t try it again, though, Ordway. They’re rather strict here
about being out of hall after hours. Probably you can give a good
explanation.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” said Hugh. “Only,” he added under his breath, “I’m
switched if I’m going to!”

“I’m sorry, fellows,” said Cathcart again, regretfully. “You know I
have to do it, though. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Hugh. “Duty is duty, eh, what?”

“Good night,” returned Bert morosely. “It doesn’t seem to me, Wallace,
that you need to be so confounded snoopy, though! Of course you’re a
proctor, and all that, but a fellow doesn’t have to go out of his way
to look for trouble!”

“I didn’t go out of my way, Bert,” replied Cathcart quietly. “I was
awake and heard steps on the stairs and then heard the door pushed
open. It was my place to see who was coming up.”

“Then, if you saw him,” said Bert crossly, “what was the good of coming
down here and making all this fuss?”

“I saw only his back, and the light was dim. I couldn’t be certain
whether it was you or Ordway.”

“Oh!” Bert shot a glance at Hugh, now sitting up in bed and hugging his
knees. “Then――then perhaps it will interest you, Wallace, to learn that
it wasn’t Ordway, after all! It happened to be me, old man. Put that in
your pipe and smoke it!” And Bert viewed the other truculently.

Cathcart smiled gently and shook his head. “That won’t do, Bert,” he
said. “Ordway’s owned up, you see.”

“Because he thought I didn’t want to be reported. Besides, he didn’t
own up. He only said――――”

“Oh, come, Bert! What’s the use?” asked Cathcart. “I know it was
Ordway.”

“You do? Even when I say it wasn’t? When I say it was me? You’re mighty
smart, aren’t you?”

Cathcart colored and frowned. “Very well,” he said stiffly. “I’ll
report you both and you can settle it between you. I’m not quite such a
fool as you seem to think, Winslow.”

“I’m not _thinking_,” replied Bert impolitely.

“Stow it, you chaps,” Hugh broke in. “Be fair, Bert. Cathcart’s only
doing what he has to. Much obliged for lying, old chap, but I don’t
really mind being reported. It’s all right, Cathcart,” he added
reassuringly. “I’m the culprit. Sorry to get you out of bed.”

Bert opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and shrugged.
Cathcart nodded to Hugh and went out. When the door was closed behind
him and Bert had turned the key with a venomous click he strode back to
Hugh’s room and eyed him wrathfully.

“Why the dickens did you have to butt in?” he demanded. “I could have
made him believe it was me in another minute. You haven’t got as much
sense as――a――as a――――”

“Proctor?” suggested Hugh helpfully. Bert grunted. Hugh threw the
clothes aside and swung his feet to the floor. “Mind tossing me those
pajamas?” he asked. “Thanks. Now, look here, old chap――――”

“You’ll get the very dickens, that’s what you’ll get,” interrupted
Bert. “Where were you? How did you get in? Didn’t you know――――”

“Yes, old dear, I knew all about it. The degrading truth is that a
half-dozen of those beastly lower middle chaps got me and a couple of
juniors and locked us up in a classroom in School Hall and I had to
shin down the coats and trousers――――”

“Shin down the _what_?”

Hugh smiled. “The coats and trousers. We tied our coats together, you
know,――and my trousers, too,――and I got down that way and got in a
window at the back and unlocked the door. Then I climbed in through the
library.”

“Who were the lower middlers?” demanded Bert hotly.

“Couldn’t see them. Dare say I shouldn’t have known them if I had. It
was all over in a jiffy. Someone grabbed me from behind, another chap
throttled me and the whole lot pushed me upstairs. Next thing I knew
I was locked in that room with a pair of silly juniors named Twining
and Struthers. Struthers wasn’t so bad, but Twining was a mean little
bounder. I say, you’ve a remarkable looking mouth, old chap!”

“And you’ve got a fine-looking lump over that eye! You’ll make a big
hit with the faculty when you’re called up tomorrow!”

“I can say I ran into a door,” replied Hugh untroubledly. “I did once,
you know, and had just such a lump.”

“Huh! And I suppose running into the door skinned your knuckles, too?”

“I’ll keep that hand behind me,” laughed Hugh. “Anyway, it was a――a――it
was some scrap, wasn’t it?”




CHAPTER X

HANRIHAN PROMISES


“The beauty of being on probation,” observed Nick, “is that a fellow is
able to give his entire time to the improvement of his mind. I recall
that during my junior year being on pro was very helpful to me. It
allowed me to do a lot of studying that I wouldn’t have been able to
accomplish otherwise, and so, without doubt, preserved me to Grafton
posterity. If it hadn’t been for that thoughtful act on the part of
faculty you might not have me with you this evening, fellows.”

“Faculty has a heap to answer for,” said Guy sadly.

“I don’t mind――much,” said Hugh. “It knocks me out of football, though,
doesn’t it?”

“Yes, and the worst of it is,” said Pop Driver, “that you’ll have to go
to gym and do your four hours per week.”

“I don’t think I shall mind that, really. I fancy it’s dumb bells and
clubs and that sort of thing, eh?”

“Yes, and bar bells and free arm movements, which are tiresome things,
and chest weights. _Creak――creak――creak――creak!_ I hate the thought of
the things.” And Nick disgustedly shook his head.

“You got off easily, if you want to know it,” said Bert. “Two weeks
isn’t anything. Usually it’s a month at least. The only thing that
saved you from getting it harder was that faculty is up in the air
about last night’s rumpus. It has a sort of an idea that a lot of
things went on it doesn’t know about and that if justice was done half
the school would be on pro.”

“They’re always easier with a new fellow,” said Guy. “Two weeks will
soon pass, Hugh. Take my advice, though, and try for B’s in everything.
That always makes them happy and they’ll let you off easy.”

“B’s?” exclaimed Bert. “Why B’s? Hugh gets an A-minus in about
everything now! By the way, fellows, Jimmy’s been pussy-footing it all
over school today trying to find out what really happened last night.
He cornered me in lower hall after French this morning and said he had
heard the juniors had held a very successful meeting. You know the way
he smiles when he wants to――to lull your suspicions?”

“Wow!” applauded Nick. “That’s langwidge!”

“So I said yes, I’d heard they had. And then he asked: ‘You――ah――you
weren’t present then yourself, Winslow?’ And I said no, I didn’t think
the juniors allowed any of the other class fellows at their meeting.
Innocent, I was. So he said, ‘H’m, yes, very true, Winslow,’ and I beat
it. What gets me is that they didn’t hear the racket and come out. I
suppose, though, they thought it was the usual rumpus.”

“There are some mighty funny-looking faces around today,” observed Pop.
“Phillips couldn’t see at all out of one eye, and――――”

“Phillips isn’t anything,” cut in Nick. “You should see Downer! He’s
positively disreputable! I told him so, too. Told him he oughtn’t to
appear among gentlemen looking as he did. He was quite short-tempered
about it.”

“I wonder if they’ll do anything,” pondered Bert.

“Someone said he’d heard they were going to stop junior meeting after
this,” replied Guy. “It would be a good thing if they did. Such
behavior is most――er――reprehensible.”

“Piffle!” scoffed Nick. “You were just dying to get into it yourself
last night, you old hypocrite!”

“I did get into it,” said Guy grimly. “And I got this for my pains.” He
laid a finger on his bruise. “Pop was the one who put ’em to rights.
Pop went into it like a whirlwind. _Thump!_ Down goes a lower! _Bang!_
Down goes an upper! Great stuff, Pop!”

“You fellows could have fought all night,” replied Pop calmly, “for all
I cared, only I thought it would be rather a silly piece of business
for half of you to get nabbed and put on pro. To come right down to
hunks, though, it was a pretty rank piece of business for grown kids to
pummel each other for no reason at all. You upper middlers ought to be
proud of it.”

“Well, we didn’t start it,” said Nick aggrievedly. “One of those chaps
punched one of us and so we punched back.”

“It’s always the other fellow who starts things, I notice. If you and
Bert and Kinley and a few more had been caught at it a fat chance the
team would have had!”

“That’s so,” agreed Guy. “I understand that Bonner was extremely
eloquent this afternoon.”

“He flayed us,” said Bert grimly. “He has a nasty tongue sometimes.”

“It struck me he was mighty easy with you,” said Pop unfeelingly. “When
you’re on the School Team, Bert, you’re supposed to behave yourself
and not act like a kid.”

“Oh, chuck it, Pop,” returned Bert shortly. “I’ve been lectured enough.
You’re as cheerful as a raven.”

“After all,” said Nick, “’is ’Ighness is the only one should kick. He’s
dished on football for two weeks, anyway, and that queers him utterly
for this year. If anyone has a right to grouch it’s Hugh, and he’s the
most cheerful of the lot.”

“Do you really think it lets me out for the year?” asked Hugh sadly. “I
was hoping that maybe, if it was only two weeks, they’d let me back on
the――the――grinds.”

“The what?” demanded Nick. “Oh, the scrubs! Grinds isn’t bad, though!
That’s what they do, all right.”

“Hope on, hope ever,” said Guy. “Put it up to Ted some time. Maybe he
will fix it for you. Who’s going to captain the second this year, Pop?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it will be Ben Myatt.”

“Honest? Poor old Bennie! He’s been trying for the first team for three
years now. I hoped he would make it this time.”

“Perhaps he will, but I doubt it. Ben just doesn’t reach to the first.
He’s a clever player, too.”

“Better than Tom Hanrihan, in my estimation,” said Nick. “I’d like to
see Ben make it this time.”

“So would I,” agreed Pop, “but he isn’t the player Tom is. Tom’s got
the zip, you know. Ben’s too good-natured, I guess.”

“There’s something in that,” mused Guy. “Remember Powell, who pitched
for us year before last, Pop? He was a nifty twirler, all right, and
had a fast one that would fool you two times out of three, but you
simply couldn’t rile him, and when things got away from us Powell was
no earthly use in the box. When you’re a run or two behind along in the
eighth or ninth you want just nine fellows in the field who are mad
clear through!”

“I say,” exclaimed Hugh, “you’re spoofin’, what?”

“Nary a spoof, Duke,” replied Guy. “Getting your mad up is what does
the business. I don’t mean you’re to show it or froth at the mouth, you
understand, but you want to have it inside you. Then when your chance
comes you bust out and something happens.”

“Really?” marveled Hugh. “I’ve always thought quite the contrary. It
seems to me, you know, that a chap who keeps his temper is the one who
can do the best.”

“Sure! I said that. _Have_ a temper, but keep it! Am I right, Pop?”

“Yes, I think so. I know that when a fellow plays football he has to
sort of seethe inside before he can really do much.”

“Did you ever seethe?” asked Nick incredulously.

“I’ve been mad enough to bite,” said Pop, smiling. “Haven’t you?”

“Me? Great Scott, yes! But you’re such a sleepy, unemotional beggar,
Pop, that I didn’t suppose you ever felt that way. Bert and I, now,
being sort of temperamental――――”

“I always get mad,” confessed Bert, “the first time a fellow tackles me
or gives me a jolt. I’ve got a rotten temper, anyway.”

“Good reason to play football, then,” said Pop. “Football’s a fine
thing for temper.”

“I fancy I’d never make a player, then,” remarked Hugh ruefully. “I
don’t get angry very easily, you see.”

His regret was so evident that the others laughed, and Nick said:
“Don’t worry about that, ’Ighness. You’ll get over it bravely when you
come to play. Just let a couple of fellows sit on your head and another
one twist your ankle for you and you’ll be mad enough to eat dirt!”

Nothing came of Thursday night’s affair. Possibly faculty didn’t
quite know where to begin, since fully two-thirds of the school was
concerned. The fracas went down in history as the Junior Meeting Riot,
and the _Campus_, the school monthly, managed to get a lot of sly fun
out of it in its next issue. Leslie and several other more prominent
members of the senior class were taken to task for allowing matters
to go as far as they had, which, considering the fact that they had
sustained various injuries in their efforts to promote peace, was
rather unkind. In the end faculty prohibited future interference with
junior meeting and, lest the temptation should prove too great for the
lower middlers, provided that the meeting should take place in Manning
common room.

Hugh took his punishment philosophically, although he really regretted
having to give up trying for the football team. He had just begun to
find something besides hard work in the daily practice, and, while he
hadn’t for a moment counted on making the first, he had entertained
hopes of finding a place on the second team. It was Tom Hanrihan who
took the matter hardest. Tom, a big, raw-boned, good-hearted chap of
eighteen, took his commission of coaching the “rookies” very seriously,
and Hugh’s defection grieved him sadly. The talk that Hugh had received
from Jimmy, otherwise the assistant principal, Mr. Rumford, was nothing
to what Hanrihan had to say to him Saturday morning. Hanrihan told Hugh
quite explicitly how many kinds of an idiot he was and would listen to
no excuses.

“You seem to think all we have to do is waste time on you fellows and
then you can drop out whenever it pleases you. Making a football team
isn’t any cinch, Ordway, when you’ve got only nine weeks to do it. You
haven’t any right to take up our time if you don’t mean to stick it
out.”

“But I did mean to stick it out,” expostulated Hugh. “It wasn’t my
fault if those beggars got me and――――”

“You shouldn’t have given them the chance. You shouldn’t have had
anything to do with that scrap, anyway. (This despite the fact that the
speaker had a very puffy and discolored left eye!) When a fellow goes
out for the team he’s supposed to look after himself. He’s trying for
the――the biggest thing in school, and he ought to realize it. You had
a good chance to make good. I as much as told you that a dozen times.
(If he had, Hugh didn’t recall it!) You showed some gumption, and you
were quick and handled a ball nicely. Now you’ve gone and spoiled it
all. Honest, Ordway, I’d like to punch your head for you!”

“Oh, very well, do it,” replied Hugh meekly. “I’m sorry. That’s all I
can say, Hanrihan.”

“A lot of good being sorry does,” snorted the other.

“It’s only two weeks, Mr. Rumford said, and I thought that possibly I
could get back again,” said Hugh wistfully.

“Get back! Lay off two weeks and get back! That’s likely! By that time
we’ll be in the middle of the season. Who do you suppose is going to
take time to coach you individually, Ordway?”

“Well,” and Hugh smiled ingratiatingly at Hanrihan, “you could, you
know, if you cared to!”

“I could!” Hanrihan stared in amazement. “Well, you’re certainly a
cheeky youngster, Ordway! What the dickens should I do it for? You
don’t suppose the team’s going to pot just because you’re out, do you?”

“N-no, of course not. I didn’t mean that.” Hugh colored in his quick
fashion. “Only, I thought that possibly――if I sort of watched practice
and saw what was being done, why, after I was off probation, you might
sort of――sort of show me, if you know what I mean!”

“Huh! You’ll have to get Bonner to let you back first. And I don’t
think he will.” Hanrihan paused. “He might, though, if I put it up to
him. Confound you, Ordway, you seem to think you can do as you please
and play hob all around and then――then get folks to square things for
you! You _are_ a cheeky youngster, and no mistake!”

“I dare say,” replied Hugh, “but you’ll speak to Mr. Bonner, eh? You
know yourself it wasn’t my fault, old chap, now don’t you?”

“Well, no, I suppose it wasn’t――in a way,” acknowledged Hanrihan more
graciously. “Well, I’ll see if we can do anything. But look here, now.
You keep in shape, do you understand? And keep in right with faculty.
No more nonsense, Ordway!”

“Right-o! And thanks awfully, Hanrihan.”

“Don’t thank me until it happens――if it does,” grumbled the other.
“I’ll let you know if――if anything comes up. So long.”

That conversation left Hugh hopeful again, but when he recounted it
to Bert the latter threw cold water on the project. “Tom will do his
part,” he said, “but there isn’t a chance that Bonner will let you
back. I know him too well. I’m sorry, Hugh. I wish he would. But I
wouldn’t expect too much if I were you.”

“I shan’t,” replied Hugh untroubledly. “But there isn’t any harm in
hoping, eh? Even if you don’t get what you want you’ve had the fun of
wishing for it, if you know what I mean!”




CHAPTER XI

THIRTEEN TO TEN


Being on probation didn’t prevent Hugh from seeing the game that
Saturday afternoon, and he and Guy and a lower middle youth named
Stiles sat together through the best part of two hours and watched
Grafton play two twelve-minute and two ten-minute periods with the
Leeds High School team. It was unseasonably warm for the first week
in October and the players felt the heat. The game dragged along
uninterestingly until, in the final period, Coach Bonner put in a
number of second-string players. That brought the two teams nearer
equality and, although there was no more scoring, the last ten minutes
contained several exciting incidents. Weston, at quarter-back in place
of Nick, got away on a sixty-five-yard run and all but scored. A
Leeds left end pulled down a forward pass for a twelve-yard gain that
momentarily looked like a touchdown. Keyes, the only one of the back
field to play the game through, fooled the enemy with a short punt that
almost resulted in a score when a Leeds player dropped the ball and it
was pulled out of the air by Siedhof. But in the end the score remained
as at the finish of the first half, 13 to 0, in favor of the home team,
and Grafton dawdled back to the campus not greatly impressed.

Hugh parted from Guy and Stiles and went on up to his study. Bert was
not yet back, and, after thoughtfully staring from the window at the
passing groups below, he went out and down the corridor to Number 34.
His rap on the half-opened door elicited a response and he entered
to find the single occupant of the room minus coat and waistcoat,
perched at the window and surrounded by books and papers. Cathcart
was tall and thin, with a fair complexion and a good deal of unruly
red-brown hair. Just now, a green shade over his eyes and a pair of
black rubber spectacles on his nose, he presented an amusing vision
as he glanced near-sightedly across. Cathcart was eighteen, a senior
and an acknowledged “grind.” It was said of him that faculty had
almost broken his heart in his lower middle year by refusing to let
him take more than twenty-one hours a week. He got as much pleasure
out of studying as Bert Winslow did from football or Guy Murtha from
baseball, and was absolutely unable to get the point of view of the
fellow who considered study a disagreeable thing to be avoided as much
as possible. It was not until Hugh was halfway across the room, which
combined study and bedroom, that Cathcart recognized him. When he did
he untangled himself slowly, distributing sheets of paper around the
floor, and slid to his feet.

“Hello,” he said doubtfully.

“Hello,” answered the visitor.

Then, without further remarks, they set to rescuing the scattered
papers. This gave them time to consider the situation and when they
faced each other again Cathcart said: “About the other night, Ordway: I
hope you didn’t think there was anything personal in what I did?”

“Not for a moment, Cathcart. I’d have done just what you did, you know.
That’s quite all right, I assure you.”

“Well, I’m glad you take it that way, really. You see, being proctor
has its drawbacks. I wasn’t anxious for it, but it makes a big
difference in my expenses for the year, you see. I get my room a good
deal cheaper, and that’s rather nice in my case. I was glad faculty let
you off as easily as they did, Ordway.”

“Thanks, yes, they were really very decent to me. Where I made my
mistake, Cathcart, was in not coming up the other stairway.” Hugh
smiled. “You wouldn’t have heard me then, I fancy.”

“I don’t think I would,” agreed the other. “I――I wish you had. Someone
said you got shut up in the gym, I believe?”

“In School Hall.” Hugh narrated his adventures on Thursday evening.

“But if you had shouted out the window someone would surely have heard
you,” said Cathcart.

“Yes, but I didn’t want to give those lower middle beggars the
satisfaction, if you know what I mean. And I rather funked having it
get around that I’d been such a silly ass, too! I say, I’m keeping you
from work, eh?”

“No, you’re not, really. Push those books aside and make yourself
comfortable. I wish you’d tell me whether Bert has it in for me,
Ordway.”

“Oh, I don’t think so! He was a bit crumby that night, but he soon gets
over it.”

“I hope so. I like Bert. I suppose I’ll have to make up my mind to
getting a few of the fellows down on me before the year’s over. Bound
to, I guess. It’s hard to make them realize that it’s my duty to report
things. They don’t think anything about it if it’s one of the masters,
but they resent it if it’s a proctor. How do you like the school,
Ordway? I suppose it’s different from your schools in England.”

“I fancy so. I never went to an English school, though; never went to
any school before I came here. Of course I’ve heard lots about the
English schools; I know quite a few chaps at Rugby and Charterhouse and
Winchester; and I rather fancy we’re a bit different here. But I like
it very much. Fact is, Cathcart, I was in a regular blue funk about
coming here. I rather thought the chaps would rag me a lot, you know,
but they haven’t. Nick Blake does, but I don’t mind Nick a bit. Of
course, I am different, I fancy; rather stupid about a lot of things;
and I’m only just beginning to understand that you chaps don’t mean
more than about half you say. It puzzled me a lot at first, you know.
You have a way of poking fun at things, if you know what I mean, that
sounds odd until you understand that it _is_ fun. I didn’t; not at
first. I’m learning, though.”

“I suppose we are different,” acknowledged Cathcart, “in some ways.
Sometimes I think we don’t take things seriously enough, Ordway, we
fellows here at Grafton. Not that Grafton is much different from other
preparatory schools, though.”

“That’s what I like,” said Hugh eagerly. “I think your way of not
taking things seriously is awfully jolly. It isn’t that you really
don’t――don’t _know_ that they’re serious――when they are――but you simply
don’t take them so. As I say, I’ve never been to an English school, but
I’m sure you fellows over here get a lot more fun than we do on the
other side. Just at first some of the fun seemed to me to be rather――I
say, I hope you won’t mind it, old chap, but it seemed a bit silly, if
you know what I mean.”

“I think a lot of our fun is,” replied Cathcart, “but it’s generally
fairly harmless. Of course, the other night was different, but that was
exceptional here. We aren’t in the habit of blacking each other’s eyes,
you see.”

“But I liked that! That was――was so jolly spontaneous, eh? Some of the
fun seems a bit――well, a bit studied, but that wasn’t. A lot of chaps
have been awfully apologetic about that affair, and I don’t see why.
On the other side we’d have thought nothing about it, and the masters
wouldn’t have noticed it, I fancy. But we’re a bit more used to using
our fists than you chaps, I think. I say, though, here I am talking
like ‘a bloomin’ Britisher,’ as Nick says, when I’m really just as much
American as I am English.”

“Are you really? That explains it, then. There’s something about you
that doesn’t seem entirely English, Ordway. You don’t _look_ terribly
English, for one thing.”

“My mother is American,” said Hugh. “Her family has lived in Maryland
ever since the place was settled, I fancy. I’ve been over here off
and on, you know, ever since I was a kid. It’s queer, Cathcart, but
sometimes I feel as if I was all American and sometimes as if I was all
English! Queer game, eh?”

“Jekyll and Hyde idea?” asked the other, with a smile. “But don’t ask
me which is Jekyll!”

“I won’t,” laughed Hugh. “Don’t want to embarrass you. What’s that
stuff you’re digging at?”

“Benson’s ‘Medieval History,’” replied Cathcart. “It’s very interesting.”

“But, I say, we don’t have that, do we?”

“No, I’m just taking it up as a reading course. I have a good deal of
spare time this term and next, you see.”

“Fancy that! I dare say you’re a regular shark at study, eh? Honor Man
and all that?”

“Well, yes, I was Honor Man three terms last year and two the year
before and one in my junior year. It isn’t hard, you know.”

“Do you go in for games at all? Tennis or golf or anything?”

“N-no, not now. I play tennis a little, but I haven’t done much at it
since spring. There doesn’t seem to be much time.”

“Yes, but look here, old chap, tennis would do you a jolly sight more
good than Whatshisname’s ‘Medieval History’!”

“I don’t feel the need of it, Ordway. You see I have gym work during
the fall and winter terms and then in spring I go in for tennis a
couple of times a week.”

“You need more than that. Look here, I’m out of football for a couple
of weeks anyhow, Cathcart. What do you say we have a try at tennis some
day? What hours do you have in the mornings?”

“I’m pretty full every morning but Thursday and Saturday,” replied the
other doubtfully. “I wouldn’t be much of a fellow for you to play with,
Ordway. I’m terribly stale. Fact is, I only do it in spring because I
have to.”

“Oh, I’m no marvel, old chap! Anyway, that doesn’t matter, does it? We
can have some sport. What time Thursday, now?”

Cathcart laughed. “Well, eleven to twelve, if you really want me to
play.”

“Eleven to twelve is all right for me. Don’t forget. Got a good racket?”

“Why, come to think of it, I don’t believe I know where it is. Seems to
me someone borrowed it last term. I’ll have a look for it, though.”

“Don’t bother too much about it. I’ve got one you may use and welcome.
I say, I hope you don’t think me awfully cheeky to come in and take up
your time, eh?”

“I don’t, indeed, Ordway! I think it mighty nice of you. I was rather
afraid you held it in for me, you see.”

“Oh, rot! As though I would! Thursday at eleven, then? I’ll stop here
for you, eh?”

“Yes, do, for I might forget it. Thursday’s a good way off, though,
and if you find time you might drop in again. It’s good to talk with a
fellow who doesn’t spout football every minute!”

“Right-o! And come across to 29, Cathcart, will you? There are heaps of
things I’d like to talk about.”

Hugh usually had his last recitation at one, and that left him a long
afternoon to get through with. One could always study, but when the
weather was fair, and it held fair that autumn well into November,
staying indoors was not what he wanted. He had one or two set-to’s at
tennis with various acquaintances but by three o’clock he was always on
hand at the first team gridiron, following the play and trying his best
to profit by what he saw. There was no cheering news from Hanrihan,
however, that week, nor had Hugh taken Guy’s advice and spoken to Ted
Trafford about his reinstatement. He didn’t feel up to doing that,
but would have been highly pleased had Bert or Nick done it for him.
Neither did, though, so far as he learned. They seemed to accept his
termination with football as final for that fall. The only incidents of
importance that week were the tennis with Wallace Cathcart on Thursday
and the football game with St. James’ Academy on Saturday.

The tennis was something of a surprise to Hugh. He secretly thought
rather well of himself as a player, although he never boasted, and had
expected to have the rather awkward appearing Cathcart at his mercy.
But things turned out differently and Hugh had to work hard for the
two sets they played. In spite of the fact that his opponent didn’t
take the game seriously and had not, according to his statement, played
since the preceding spring, he was able to give Hugh a hard tussle.
Cathcart had a bewildering serve when, towards the middle of the first
set, he began to get command of it, and he possessed a remarkably
clever way of getting about the court. Weak on backhand strokes, he
wisely avoided them whenever possible and spun the ball across low and
hard from the face of his racket in a way that made Hugh admire and
marvel.

When, at the end of the first set, won by Hugh, 6–4, they rested a
minute, Hugh took Cathcart to task. “I say, old chap, it’s a crying
shame for you not to play more. Why, you’re a natural tennis player,
’pon my word you are! Look here, why don’t you, eh?”

“I don’t know.” Cathcart, breathing hard from his exertions, thought
a moment. “I really believe I could play fairly decently if I put my
mind on it and practiced. And it is good fun. I’d forgotten what fun it
was, Ordway. Do you think you could show me how to get those backhand
returns? Or wouldn’t you care to?”

“Glad to! The trouble is you funk ’em, you know.”

“I’m afraid of them. If I can’t get into position to take them on the
right I let them go. I’m awfully weak on backhand work.”

“Practice is all you need, then. That’s a perfectly spif――a perfectly
corking serve of yours! I have to take it almost at the backline, do
you know? Shall we go on?”

In the second set Cathcart won the second and fourth on his service
and then, losing the sixth to Hugh, took advantage of the latter’s
momentary let-down and made the set four-all. After that, though, he
tired and Hugh had no difficulty in winning the ninth and tenth games
and capturing the set by the previous score.

Cathcart agreed to play again Saturday morning, but begged off the next
day, having discovered some work he ought to do. Hugh took Ned Stiles
on instead, but had poor sport.

The St. James game in the afternoon was a rattling good one. For the
first time that season Coach Bonner put his full strength into the
field at the start. Dresser was at left end, Franklin at left tackle,
Kinley at left guard, Musgrave at center, Driver at right guard,
Trafford at right tackle, Tray at right end, Blake at quarter, Winslow
at left half, Vail at right half, and Keyes at full. St. James was
a heavy team, averaging a year more in age, perhaps, and surely ten
pounds more in weight, and played close-formation football in a very
clever manner. Grafton’s game this year, so far as one could determine
at this stage, was to be a combination of wide-open and old-style
football. She had an experienced trio in Musgrave, Driver and Trafford,
a fair guard in Kinley and a good tackle in Franklin. Roy Dresser, at
left end, was almost certain of his position, but Tray, on the other
wing, was less satisfactory. In the back-field, Blake and Winslow had
seen two years of service on the first and second teams, Vail was a
newcomer in football, although a senior, and Keyes had made the team at
the end of the preceding season. The back-field was rather lighter than
Mr. Bonner could have wished for, but it was fast and “scrappy.” So far
it gave promise of being a good defensive eleven, with its offensive
abilities still to be proved.

Today’s game showed up many weak points, for St. James was a hard
enough proposition to cause Grafton to make use of everything she
knew. It was St. James who scored first, shortly after the kick-off,
when Nick misjudged a punt in front of his goal and a brown-stockinged
player fell on the pigskin near the twenty-yard line. Grafton gave back
slowly, but the visitors made it first down on the nine yards. Then two
tries failed to gain more than as many feet and the St. James full-back
booted the ball over very prettily.

Grafton came back hard and forced the playing for the remainder of the
period but was unable to get a score. In the second quarter, Nick began
a march from the middle of the field to the Brown’s goal that would not
be denied and Keyes was eventually pushed over for a touchdown. Keyes
failed at the goal. St. James gained on rushes against Kinley when she
got the ball back, but the half ended with the score 6 to 3 in the
home team’s favor.

When the third period opened Trafford kicked off and St. James again
started her smashing at tackle and guard on the left, but the gains
grew shorter there and she switched to the other wing and finally
got her left half around Tray for a twenty-yard sprint that laid the
pigskin in dangerous proximity to the Scarlet-and-Gray goal. Some hard
fighting followed, with St. James digging her cleats valiantly and
smashing at everything in sight. Hugh got very excited at this period
of the contest and squirmed about on his seat in a most un-English
manner. Grafton took the ball away on her twelve yards and the stands
cheered with joy and relief.

But the joy was short-lived, for Keyes punted miserably from behind
his goal line and the ball was St. James’ again near the twenty-yards.
She got five on the very first play between Kinley and Franklin and
followed it with three more off Franklin. The latter was hurt in the
play and Parker took his place. St. James lost slightly on a run
around end, but gained her distance on the next down when a fake kick
developed into a line-plunge through center.

Grafton, flocking along the edge of the field, implored her warriors to
“Hold ’em!” But with less than ten yards to go and four downs at her
command the prospect looked extremely good for the visitor. A plunge at
Kinley was stopped for no gain. Then a complicated crisscross play sent
a half-back past Captain Trafford for three yards, Tray being boxed to
the king’s taste. Grafton began to breathe easier then, but the third
down added two yards more when the St. James full-back tore through
Kinley. That brought the ball to the five-yard line, and the Brown team
arranged itself for a try at goal. Ted Trafford diagnosed the play as
a fake and Nick hustled his back-field close in. When the ball went
back it was caught by a half who faked an end run and then, when the
left wing of the Grafton line had been drawn in, threw across to his
right end. That youth had only to drop across the line to score the
touchdown. In fact drop was all he could do, for Bert tackled him the
moment the ball settled into his hands. The punt-out landed the pigskin
directly in front of the crossbar and St. James added another point,
bringing her total to 10. The whistle sounded a moment later.

Grafton had now to score at least five points to win. A field goal and
a safety would do it, or two field goals or a touchdown, but with only
ten minutes left none of those seemed very likely. When, however, Nick
had sent Vail around the enemy’s right flank for some eighteen yards
and followed it by breaking through the Brown’s center himself for six
more, putting the ball on the St. James’ thirty-two yards just three
minutes after the last period had begun, the Grafton supporters became
more hopeful. Keyes smashed into the line twice for a total of five,
and it was first down on the enemy’s twenty-seven yards. Then, when the
Scarlet-and-Gray scented a touchdown or, at the least, a field-goal,
Vail fumbled a pass and a St. James forward squirmed through and
snuggled the pigskin beneath him.

St. James kicked on second down and Bert caught on his own forty-three
yards and ran back five. Grafton opened her line wide and passed
obliquely to Vail and the right half dodged past two white marks before
he was stopped. Delayed passes brought short gains and the pigskin
was on the Brown’s forty. Keyes got two off left tackle, Bert failed
to gain at the center and Keyes punted to St. James’ five-yard line.
Tray stopped the quarter for little gain and St. James kicked from
behind her goal after one weak attempt at rushing. Nick caught near the
sideline at about the thirty-two yards and started a run that wrought
Grafton to a condition of frenzied excitement. He passed four of the
enemy, running straight along the white boundary, dodged a half-back
near the fifteen yards and was only stopped when the St. James quarter
forced him out at the eight yards.

Grafton cheered exultantly and shouted “Touchdown! Touchdown!” and
Coach Bonner, thus far chary of substitutes, sped four into the
line-up. Yetter went in for Kinley, Weston for Nick Blake, Milford for
Tray, and Zanetti for Vail. It was Zanetti who made the first try and
gained two yards on a wide end run. That brought the ball directly in
front of goal. From a kick formation Bert plunged at left guard and
when the resulting confusion of bodies had been untangled the pigskin
lay almost on the three yards. With the crowd yelling like mad, Keyes
again went back and held out his hands, Nick called his signals and
Roy Dresser, on an end-around play, carried the ball across the line
almost unmolested, the fake attack on the center fooling the defenders
completely!

Just to prove that he could kick a goal, even if he had failed in his
previous attempt, Keyes put it over from a wide angle, and Grafton’s
score was 13. The period came to an end a minute or so later, the final
score, 13 to 10, and St. James cheered a bit disgruntledly and Grafton
quite contentedly.

Hugh, having passed through a succession of thrills that had left him
rather limp, loitered back to the tennis courts and, finding a seat
on a stone roller, watched a game of doubles without seeing much of
it. The contest he had just witnessed had settled his conviction that
he wouldn’t be at all happy unless he was allowed to return to the
football field and try for a place on the scrubs. Just now he felt
quite certain that, given the opportunity, he could prove his right to
a position there, and, while the white balls darted to and fro across
the nets unseen by him and the voices of the players fell on deaf ears,
he drew beautiful mental pictures in all of which he, Hugh Oswald
Brodwick Ordway, clad in canvas and leather, stood out very prominently.

After a while he discovered that the courts were almost deserted and
that he was shivering, and so, plunging hands in pockets in Grafton
fashion, he tramped thoughtfully back to Lothrop.




CHAPTER XII

TWO IN A CANOE


“What do you think about when you are running with the ball as you were
yesterday?” asked Hugh.

“Think about?” repeated Nick. “Why, I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.
There isn’t time. You just――just run like the dickens and watch for
the opponents and get ready to straight-arm them or side-step them or
something, you know, and keep on going until they nab you. Then you
hold on to the ball hard and try to drop easy and get your head out of
the way. I suppose you really do do a whole lot of thinking, ’Ighness,
but it’s sort of like a dream. That is, you can’t remember afterwards.
I’ve heard fellows who have made long runs, maybe the length of the
field, or pretty near, tell afterwards just what they thought and
planned, but I don’t believe them. They made that up afterwards. You
don’t do much planning. You couldn’t, anyway. You get the ball and look
for a place to turn in. Then a fellow smashes at you and you dodge him
if you can or you put your hand out and let him have it hard. And then
two or three others are coming at you and you swing in, maybe, or you
swing out, and you get by them somehow――you never know quite how――and
you beat it as hard as you can for the goal line. And about that time
the quarter or a half makes for you and you try to get past him, and
you do or you don’t. Mostly you don’t!”

“It must be jolly exciting,” mused Hugh. “I thought they had you two or
three times yesterday before they had.”

“So did I. I missed my guess with that quarter of theirs. I thought
that if I kept near the side line he would think I meant to turn in and
then I’d keep on straight. But he didn’t fall for it.”

“Why, then you did think, after all, didn’t you?”

Nick looked puzzled. “I guess I must have,” he acknowledged. “I guess
you’d call it unconscious cerebration. Here we are!”

It was afternoon of Sunday, the day succeeding the St. James game, and
Nick and Hugh were going canoeing. A backwater of the river formed a
little cove in the southwest corner of the playing field and save when
the water was very high there was a slope of coarse sand and gravel
there which was facetiously called the Beach, just as the cove was
known as the Pool. It provided a fairly good place for swimming, since
the water was not deep, although the mud was somewhat of a drawback;
and it made a convenient haven for canoes. They were drawn up on the
grass under the well-nigh leafless branches of a grove of maple and ash
trees, a flotilla of some twenty brightly hued craft. Nick’s canoe,
which he owned in partnership with Bert, was easily located, for it
was the only white one in the lot. It had a neat stripe of gold along
its side and the name in gilt letters at the bow: _Omeomi_. Hugh had
been fooled by that name, to Nick’s delight, pronouncing it Om-e-om-e,
believing the statement that it was an Indian word. Nick, however,
pronounced it “O me! O my!”

Hugh took a paddle and seated himself in the bow and Nick pushed off
and guided the gleaming craft out of the cove and around a point of
alders to the river. There he headed up stream, against a barely
perceptible current.

“Now dig if you like,” he called, and Hugh dipped his paddle very
awkwardly and tried his best to perform as he had seen Nick and others
perform. But this was his first attempt and he wasn’t very successful.
Nick let him toil for several minutes. Then:

“’Ighness,” he said, “if you want to learn to paddle you’ll have to
start right. Put your left hand further down and―――― Hold on! Don’t
lean over like that or we’ll have to walk home! Put your hand just
above the end of the blade. That’s it. Now, instead of reaching out
close to the bow, start your stroke farther off and sort of pull it
in. If you don’t you’re pushing the bow to the right every stroke,
don’t you see? Personally, I don’t mind, but the next chap might not
like to have to keep straightening out every time. That’s better,
but your stroke’s too long, ’Ighness. Shorten it up. Shorter still.
That’s more like it. Don’t try to push when the blade’s behind you,
because it doesn’t do any good. It rather slows the canoe up, in fact.
Forces the stern down and makes it drag more water. Get your drive at
the beginning of the stroke, then let up as the paddle passes you and
finish the stroke quickly. Try it.”

Hugh tried it, at first with amusing results, and Nick had to dig hard
at times to keep the craft in its course. But after a while the bow
paddler became more adept. Then Nick tried to teach him to turn his
blade as it left the water, but that trick was for the present beyond
the novice. Once Hugh lost his paddle entirely and they had to float
downstream after it. They went some two miles in the direction of
Needham Falls, by which time the neighboring town was in sight across
the fields, and then pulled the nose of the canoe up on the bank and
rested. The afternoon was still and the October sunlight warm, and
Hugh, for one, was ready for the respite. They laid themselves full
length on a bed of yellowing marsh grass, pillowing their heads in
their clasped hands, and pulled their caps over their eyes.

“Paddling a canoe’s harder work than I fancied,” mused Hugh, conscious
of lame muscles.

“You’ll soon get onto it. The next time you’d better try the stern.”

“I suppose that’s more difficult.”

“A little. You’ve got to steer, too, you see. But it isn’t hard once
you’ve got the hang of it. Funny you’ve never done any canoeing.”

“Yes, I dare say. I’ve punted a bit, and I’ve rowed some, but you don’t
find many canoes on the other side except on the Thames. And mother was
always rather shy about letting me go on the water.”

“It must be dandy on that Thames of yours,” said Nick. “I’ve read about
the races, you know, and all that; houseboats lined up along the shore
and Johnnies in flannels paddling about and colored lanterns and so on.
Must be great!”

“I dare say. I never saw but one boat race. That was the time
you――we――the American crew beat us――them.”

“You’re getting mixed, ’Ighness!” laughed Nick. “You don’t know whether
you’re United States or English.”

“It’s a bit confusing,” agreed Hugh. “Of course, I really am English,
because my father is English and I was born over there. But sometimes
it seems awfully much as though I weren’t, you know! Since I’ve been
here I feel as if I really belonged, if you know――――”

“If I know what you mean; I do, old man. Just the same, Hugh, you’d be
in an awful mess if we ever went to war with England, wouldn’t you?
What would you do then?”

Hugh shook his head soberly. “I don’t know, really. I fancy, though,
I’d stick with dad. I couldn’t do anything else, could I?”

“I don’t see how you could. Wouldn’t it be touching when you and I
met on the trampled field of battle? ‘Why, hello, ’Ighness!’ I’d say.
‘How’s the boy? Take that!’ And I’d biff you one on the side of the
head. And you’d say, smiling pleasantly: ‘Well, well, if it isn’t me
old friend Nick! I’m chawmed to meet you, Nick. Pardon me, but I’ve got
to hand you this!’ And then you’d stick a bayonet into my ribs. Or,
no, you wouldn’t, either, because you’d be an officer, I guess; maybe
Field Marshal Ordway; and so you’d let me have it with a sword! And
then you’d get the Victoria Cross for bravery.”

“Maybe you’d be an officer, too,” Hugh suggested, smiling.

“Oh, I should! I’d be General Blake, Commander of the United States
Expeditionary Forces; and so, instead of beating you over the bean with
the butt end of my rusty trifle――er, trusty rifle, I’d slash off your
head with my bejeweled sword. There’d be some style to that, eh?”

“Don’t see what good the V. C. would do me under the circumstances,”
objected Hugh. “I’m not keen for that programme, Nick. I say, isn’t it
getting late? Hadn’t we better nip it?”

“Almost half-past four, by ginger! Never mind, we’ve got the current
with us going back, and you can rest up. How are the shoulders and
sturdy biceps, Duke?”

“Rather lame, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Chawmed, I’m sure. Tumble in and I’ll shove her off.”

The next day the second team became an official fact. Mr. Crowley, the
assistant athletic director, took charge of the coaching and the squad
of nineteen started in at training table in Manning that noon. Ben
Myatt was chosen captain. As usual, Hugh went over to the field after
school in the afternoon and looked on. He had secretly hoped to make
an end position on the second, but there were Bellows and Forbes in
the coveted places, and no word had come from Hanrihan. He began to
believe, with Bert, that his chances for this year were at an end.

The first was going through signal drill, Nick driving one squad and
Weston the other. Behind each line-up a few sweatered substitutes
followed. Neil Ayer was at quarter for the second, further down the
field, and Mr. Crowley, familiarly known as “Dinny,” with a half-dozen
unplaced candidates, looked on. There was just a suspicion of frost in
the air today, and the fact told on the players. There was more vim in
their movements as, in response to the voices of the quarter-backs,
they trotted up and down with the balls. Coach Bonner and Jim Quinn,
the manager, were conversing in front of the bench, and Davy Richards,
the trainer, was mending a head-guard discarded by one of the players
a few minutes before. Hugh wondered what Mr. Bonner would say if he
broached the subject of reinstatement. At the worst he could only scowl
and say no. And he might say yes! But――well, Coach Bonner wasn’t the
sort of man one felt like making suggestions to! Besides, Hanrihan had
told Hugh to wait.

There were few onlookers about the first team gridiron today, for the
upper and lower middlers were playing the first of the class games
on the further field and the crowd was over there. Hugh was debating
whether to follow or to remain here in the hope of getting some word
from Hanrihan when that youth came to the bench. In front of him
the second team squad, players and followers, came to a breathless
pause after a forward pass and Mr. Crowley, short, square, red-faced,
criticized gruffly. At that moment Hugh became conscious of someone at
his shoulder and heard Mr. Smiley’s deep and pleasant voice.

“What do you think of them, Ordway?” asked the Latin instructor.

“Smiles” was a fine, upstanding man well under forty, clean-shaven,
tanned, gray-eyed. Although he lived in the master’s suite on the
third floor of Lothrop, Hugh had never had more than a nod or a “Good
morning” from him and was rather surprised that Smiles knew his name.

“They look rather fit, sir,” replied the boy.

“Yes. I hope Mr. Crowley will turn us out a good second. A lot depends
on the scrubs. I understand they’ve chosen Myatt for captain. A fine
fellow and a good player. Too bad he’s never made the varsity team.
When he was a lower middler we all looked to see him captain this year.
He lacks something, though.”

“I heard a fellow say Myatt was too good-natured, sir.”

“I wonder! Meaning easy-going, I suppose. Perhaps. Well, he may be
able to do more for us where he is than if he were on the first. Ah,
we’re to have a scrimmage I see. I suppose you don’t play our kind of
football, Ordway.”

“I was trying, sir. I went out for the team, but――――”

“Couldn’t quite get the hang of it?”

“I had to stop, sir. I’m on probation.”

“To be sure. I remember now. Too bad. Well, you’ll have your class team
to try for when you get squared again.”

“Y-yes, sir,” agreed Hugh dubiously, “but――but I was hoping to get back
with the second. Hanrihan said he thought I might. Do you――do you think
so, sir?”

“Hm. I’m afraid the second will be rather far along then. When do you
expect to get off?”

“This week, sir, I hope.”

“Well, in that case――have you spoken to Mr. Crowley?”

“No, sir, I didn’t quite like to, if you know what I mean.”

The master smiled. “I think I do, Ordway. But I don’t see how you
expect to get back unless you ask.”

“Hanrihan told me he would try to――to arrange it.”

“But Tom Hanrihan hasn’t anything to do with the second team, I’m
afraid, Ordway.”

“I fancy not, sir. I thought perhaps I’d speak to Mr. Bonner.”

“Mr. Bonner has no more to do with it than Hanrihan. See Mr. Crowley.
He will hear what you have to say. You know him, I suppose.”

Hugh shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Well, wait until he comes off and we’ll speak to him. He’s coming
now, I think. We’ll take the bull by the horns.” Mr. Smiley chuckled,
and Hugh had to smile, too, for the simile was unflatteringly apt.
Mr. Crowley did remind one remarkably of a bull! “‘_Audentes fortuna
iuvat_,’ Ordway, if you haven’t forgotten your Latin.”

Hugh followed the master to where the second team coach was approaching
the bench in company with Ben Myatt. Hugh lagged a little, for, while
it might be true that fortune favored the brave, it was equally
true that Mr. Crowley didn’t know him from Adam and might think him
decidedly fresh. There was a word or two of greeting between the men,
during which Myatt slipped away, and then Mr. Smiley turned to Hugh.

“This is Ordway, Mr. Crowley. He’s looking for a job and thinks you may
have an opening for a bright young man.”

“Looking for a job?” said the coach, shaking hands. “What sort of a
job, my boy?”

Hugh reddened. “I’d like to get back on the second, sir,” he explained
embarrassedly. “You see, I was getting on fairly well until I went on
probation, and――――”

“Oh, yes, Hanrihan mentioned you, I think. Ordway, is it?”

“Yes, sir. I thought maybe you might let me have another try, Mr.
Crowley, if you know what――――”

“Are you square with the office now?” demanded the other.

“Not today, sir, but I shall be by Friday, I fancy.”

“Then you come and see me Friday, Ordway.”

“Thank you.”

“But don’t come unless you can play. And if you do come”――and here Mr.
Crowley scowled fearsomely――“see that you stay. We haven’t any room for
cut-ups on the team, Ordway. You won’t be of any use to me unless you
can stay straight with the faculty.” Mr. Crowley dismissed Hugh and
his affairs with a nod and turned back to Mr. Smiley. Hugh dropped out
of hearing and presently the master rejoined him.

“Are you going to watch the scrimmage?” asked the latter. “If so,
suppose we sit down over there. Your friend at court seems to have
provided for you, after all. I’m glad you’re to get back.”

“Thank you, sir. It was good of you to――to――――”

“Not at all, Ordway, but I shall expect you to make the most of your
chance and become a distinguished member of the team.” The master
smiled. “When you slam the ball across the line I shall proudly recall
the slight assistance I rendered and partake of the credit. Now then,
first kicks off to the second. ‘The trumpet hoarse rings out the bloody
signal for the war!’ Well kicked, Trafford!”




CHAPTER XIII

BACK TO THE FOLD


Bert was as surprised as he was delighted when Hugh informed him after
practice that Mr. Crowley had virtually promised him a place with the
second team. At first Bert insisted that his chum had misunderstood,
but, on having the conversation repeated, acknowledged that Hugh had
good grounds for encouragement. “I never heard of its being done
before, Hugh,” he said. “Tom Hanrihan must have a drag with Dinny, and
no mistake. You’ll have to work like the dickens to stay on. Think you
can do it?”

“I fancy I can do as well as some of those chaps there now,” answered
Hugh placidly.

“Bellows isn’t bad at end, I guess,” mused Bert, “but Forbes oughtn’t
to be hard to beat. You’re trying for end, aren’t you?”

“I wanted to play end, but I wasn’t there long enough to get placed
more than once or twice. End’s about all I can play, I fancy. I’m not
heavy enough for tackle or guard or back.”

“You’d make a good quarter if you had more experience,” said Bert
thoughtfully. “And they might use you for a running back. You’re quick,
I guess.”

“I’d be laid flat if I ran into Ted Trafford or Pop, though,” laughed
Hugh. “Pop could take me up and throw me clear over the goal. I fancy
end is my place, if I can get it.”

Nick was equally pleased and, like Bert, seemed to think that fortune
had been unusually kind to Hugh. “But you’re a lucky guy, anyway, Duke.
Some fellows are born to good fortune, I guess, and you’re one of them.
That was nice of Smiles, though, wasn’t it? Don’t you like him, Hugh?”

“Very much. We had a topping time. And, I say, you chaps, he knows an
awful lot of football!”

Bert and Nick laughed. “Why shouldn’t he?” asked Bert. “He played it
for three or four years and came near making the all-America team,
didn’t he, Nick?”

“So they say. Anyway, I’ll bet he was a dandy guard. When he first came
here he used to help with the coaching. That was before Dinny came.”

“And after. Dinny didn’t coach the elevens until the first fall we were
here.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought Dinny was always a football coach.”

“No, they got him because Pete had too much to do. Dinny was supposed
to give all his time to the track team and nine. Then they got Davy to
look after the track fellows and so Dinny took hold of the second team.”

“I should think that Mr. Smiley would be a ripping football coach,”
said Hugh.

“Yes,” agreed Nick. “He took hold of the upper middlers two years ago
and they ran away with everything and even held the first team to no
score once. Remember, Bert?”

“That was three years ago, though, because I was a junior then. That
was some team, Nick, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Remember how it beat Grammar School thirty-four to nothing, or
something like that? And Grammar School made a big howl about it and
wrote to the paper that we’d played a lot of first team fellows against
them.”

“Has Mr. Smiley anything to do with athletics here?” asked Hugh. “He
said something that――――”

“Chairman of the Faculty Athletic Committee,” replied Nick. “He and
Gring and Pete Sargent are the committee. You must have made a hit with
him or he wouldn’t have gone to Dinny with you. I like Smiles. Wish I
was still taking Latin.”

“I dare say it wouldn’t do you any harm,” said Bert unkindly.

“Nor much good. All a fellow needs is enough to pass his college exams.
After that he forgets it as fast as he knows how. Well, meanwhile
there’s a bunch of German waiting for me downstairs. You’re a lucky dog
not to have the stuff, Bert.”

“I get it next year. What are you reading?”

“‘Das Edel Blüt.’ It’s tough, if you ask me. When there was a perfectly
good, gentlemanly language like Latin, why did someone have to go and
invent German? Well, I’m off.”

Hugh was summoned to the office Thursday and listened to a brief homily
by Mr. Rumford. When he emerged he was once more in good standing.
Since, however, it was by that time almost five o’clock, it was
too late to report to Mr. Crowley that day, and Hugh dropped in on
Wallace Cathcart and spent the rest of the time until supper arguing
whether a college education was essential to success in life. While
Hugh could beat his host at tennis, and had done it twice since their
first meeting, he was no match for him in the present controversy,
and Cathcart won the debate easily, proving conclusively that a high
school education was all that was required by the average person. And
this in the face of the fact that Cathcart had his plans all laid for a
full college course and two years of graduate study!

Hugh reported to Mr. Crowley the next afternoon dressed for play. The
second team coach viewed him with an unflattering lack of enthusiasm.
“Are you square with the office?” he asked. Hugh assured him that he
was. Mr. Crowley glanced doubtfully about the field and then grunted.
“All right. Get in there and catch some of those punts.” That was all.
Evidently, Hugh reflected, his advent was not a matter of as much
importance to Mr. Crowley as it was to him.

His appearance with the squad aroused not a little surprise among his
team-mates. In one or two cases, he thought, it aroused resentment
as well. He knew few of the fellows save by sight. Neil Ayer, the
first-choice quarter-back, was a speaking acquaintance, and so, to a
lesser extent, was Hauser, who played left half. But the rest were
practically strangers to him. He was relieved to find that his enforced
idleness had not cost him what skill he had acquired, and he couldn’t
see but that he caught, threw and handled the pigskin generally as
well as half the fellows in the squad. Mr. Crowley made him known to
Captain Myatt later, and Myatt, who was a big, likable chap, won Hugh’s
instant affection by being very nice to him. One would have thought
from Myatt’s words that Hugh was doing him the biggest sort of a favor
by joining the squad. Hugh didn’t get into signal work, for he didn’t
know the code, but he trudged along behind and listened and watched
and picked up a good deal of useful knowledge that afternoon. Later,
when the second took the field to play two ten-minute periods with
the first, Hugh and three others were sent off out of the way with a
football and put in the time punting and catching. At supper time,
armed with his napkin-ring and a bottle of marmalade, his private
property, he joined the training table in Manning.

There were just twenty youths at the long table which was set up in
a corner of the big dining hall in the junior dormitory, and Mr.
Crowley presided at the head. Hugh felt a bit strange at supper that
first evening and was conscious of the puzzled regard of some of his
companions. Doubtless they wondered at his sudden advent with the team.
There was no ill-feeling in evidence, however, and Hugh got through the
meal without much conversation and felt somewhat relieved when chairs
were pushed back. At training table, in order that no one should hurry
through his meal at the risk of indigestion, it was a rule that all
must remain until the coach gave the word. Consequently, if one did
bolt his food it profited him nothing since he was obliged to sit there
and watch his neighbors finish, and fellows who had the “quick lunch”
habit soon got over it. Mr. Crowley made occasional exceptions to the
rule, but one had to put forward a pretty convincing plea.

Tonight the team left the table together and Hugh passed down the
corridor in the rear of the group. When he reached the entrance several
of the second team members had paused just outside the doorway and
Hugh’s passage was blocked. After pausing an instant for the others to
go on down the steps or move aside, he said: “I beg your pardon,” and
edged through. A short, broad-bodied youth glanced around and instantly
pulled a companion out of the way.

“Gangway, Charley!” he exclaimed. “Let the British Aristocracy pass. My
word, we fawncy ourself a bit, eh, what?”

Hugh recognized the speaker as Brewster Longley, the team’s center. He
was broad of shoulder and hip, short-necked and short-limbed, with a
round face surmounted by very black hair which, close-cropped, looked
like the bristles of a blacking brush. He was called “Brew” Longley and
was a very clever center. Hugh’s brief glance expressed surprise as he
passed down the steps. He had never spoken to Longley and the latter’s
unexpected “ragging” disconcerted him. As he went off along the path
he heard an amused laugh from the occupants of the steps and resented
it. He had half a mind to turn back. But the next instant his flash of
anger left him and he mentally shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the
incident.

Bert was not at home when Hugh reached the study, but he came in soon
after looking cross and worried. Hugh’s efforts at conversation were
not successful, for Bert answered in monosyllables and showed an
evident disinclination to talk. Animated by good resolutions regarding
study, for he meant to keep his present class standing if it was
possible and so follow the earnest advice of Mr. Rumford, Hugh got his
books together and seated himself at his table. But it was hard to get
his mind on lessons when Bert was wandering aimlessly from bedroom
to study and from study back to bedroom. Finally Hugh ventured a
good-natured protest and to his bewilderment Bert turned on him angrily.

“Oh, dry up!” he snarled. “If you don’t like my moving around you take
your books in your room. I’ve got as much right here as you have.”

“I didn’t say you hadn’t,” replied Hugh, after the first moment of
astonishment. “What are you so waxy about? I only asked you not to――――”

“Well, I’ll walk around here just as much as I please,” growled the
other. “You make me weary, anyhow, you and your airs! I didn’t ask to
have a blooming Britisher wished on me, if you care to know it!”

“And I didn’t ask to be put in with a bear,” replied Hugh mildly.
“What’s wrong with you, anyhow, old chap? Anything I’ve done?”

“There isn’t anything wrong,” responded Bert crossly, “except that a
fellow likes a certain amount of freedom in his own rooms. You seem to
think you own this place!”

“Piffle! Go ahead and walk if it does you any good.” Hugh smiled as he
turned back to his book. Probably Bert was looking for grievances, for
that smile instead of bringing peace produced a fresh outburst.

“You bet I’ll walk! And let me tell you another thing, Ordway. I had
this room picked out long before you ever thought of coming here, and
if another chap hadn’t quit school you wouldn’t be here. Anyone would
think from the airs you put on that this dormitory was built especially
for you.”

“Then let me tell you something, Bert,” said Hugh, losing patience at
last. “My mother wanted me to take this room by myself and she engaged
it last spring. Later the secretary wrote that they had had another
application for it and would I mind sharing the suite. And I said I
wouldn’t, although the mater was dead against it. So if you think I’m
here through any kindness of yours you’re all wrong.”

Bert stared in surprise. “I don’t believe it,” he said at last. “They
wouldn’t rent this suite to one fellow. They never do.”

“They did, however. If you don’t believe me I can show you the paper.
It’s in my dispatch-box in there. Mind you, I’m not fussing about it,
but I’m hanged if you can tell me I got in here because you said so!”

“Oh, I suppose you’re such a swell they let down the rules for you,”
sneered Bert. “I dare say they thought you were the Prince of Wales,
with your silly valet and your coat-of-arms and all the rest of the
piffle! You make me mighty tired, if you want to know.”

“Sorry,” said Hugh shortly. “But I don’t see what’s going to be done
about it. I’m plaguey sure I’m not going to get out of here to oblige
you, old chap.”

“All right, but as long as you stay you can be mighty sure that I’m
going to do as I please here, you pig-headed Britisher!”

“Right-o! And now let’s stop chinning, if you don’t mind.”

Bert grumbled a bit and at last, with a good deal of noisy slamming of
books, settled down to study. They didn’t speak again that evening.
Later Bert took himself off to visit somewhere in the building and
Hugh went to bed with a book. He didn’t read a great deal, though,
for Bert’s remarks had stung. When you are making a hard try to be as
American and democratic as you possibly can, it is discouraging to be
accused of putting on side. In Hugh’s case it hurt. Looking back, he
could see now that he had made a bad beginning by appearing on the
scene with Bowles in attendance, but he had supposed that Bert and
the others had forgotten that incident. As for the coat-of-arms――what
Bert really meant was crest――that seemed a small matter. It was on his
brushes and silver toilet things, and he had some writing paper that
bore it. But he never used the paper and he certainly never paraded
the toilet articles. After a while he got out of bed, pulled his bag
from the closet and ruthlessly dumped brushes and comb and shoehorn
and buttonhook and three or four other articles into it and shoved the
bag back in the closet. The next morning he combed his hair with his
fingers, not very successfully, and after English he hurried off to the
village and outfitted anew at the drug store, becoming the owner of two
military brushes with imitation mahogany backs, a black rubber comb, a
five-cent buttonhook made of nickel, and a papier-mâché shoehorn. He
didn’t know what more he could do unless he gave up wearing his watch,
which had the crest above his monogram, or left off a small seal-ring
which offended in the same way.

Bert had apparently forgotten his ill-humor of the night before and was
the same as usual, except that he seemed rather quiet and depressed.
Hugh, however, found it hard to forget so readily, for he was fond of
his roommate and the latter’s remarks still rankled. But Hugh tried to
hide the fact and Bert never suspected it. That afternoon Hugh believed
that he had discovered the reason for his chum’s ill-humor, for Bert
didn’t get into the scrimmage with the second team until it was almost
over, Zanetti and Siedhof playing at left half by turns. Hugh was again
left out of the second team line-up, but he was able to follow the
scrimmaging fairly closely from where he and three other fellows were
punting and catching beyond the west goal.

Later he walked back with Pop, and Pop, after a silence that lasted
until they had crossed the green, asked: “What’s wrong with Bert, Duke?
He’s as grouchy as a bear and is playing like a silly idiot. Bonner
gave him an awful dressing-down after practice yesterday. And of course
he had to go and lose his temper and sass Bonner back and there was the
dickens to pay for a while. Bonner made him apologize. I was afraid at
first that Bert wouldn’t do it. Did he tell you about it?”

“Not a word. He was beastly ugly last evening, though. I didn’t know
what the dickens was up. We had a regular row.”

“He has a rotten temper. Gets over it quick, though. I thought at one
time Bonner was going to fire him from the squad. He will have to brace
up and get onto himself or he will find that Siedhof has his place.
Bonner isn’t the sort you can fool with much.”

“I wish he wouldn’t flare up the way he does,” said Hugh. “He says
perfectly rotten things when he’s waxy.”

Pop nodded. “He’s as mean as a little yellow pup when he gets started.
Come on over a while, Duke, and tell me how you’re getting on. What’s
Crowley going to do with you, by the way? The end positions are
settled, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but Bert thinks I might beat out that chap Forbes. I dare say
I’ll sit on the bench a good deal, though. What sort of a team has
Rotan College, Pop?”

“‘Rotten’ College? Oh, good enough to lay us out, I guess. They’ll win
about twelve to nothing. Still, it’ll be a good game. There’s a big
mucker named Lambert who plays left guard for them. Lambert and I had
quite a merry little party last year and I’m honest enough to own up
that he got the best of it. I’m looking forward with much pleasure to
meeting him again on Saturday.” Pop smiled grimly. “If he tries what he
tried last year he won’t play more than a couple of periods, I guess.”

“Pop, you must control that horrid temper of yours,” said Hugh gravely.

Pop grinned. “I will. I’m not going to start anything, Duke, but if
Lambert gets gay he will run against something hard this time. Last
year I stood a lot of jolts from him, and Bonner saw it, and after
the game――they beat us seven to three――he said, ‘If I had caught you
slugging back at that fellow I’d have pulled you out, Pop.’ ‘Sure, I
knew that,’ I told him. ‘That’s the only reason he got away with it.’
So the other day Bonner said, ‘You’ll play against Lambert again
next Saturday.’ And I said, yes, I was expecting to. And Bonner said,
looking away off into the distance, ‘He used you sort of roughly last
year, didn’t he?’ ‘He sure did,’ said I. ‘Well, we mustn’t have any
rough stuff, Pop, you know. If I catch you at it you’ll come out.’ ‘All
right,’ said I. ‘Are you likely to be looking?’ ‘Well, I’m not going to
keep my eyes on you all the time,’ he said, ‘and my sight isn’t what
it was when I was younger, but if the umpire should call my attention
to anything you’d have to come out, Pop. So if I were you I’d be a bit
careful!’ And I’m going to be.”

Hugh laughed as Pop pushed him through the doorway of Number 20. “I’m
not going to miss that game, whatever happens,” he declared. “And if
they send me out to carry you off, Pop, I’ll be very gentle with you.”

“Huh!” growled the other. “Carry _me_ off, eh? If Lambert doesn’t act
like a perfect gentleman he will be smiling in his sleep and listening
to the birdies singing about the middle of the second quarter!”




CHAPTER XIV

BERT CONFIDES


Bert wasn’t very good company that week. In the evenings he made a
great pretence of studying, but Hugh’s stolen glances showed that his
friend’s thoughts were far from his books. At times Bert was as gay
as you please, but the gayety didn’t last long and while it did last
struck Hugh as being decidedly forced. For the most part Bert was
silent and morose. There were no more bickerings, but it was more to
Hugh’s credit than Bert’s, for the latter on more than one occasion
showed himself ready to quarrel on any provocation. As a result Hugh
was less at home than usual. He spent much time with Pop Driver and
Roy Dresser, over in Trow, and often dropped down the corridor to
hobnob with Cathcart before bedtime. There was one good thing about
the proctor and that was that you could always depend on finding him
in his room except when he had a recitation. Now and then Hugh visited
Nick, but Nick, unlike Cathcart, was almost never in. A couple of
evenings Hugh went over to Lit for awhile, but he had a feeling that
it was better taste to remain away from the society’s room until he
was a full-fledged member. He very much wished that Bert would confide
in him, so that whatever the trouble was they might talk it over like
sensible beings. Somehow, he didn’t believe that gridiron difficulties
quite explained his friend’s condition of mind. Instead, he shrewdly
suspected that Bert’s poor performances in practice of late were the
result of some secret worry and not the cause of it. All that Hugh
could be certain of was that studies had nothing to do with it, for,
while Bert was not a particularly studious fellow, he nevertheless
managed to maintain an average standing and was seldom in trouble with
the office.

Bert went back to left half on Wednesday and stayed there until the
Rotan game. But even Hugh could see that he was having a hard time of
it to keep Siedhof out, and there were times when no one could have
criticized Coach Bonner had he pulled Bert back to the bench. Nick
confided to Hugh one day that Bert was frightfully off his game, adding
regretfully, “It’s got so I think twice before I give him the ball.
And Bonner’s getting on to me, too. Bert’s got to brace up Saturday or
Billy Siedhof will have his place. I’d like to know what the dickens
is wrong with him! The best thing for him would be to get Davy to lay
him off for three or four days. I suggested it to him yesterday and he
nearly bit my head off. Ted’s got his eye on him, too, and Ted’s so set
on winning this year that he’d fire his grandmother if she didn’t play
well! Look here, ’Ighness, why don’t you sort of drop a hint to Bert,
eh? I’ve tried it and only escaped death by instant flight.”

“So you want me to die, eh? I’d do it, only――well, Bert gets mad so
easily now that it wouldn’t be much good.”

“I guess it wouldn’t. Well, it’s his funeral and he will have to make
his own arrangements. Still, I hate to see him making such a mess of
things without any reason that anyone can see. What the dickens _is_
the matter, Duke? Has he hinted anything to you?”

“No, he hasn’t. All I know is――――” Hugh hesitated a moment. “I don’t
_know_ anything, but this morning when I got the mail and took it up
there was a letter for Bert from his father――I know the postmark and
the writing, you see――and one from Needham, and he didn’t like either
of them.”

“That isn’t much of a clue. He doesn’t like anything just at present.
He doesn’t even like his fodder; doesn’t eat enough to keep alive.
Oh, well, it will blow over, I guess. And I’ve got enough to worry
about as it is, with a left side of the line that’s letting everything
pile through it. Saturday’s game is going to be a slaughter of the
innocents, Duke, you take it from me.”

Hugh, like Nick, had his own troubles during the next few days, for
Coach Crowley tried him out at right end on the second, and as an end
Hugh had much to learn. Just why, after the first ten-minute fiasco,
Mr. Crowley sent him back again Hugh couldn’t understand. Hugh was
boxed time after time, while the first team backs romped past, allowed
himself to be drawn out of the play by the cunning Dresser until that
youth laughed when he caught Hugh’s anxious regard, and twice overran
the ball on kicks and felt like forty kinds of a fool. But Crowley
yanked him hither and thither, bellowed things that he couldn’t more
than half understand, threatened him with the bench regularly every
second play――and kept him at it. Hugh told himself Thursday afternoon,
as he made his way tiredly out of the field house and back to Lothrop,
that he had forever settled his chances with the second and that he was
not half sorry. But later, when he had eaten ravenously and rested, he
decided that he was sorry, awfully sorry, and he neglected his next
day’s Greek and mathematics while he frowningly studied a chapter
entitled “How to Play the End Positions” in a book on football. After a
half-hour of it he sighed and closed the volume.

“The chap who wrote that may know all about it, but he doesn’t play
Dinny’s kind of football,” he reflected. “What I want is a book that
will tell me how to keep Roy and Franklin from making me look like a
guy! Still, I fancy Crowley won’t try me there again unless both Forbes
and Bellows and that other chap get killed.”

But Hugh was wrong. The next day he was again back at the right end of
the line and again Ayer yelped at him and Coach Crowley bellowed and
Captain Myatt barked. But he did a little better today, just enough,
probably, to keep Mr. Crowley from having him instantly drawn and
quartered or immersed in boiling oil. Roy Dresser, who played left end
on the first, found it harder to entice his opponent away from the
play, and Franklin, at left tackle, discovered that he couldn’t always
fool him. Still, Hugh missed an easy tackle on one occasion and let
Nick slip past for a long gain while he ruefully picked himself from
the ground and scraped the mud from his face. Mr. Crowley almost ate
him for that and Neil Ayer evinced every desire to officiate with the
vinegar and salt. That was a bad day for the second, on the whole, for
the first ran up five scores in the twenty minutes of scrimmaging.
What troubled Hugh quite as much as his own defects was the sorry
performance put up by Bert on the enemy team. Bert fumbled miserably
twice, and, while he usually gained when he had the ball, played in
such a half-hearted manner that Coach Bonner was “on his neck” half the
time. In the last of the second period, when substitutions on each team
were numerous, Bert went out in favor of Siedhof. Hugh, too, severed
his connection with the game then, and Forbes got back to his own.

On the bench, dragging the sleeves of his sweater across his chest,
Hugh ventured a remark to Bert, but the result was not encouraging.
Bert only growled. After that Hugh watched Forbes and earnestly tried
not to indulge in uncharitable thoughts. But he couldn’t help feeling
exultant when Vail and Bert swept around their left end, Vail carrying
the pigskin, and spurned the recumbent form of Forbes underfoot. That
was encouraging to Hugh. Even Forbes, it seemed, was by no means beyond
the cunning wiles of the enemy. Then Davy Richards, the trainer, who
had been up the field administering to a dislocated finger, hurried
indignantly back to the bench and sent them scurrying to the showers.

That evening Hugh went back to the football book and discovered a
trifle more of sense in what he read. After all, he concluded, perhaps
the writer might last five minutes at end under Crowley. There was
no work for the first team regulars on Friday, but the second-string
players were lined up against the second for one twelve-minute
period and barely saved their bacon by slipping Derry across the
field unnoticed for a forward pass that brought a touchdown. Hugh
congratulated himself that that play took place on the other side and
that it was Bellows and not he who had to face the irate Mr. Crowley.
Three minutes later, on the second’s thirty-five, first team tried the
same trick on the other side and Hugh was fortunate enough to knock
the ball down before the opposing left end could get it. For that he
got a slap on the back from Myatt, a grin from Quarterback Ayer, and
a grunt from Coach Crowley. Not much in the way of reward, perhaps,
after all the scoldings he had suffered, but quite sufficient in Hugh’s
estimation. Even though he was informed a minute later that he was
the worst end that had ever donned canvas he refused to be dejected.
“That,” he told himself hearteningly as he watched the opposing
tackle and waited for the signal, “isn’t so. If I were as bad as that
I wouldn’t be here.” Then he was trying to block off a big tackle,
while Ayer’s voice shrilled “_In! In!_” and everything was excitedly
confused and glorious. After another moment Hauser yanked him to his
feet at the risk of dislocating his arm and Myatt shoved him into
position again, and Quinn was crying: “Third down! Four to go!” and
Ayer was barking his signals: “Manson back! 47――35――16!”

The game ended when Manson’s punt had dropped into the arms of a
first-team back, and, muddy and warm and panting, they trotted up to
the field house. It was worth all the hard knocks and harder words
to feel the tingling rain of the hissing shower on naked body, and
afterwards, Hugh, deliciously weary, slowly pulled his clothes on and
went half asleep in the task of tying a shoelace and heard the babel of
voices as in a dream until Ben Myatt, scantily wrapped in a monstrous
bath towel, sank to the bench beside him with a deep sigh and murmured:
“They didn’t do much with our wing today, Ordway, did they?”

And Hugh, emerging from his luxurious drowse, shook his head proudly
and answered: “Rather not!” After which, with a supreme effort of the
will, he finished tying that lace and got to his feet. Encountering
the eyes of Forbes he smiled kindly but pityingly. It was too bad that
Forbes was out of it. He was sorry for Forbes. But as events proved he
need not have been.

He found Bert lying on the window-seat scribbling on a scratch-pad when
he got back to Lothrop. Perhaps the afternoon’s rest had benefited the
first-team player, for he was undeniably in better humor.

“What did they do to you, Hugh?” he asked as he tore a sheet from the
pad and crumpled it in his hand. “Were they brutal?”

“Hardly! They scored once, but they wouldn’t have pulled that if we
hadn’t been asleep. Derry took a pass about a foot from the side line
and ran thirty yards.”

Bert laughed. “What were you fellows doing to let him get off like
that? You must have been asleep!”

“I fancy we were,” acknowledged Hugh ruefully as he seated himself
in the Morris chair and stretched tired legs across the rug. “I was
awfully glad it wasn’t on my side.”

“I’ll bet you were! Who played halves for them?”

“Kinds was one. The other fellow I don’t know. Small and dark and
awfully quick and squirmy.”

“Fearing. He’s going to make a bully half some day. He’s only a lower
middler.” There was a pause and then: “Say, Hugh,” Bert went on
carelessly, “you don’t happen to have any money you don’t want to use
for a while, I suppose?”

“Money? How much?”

“Oh, a beast of a lot; thirty dollars. Twenty would do, I guess. It
would do for a while, anyway.” Bert was much too casual to deceive the
other and Hugh looked regretful.

“No, I haven’t more than six or seven, Bert. How soon would you have to
have it?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I only thought that if you did happen to have
it――――”

“I know, but I fancy I could get it in a few days. Only thing is the
mater’s away just now.” He frowned thoughtfully. “What are you going to
do, Bert? Buy something?”

“Sort of. It doesn’t matter a bit.” He yawned elaborately, tossed aside
the block of paper and sat up. “I’d have to have it by Monday, anyway.
Thanks just the same.”

“Monday! But this is Friday, and――――”

“I know. Don’t bother. I tell you it doesn’t matter, Hugh.”

“Yes, but――if you want it――I say, now, I might telegraph, eh? But I
dare say you could get it from home as soon as I could.”

“Well, the fact is――――” Bert hesitated. “My dad’s shut down on me and
won’t send me a cent beyond my allowance; and that’s only ten a month.
Of course, he will come around in time; maybe in a month; but I’ve got
to have――that is, I――I need twenty or thirty right now. I’ve sort of
promised a man to let him have it Monday. It――it’s a debt. An old one.
Things I bought last winter. Now he’s acting nasty and threatens to go
to faculty if I don’t settle up.”

“But I thought we weren’t allowed to have any debts!”

Bert shrugged. “We aren’t supposed to, except by special arrangement.
But most every fellow has things charged here in the village or over in
Needham. Of course you’re supposed to settle at the end of term, and I
meant to, but I was hard up and couldn’t. This Shylock bothered me all
summer with bills and letters and things and I told him I’d pay when I
got back. Well, I tried to, but dad got angry and said I was spending
too much money and I’d have to get along on my allowance. And he told
mother not to let me have it. So it’s a rotten outlook. Of course, if I
can’t pay him right now, I can’t, and that’s all there is to it. Only
if he _should_ go to Charlie I’d get fired as quick as a wink.”

“That’s too bad,” said Hugh sympathetically. “We’ll simply have to
dig up the money somewhere. Toss me that block, will you? And your
pencil? Thanks. Now, let’s see. ‘Please send six pounds’――no, ‘thirty
dollars――――’” Hugh nibbled the pencil reflectively. “I’ve got about six
dollars, though, so I’ll just ask for twenty-five. Thirty’s enough, old
chap? You’re certain?”

“Yes, but I don’t believe you’d better, Hugh. I don’t know, after all,
when I can pay it back. Maybe not until Christmas. I always get some
extra money then. I guess Fallow and Turner will wait.”

“But there’d be no hurry about paying it back, Bert,” the other
protested. “And my mother won’t mind sending it the least bit. I
haven’t asked for any extra tin for a long time. You just sit tight,
old dear, and leave it to me. ‘Please send twenty-five dollars at once.
Important. Well. Love.’ That ought to do it. I say, though, maybe I’d
better ask mother to telegraph it, eh? Then she’d surely get it here
by Monday. Unless, that is, this doesn’t get to her in time. You see,
she went away to make some visits the other day. She ought to be in
Philadelphia tomorrow, but if she stayed over in New York――I fancy I’ll
send a couple of these just to be on the safe side. Bound to fetch her
that way, what?”

“It’s awfully decent of you,” said Bert gratefully. “Hope I’ll be able
to do as much for you some day.”

“I hope you won’t need to,” laughed Hugh. “How do I get these off? I
can telephone, can’t I?”

“Yes, and they’ll charge it to the school and you can settle with the
office. I ought to offer to pay them myself, Hugh, but I’m just about
strapped. You could add it to the rest, though.”

“Oh, rot! I’ll nip down and get them off now. If mother gets one of
these tomorrow morning we might hear by afternoon, eh?”

When Hugh got back Bert was whistling merrily in his room.

“They said they’d get them off right away,” Hugh announced from the
doorway. “So that’s all right, eh?”

“Yes,” replied Bert. “And I hope―――― Well, anyway, I’m awfully much
obliged, Hugh. To tell the truth I’ve been scared to death for a week
for fear Fallow would turn up here at school.”

“Well, it won’t matter if he does now,” responded Hugh cheerfully.
“Is――is that what’s been bothering you lately, old chap?”

Bert nodded. “Did you notice it?” he asked, mildly surprised.

“Did I notice it? Well, rather! You’ve been as――as grouchy as a bear.”

“Have I?” asked the other penitently. “I guess I have. I’m sorry, Hugh.
I guess I was particularly nasty the other night, wasn’t I?”

“Well, you weren’t exactly sweet-tempered,” chuckled Hugh.

“I guess I was a regular beast. I wish you’d――er――forget it.”

“All right. I fancy I lost my temper a bit too.”

“I didn’t mean”――Bert spoke from behind a towel――“what I said about
rooming with you, Hugh. I――I’m sorry I was such a cad.”

“Oh, don’t talk so sick,” muttered Hugh, backing away from the door. “I
didn’t pay any attention to it. Now shut up. I’ve got to wash.”




CHAPTER XV

GRAFTON SCORES


The second team were not exempted from work on Saturday, rather to
their annoyance, and it wasn’t until the Rotan College game was nearly
half over that they were dismissed and allowed to flock over to the
first-team gridiron and crowd into seats at the end of the stand.

Rotan had already scored once and the board announced “Grafton
0――Visitors 7.”

Rotan was a small college, but it rather specialized in football and
its teams were invariably clever. Naturally the eleven blue-stockinged
youths averaged superior to Grafton in age, size, weight and
experience, and a defeat for the home team was a foregone conclusion.
Rotan had played a mid-season contest at Grafton regularly every fall
for six years, and in that period Grafton’s best performance was a
0 to 0 game four years previous. Rotan was a light team, as college
teams went, but it knew a lot of football and provided just the
experience that Coach Bonner desired for his charges at that period of
development.

It was soon apparent to the second team members that their champions
were in for a severe drubbing today. Rotan was using a wide-open
formation and running her backs around the Grafton wings about as
she pleased, varying this pastime by an occasional short punt and
a quarter-back plunge at the center. The Rotan backs were tall and
heavy and hard to stop even when the home-team players were fortunate
enough to get to them. But it was the dazzling unexpectedness of the
attack that was principally accountable for the helplessness of the
Scarlet-and-Gray. Rotan’s forwards would string across the field
almost from side line to side line, her backs would retreat ten and
even twelve yards behind them, there would come a quick, short signal,
the ball would go back, the back-field would start on the run to one
side or the other, the ball would be caught by one or another of the
moving backs, Grafton would come plunging through and then――well, then
a blue-armed youth would be suddenly seen running blithely away with
the pigskin tucked to his body and not a Graftonian nearer than five
yards! How they did it not even the spectators could see. They seemed
to possess an absolutely uncanny ability to guess where the openings
were to be. Hanser, who was Hugh’s neighbor on one side, muttered
disgustedly when a Rotan half had taken the ball over three white lines
and placed it twenty yards from the home team’s goal.

“Why doesn’t Ted play his ends deeper?” he asked. “What’s the idea of
tearing through and not knowing where the ball is? They can’t stop ’em
that way. What’s Bonner thinking of, I’d like to know.”

“It looks to me,” said Bellows, from further along, “as if those
fellows started before the ball. You watch this time, Frank.”

“I have watched, and they don’t. They’ve got it down pretty fine,
that’s all. That full-back does start before the ball, but he runs
back a little and he’s all right. Then when the ball is snapped he
straightens out again and half the time he doesn’t get into the play at
all. If one of those chaps would only fumble once it would be a cinch!”

“They won’t, though. They’re wizards at it. Watch the way they put
Kinley out every time. Musgrave too.”

“Yes, and look at our ends. Might as well be sitting on the bench for
all the good they do. If I was Ted I’d close the line up and make them
show their hand more. That was Neil Ayer. They’ll have to quit that
foolishness now, though. They won’t be able to run the ends inside the
twenty.”

Rotan didn’t try to. She closed up and piled her backs at the left of
the Grafton line and made three past Kinley and Franklin. She repeated
the play for two more and then tried a skin-tackle play off Ted
Trafford that worked for a scant yard. With four to go on fourth down
her full-back dropped behind to the thirty yards and held his long arms
out. But he didn’t kick when the ball came to him. Instead, there was a
straight heave across the center and for a breathless instant it seemed
that the visitors had again scored. But the end, who had managed to
post himself behind the goal line, couldn’t hold the ball when it came
to him and the pigskin changed hands.

Hugh watched interestedly then to see how Pop Driver and the
redoubtable Lambert were getting on. But the play was at the far end
of the field and details were beyond his vision. Two tries netted the
Scarlet-and-Gray less than five yards and Keyes punted high and far.
Roy Dresser nailed the Rotan quarter on the enemy’s thirty-eight and
once more Rotan started her open game. Four yards, eight yards, six
yards, and the linesmen scampered with the chain. So far Rotan had not
once tried a forward pass in the middle of the field, but when two
tries netted but seven yards, she gave a remarkable exhibition of her
ability in that department. The full-back went back to kicking position
and the ball sped fast and true to him. Then, with two backs forming
a tandem interference, he sped to the left. Tray, the Grafton right
end, failed to get through and it was Ted Trafford who almost upset
the runner well behind his line. But Ted’s tackle just failed and the
full-back stopped short, turned and heaved the pigskin far down the
field and to the right, where his own right end, quite uncovered, was
waiting. Nick Blake brought down the runner on his thirty-six yards
and won a salvo of applause. But after that there was no hope. Rotan
snaked through the Grafton left side, ran both ends, faked two kicks,
and finally, when the defenders fully expected a forward pass, massed
on the center of the line and piled through Musgrave for the second
touchdown. Rotan failed at goal and a moment later the half was at an
end.

“Thirteen to nothing, eh?” muttered Hanser, his eyes on the scoreboard.
“I guess I can pretty nearly predict the final score, Ordway. About
thirty-two to a goose-egg, I reckon. Rotan ought to be able to score
three more touchdowns and kick at least one goal.”

“Maybe we’ll buck up in the next half,” said Hugh hopefully.

“We’ll have to do a lot of bucking,” grunted Hanser as he pulled
himself from the seat. “I’m going down to look for a fellow. Keep my
seat, will you?”

School and village had turned out well for the game, and Rotan had
brought some half-hundred students with her, and so between halves
there was a good deal of cheering from both sides of the field, and the
visiting contingent sang a couple of songs and were politely applauded.
Then Hanser ploughed his way back to his seat, the teams trotted around
the corner of the stand and Rotan lined up for the kick-off.

Bert Winslow, playing back with Nick, caught the ball and ran it a good
twelve yards before he was spilled. Then Grafton, evidently smarting
under the coach’s remarks in the field house, went at it with a new
vim. Unable in the first half to make much headway through the blue
line, she began to bear down hard on the ends and tackles. The first
attempt gained many yards, but it was across the field instead of down
it, and the pigskin came to a pause on the same line from which it had
started. But the next attempt proved more successful, for, with Keyes
carrying, the pigskin slipped around the Rotan left end for a first
down. Then Bert plowed through between center and right guard for four
and Roy Dresser, on an end-around play, added another five. Keyes
plugged through on the left for enough to make the distance. By this
time Grafton was shouting enthusiastically in the stand and the ball
was past the center of the field and in Rotan territory.

Bert again made four on a delayed pass around the opponent’s right
wing, and once more Keyes, from kick formation, ran wide for a scant
gain. With four to go, Nick slipped straight ahead for two and then
Keyes faked a kick and made it first down. The ball was near Rotan
thirty-five yards now and visions of a touchdown floated before the
Grafton supporters. But when two tries had failed to yield more than
four yards and Keyes got a forward pass away to Roy Dresser and that
youth failed even to touch it, a punt was in order. Rotan caught on
her five yards but failed to gain. Then, since the play was now nearly
opposite his end of the stand, Hugh could watch the doings of Pop and
his adversary. And they were well worth noting.

Lambert was a big, rawboned fellow with a shock of yellow-brown hair
which, since he had lost his head-guard, made a vivid note of color.
It was evident to Hugh that both Pop and Lambert were engaged in a
private and personal rivalry that was of absorbing interest to them.
And both youths looked as if they had had hard wear. Lambert sported
a strip of plaster across his nose like a saddle and Pop had one very
discolored eye. On offense Lambert played well outside of Pop Driver,
for the Grafton line was no longer attempting to stretch as wide as the
opponent’s, and, theoretically at least, it was Captain Trafford who
should have engaged the shock-haired left guard. But Hugh noted with
amusement that almost every time it was Pop who tried conclusions with
Lambert, often, as it appeared, most impolitely ignoring the center’s
efforts to interest him. Hugh couldn’t see anything that looked like
slugging, however, in spite of the visible marks of combat. It was
merely a very pretty struggle for supremacy, with the honors fairly
even, Hugh concluded. But a few minutes later, when Rotan, having
failed at a run around Roy Dresser’s end and lost three yards on a
forward pass that went awry, finally punted to midfield and the two
teams lined up close to the fifty-yard line, he began to have his
doubts. With the ball in Grafton’s possession and the lines playing
close and compact, Lambert and Pop faced each other at arm’s length.
On the first play, a direct plunge at the guard position on the left,
Hugh, watching Pop and his adversary rather than the runner, saw
the rivals clash together and Lambert’s fist, under cover of the
confusion, jerk upwards to Pop’s chin. He almost, he thought, heard
the thud of the blow. He saw Pop’s head go back and Pop reel for an
instant. Then the Rotan line buckled and the whistle shrilled. Hugh
turned to Hanser, but it was evident that the incident had escaped
him just as it had apparently escaped everyone else, including the
officials.

“That chap Lambert there is slugging like the mischief,” said Hugh.

“Is he?” Hanser chuckled. “He’d better not try it on with Pop Driver,
then. Pop’s sore with him, anyway, after last year’s game.”

“I fancy he’s sorer now,” replied Hugh dryly, “for Lambert just drove
his fist under Pop’s chin.”

“Lambert did?” asked Hanser incredulously. “Did you see him?”

“Rather!”

“Then it’s good-by, Lambert, all right, all right! Pop’ll get him
before long.”

But the next play drew Pop further out and set him to boxing the
opposing tackle, and he and Lambert didn’t get together. Grafton lost
on an attempt at a skin-tackle play and Keyes went back to kicking
position. When the ball was passed from center Pop met the onslaught of
Lambert with all the weight of his body and bore him back far behind
his own line, to the annoyance of Lambert and the amusement of those
who watched. When the ball was sailing down the field Lambert was
still giving ground before Pop. Infuriated, he drew back his arm as
they separated and aimed a blow. But Pop ducked inside his guard and
Lambert’s fist shot harmlessly into air. For the space of two or three
seconds the two players stood there, their faces close, and Hugh could
see Pop’s lips move. Then, as a Rotan player shoved in between them,
Pop drew off and trotted down the field. Hugh wondered what he had said
to Lambert.

Rotan came back with a vengeance and eight plays put the pigskin back
where it had been. Then another long forward pass was successful and
once more Grafton was defending her last ditch. This time the enemy
had harder work getting across that last line, but cross it she did
eventually, her full-back dragging half the defending team with him
as he won the final three yards on a plunge through Yetter, who had
taken Kinley’s place at left guard. It was a fine mêlée, that play,
a confused jumble of writhing, pushing, panting bodies, and when the
whistle blew half the twenty-two contestants were heaped in a gorgeous
pyramid above the ball. One by one they were pulled to their feet while
the referee squirmed under the pile and located the pigskin a good
six inches past the line. But they didn’t all get up, either, for one
player with blue-stockinged legs remained prone on the trampled sod,
and when, a moment later, they raised his head and swashed the big
sponge over his face Hugh caught sight of a mass of yellow-brown hair.

“It’s Lambert!” he said awedly.

Hanser nodded. “I told you Pop would get him,” he replied. “You can’t
put your fist in Pop’s face like that and get away with it――not unless
you smile when you do it! I guess Lambert’s through. Yes, there he
goes. Looks a bit groggy, doesn’t he? And unless I’m mistaken he’s
wondering whether the goal post fell on him or he was trampled by a
stone-crusher.” Hanser chuckled. “He just tried it once too often,
that’s all.”

“I didn’t see anything,” said Hugh wonderingly.

“Nor anyone else, I guess, except Lambert, and he saw stars. Pop waited
until he could do it right and get away with it. If Pop handed him one
you can bet he deserved it, for Pop Driver’s as clean a player as there
is.”

Lambert, supported by a team-mate, was walking off the field, his legs
decidedly wobbly and his head showing an inclination to fall over on
his chest, and a substitute was being sent in. Then Rotan punted out,
caught neatly, and sent a clean kick over the bar for another point,
and the scoreboard changed its figures to 20.

There was no more scoring in that period and none in the last
until well toward the end. Coach Bonner had sprinkled substitutes
liberally by that time, and Rotan, too, was represented by a number of
second-string players. The visitor evidently concluded that she had
piled up a sufficient score and was bent only on holding her adversary
where she was. She punted on second down frequently and managed to
keep the ball in Grafton territory until there were but six minutes
left to play. Then a fumble by a substitute Rotan half-back changed
the complexion of affairs, for Parker, who had taken Franklin’s place
at left tackle, shot through and dropped on the pigskin and it was
Grafton’s on the enemy’s thirty-two yards!

Weston, second-choice quarter, dashed on with instructions and Nick
Blake yielded his head-guard and trotted off. In the stands, Grafton
sympathizers demanded a touchdown. The Scarlet-and-Gray began an
attack on the left of the Rotan center, where Lambert had yielded to
a substitute, and first Keyes and then Bert and Vail tore through for
short but substantial gains. Down to the twenty yards went the ball,
Rotan hurrying on two fresh players to bolster her line. A forward pass
gained four yards and Bert got six past left tackle. Weston carried
the ball on a delayed play straight through center for three more. But
on her seven yards, under the shadow of her goal, Rotan stiffened. Two
plunges at the left gained little, for the secondary defense stopped
the runner in each case, and Keyes dropped back to kick. Everything
favored a score then, but luck was against the home team, for Musgrave
passed miserably and all Keyes could do was make the catch safe and try
to gain a scant two or three yards before the enemy bowled him over.

It was fourth down now, with twelve to go, and, after a hurried
conference, Weston again sent Keyes back. But although a try-at-goal
was to be expected, Rotan was not to be caught napping, and she placed
her back-field players to guard against a forward pass. But the ball
never reached Keyes. Instead, it slanted off to Bert and, while the
big full-back gave a clever exhibition of a youth kicking an imaginary
pigskin, Bert circled wide to his right, Vail leading the way, and
turned in sharply where Tray had cleared the hole. There was an instant
of doubt, for a Rotan back dived for the runner and almost stopped
him, but Bert squirmed on, wrested himself free, crossed the five-yard
line unchallenged, and plunged on in a confused medley of friends and
foes. He was almost across when the Rotan quarter-back smashed into
him. Bert faltered then and gave back, but the next instant the drive
behind him carried him on again above the enemy and buried him from
sight well over the goal line.

Grafton waved and shouted and exulted, and continued to shout until
Weston was lying on the sod with the ball between his hands and Keyes
was cautiously measuring the distance and studying the cant. And
afterwards, when the ball had slanted off at a weird tangent, avoiding
the goal widely, Grafton shouted again, for what mattered it if Keyes
had missed? They had scored on Rotan, scored against a far bigger and
more experienced team, and the figures on the score-board were 6 and 20!

Something that did matter, however, although few paid heed to it just
then, was the fact that Bert had laid where he had fallen until Davy,
beckoning two substitutes from the bench, had had him borne away to the
field house.




CHAPTER XVI

A BROKEN RIB


On the whole, Grafton was satisfied with that game. She had made larger
scores against Rotan in the past, to be sure, but on those occasions
the college team had been undoubtedly weaker than she had been today.
Even Coach Bonner, who was not easily satisfied, acknowledged to Ted
Trafford that the Scarlet-and-Gray eleven had done well to hold Rotan
to three scores. Ted wanted credit, too, for the six points his team
had won, but Mr. Bonner shrugged his shoulders then. “There was too
much luck in that touchdown, Traf,” he said. “Defensively the team did
very well. Let it go at that!”

Hugh climbed the stairs to the infirmary on the second floor of Manning
after supper that night to inquire about Bert, as to whose injury many
and various rumors were afloat. Mrs. Prouty, the matron, gave him
permission to see the patient and Hugh found the invalid in the act
of finishing a fairly substantial meal. Bert greeted the caller quite
cheerfully.

“You needn’t tiptoe,” he laughed, “and you needn’t look like an
undertaker. I’m not dead yet, Duke. It’s only a cracked rib. The Doc
says I’ll be all right in a couple of weeks and can play before that if
I’ll wear a pad. Still, it’s kind of tough luck.”

“I’m glad it’s no worse,” said Hugh. “They had all sorts of stories
about you at table tonight. You played a ripping――a corking game, old
chap.”

“Well, I played better than I’ve been playing, that’s sure. It was a
dandy game and we did mighty well to hold them to twenty, Hugh, to say
nothing of scoring on them. Have you heard yet?”

“Heard?” asked Hugh.

“About the money, I mean.”

“Oh, I say, I forgot all about it! There wasn’t anything in the box,
though. Would they put a telegram in the box?”

“They usually telephone it to you. Maybe your mother didn’t get your
message in time, though. You think she’s at either one of those places,
don’t you?”

“Why, yes. I ought to have received a letter from her today. She
almost always writes so that I get it Saturday. We’ll surely hear by
Monday, Bert.”

“Well, I hope so. If that fellow wants to make trouble for me he can do
it to the King’s taste.”

“He won’t, though, if he knows he’s going to get his money, eh? You sit
tight, old chap, and don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m tight, all right,” answered Bert, with a grin. “They’ve got
me strapped and plastered and bandaged until I can hardly breathe! I’m
coming back Monday; Doc said I might. This isn’t so bad, though, and
Mother Prouty’s a corker.”

“You’ve got it all to yourself, haven’t you?” asked Hugh, viewing the
two empty cots. “If you get lonesome I’ll develop a mysterious illness
and get lugged over here. I dare say I’d better be toddling along now,
though. Do they let you read?”

“Why not? I don’t have to use my ribs to read, do I? By the way, I wish
you’d drop around tomorrow morning and bring my geometry and Greek
reader. And you might fetch a paper, too. Good night.”

In the corridor below Hugh encountered Pop, a rather damaged looking
Pop, with a puffy green and purple left eye and a long scratch on his
nose. When he learned that Hugh had just come from the infirmary he
turned back.

“I guess I won’t go up then,” he said. “How is he? What’s the damage?”

Hugh told him as they left the building and turned their steps toward
Trow, and Pop expressed relief. “Some fellow said he’d broken his
collar-bone. A rib isn’t so bad. Davy’ll have him bundled up and
playing in a few days. What did you think of the game?”

“A little bit of all right, Pop! And, I say, you certainly did for
Lambert, what?”

“Lambert? No.”

Hugh laughed. “Oh, no; you didn’t wallop the beggar, not half! Served
him jolly right, of course; I saw him give you that punch under the
chin, you know. I wish, though, you’d tell me what you said to him that
time you two had your heads together.”

“Do you? Well, I said, ‘Lambert, if you make me lose my temper you’ll
go home in an ambulance. Now quit it!’ He did, too. We didn’t have any
trouble after that.”

“You mean you didn’t! _He_ looked jolly well troubled when they took
him off. Hanser said you’d get him.”

“Sorry to disappoint Hanser,” replied Pop, “but as a matter of fact I
didn’t mix it up with Lambert once.”

“You didn’t? Then what happened to him?”

“He told me afterwards――I saw him in the field house――that someone
kicked him in the head. He had rather a bad bruise.”

“Oh!” murmured Hugh. “Well, I fancied――you know you said――――”

“Yes, I know I did. But I got to thinking it over. You see, I wanted to
play the game through, for one thing, and if I’d been caught slugging
I wouldn’t have. And then, too, I――well, I sort of wanted to see if I
_could_ keep my temper. After all, I guess the rough-stuff doesn’t get
you anything.”

“Rather looks as though Hanser and I misjudged you, Pop,” laughed Hugh.
Then, soberly: “I say, though, I’m rather glad you didn’t. Of course he
deserved something, but――somehow――if you know what I mean――――”

“I get you, Steve! As you’d probably say, it isn’t cricket. Coming up?”

“Thanks, no, not tonight. I’m rather keen on writing a letter to the
governor. Good night, Pop.”

The letter wasn’t written until the next day, though, for Cathcart
dropped in to inquire after Bert and remained to talk awhile, and
before he left Nick and Guy arrived on a similar mission. Nick was
in extremely high spirits, in spite of the fact that two of his
fingers were bound together with surgeon’s tape, and, after Cathcart
had removed his restraining presence, became so hilarious and playful
that Guy and Hugh were forced to improvise a straight-jacket from a
pair of Bert’s discarded football pants. Subsequently, Nick reclined,
neatly trussed, on the window-seat and proclaimed: “I am but mad
north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a
handsaw!” Then he began on Hood’s “The Bridge of Sighs,” and, reaching
the lines,

    “Mad from life’s history,
     Glad to death’s mystery,
     Swift to be hurled――
     Anywhere, anywhere,
     Out of the world!”

he rolled himself off the cushion and reached the floor with a most
terrific bump. After that they gagged him and sat on him.

Sunday turned out frosty and clear, with a blue, blue sky overhead and
scarlet and russet leaves rustling along the paths. In the afternoon
Hugh and Pop ascended Mount Grafton to the observatory on top and held
their caps while they climbed the winding stairway and looked for
miles over the world. Then they found a sunny crevice in the great
pink granite ledge beneath and sat there for a long time, looking
down on the roofs of the school buildings below them, and discussed
many weighty matters. It was not until, comfortably tired and very
hungry, they returned to school that Hugh got that letter written. When
he had finished it, however, and it lay sealed and addressed on the
table, instead of taking it downstairs and dropping it in the mail-box
he slipped it between the leaves of a book and put the book in the
table drawer. In the morning he would hand the letter directly to the
postman, a custom that puzzled Bert and moved him to sarcasm.

There was no reply to his telegram the next forenoon and Hugh was
troubled on Bert’s account. The latter moved back to Lothrop and
attended classes as usual that morning, but, perhaps because he was
uncomfortably bandaged and it hurt him when he took a deep breath,
or perhaps because he was worried over the non-arrival of that
money-order, he was in rather a cantankerous mood. Hugh dispatched
another message to his mother before he went to the field in the
afternoon, addressing it to his home on the chance that she had changed
her plans and returned to Shorefields. Fortunately, no irate creditor
put in an appearance, and Bert took hope and accompanied Hugh to the
field to watch practice.

Hugh found a surprise awaiting him. They had, it seemed, transferred
Hanser to the first team and, since that left the second long on ends
and short on half-backs, Hugh was informed that he was to substitute
Brunswick or Peet behind the line. “Never played half, have you?”
inquired Mr. Crowley brusquely. “Thought not. Well, keep your eyes open
and study the signals. You’re likely to get a chance to show what you
can do today or tomorrow.”

The chance came that afternoon, for Peet, who had taken Hanser’s place,
failed to satisfy the coach and was pulled out five minutes after the
game with the first team began. Hugh, watching Mr. Crowley anxiously,
was half inclined to hope that his choice would fall on the other
substitute, Boynton, for Hugh wasn’t at all convinced of his ability
to play half-back. Possibly, however, the coach wanted to know just
how bad Hugh would prove, for after a quick glance along the bench he
motioned to him.

“Hi, Ordway! Get in there at right half. Use your head, now, and don’t
ball up your signals. Tell Ayer to watch their guard-tackle hole on the
left. Get it? On the _left_!”

Well, on the whole, or “taking it by and large,” as Pop would have
said, Hugh didn’t do so badly that afternoon. He did get his signals
mixed once and he soon proved himself much too light for line-bucking.
But on several occasions when the play was outside of tackle he made
good gains, once reeling off fifteen yards before he was thumped to the
ground by Vail. And on defense he rather did himself proud, working
very smoothly with Forbes, who was back at right end, and Spalding,
the right tackle, when the play came that way. He made the mistakes of
ignorance and he once fumbled a two-yard pass from the quarter, saving
the situation, however, by recovering the ball for a slight loss of
ground. Mr. Crowley cornered him in the dressing room after practice
and told him of a great many things that he had done wrong and advised
him to brush up on the signals. And when the coach had taken himself
off, growling, Captain Myatt salved his wounds with a smile and a “Good
work, Ordway! Hang to it!”

There was one thing that that afternoon’s experience did for Hugh, in
any event. It convinced him that he didn’t want to play end again and
that he did want to play half-back. He would go on being an end this
year, he told himself, but next fall he would go out for a half-back
position and refuse anything else. Playing end wasn’t bad fun, but
there was something about having the ball in the crook of your elbow or
snuggled to your stomach and pitting your wits and speed and strength
against the enemy, that was ten times more exciting. Of course, as soon
as Bert got into harness again Hanser would be returned to the second
and Hugh would be back elbowing Forbes for the outpost position. But
next year!

He said all this to Bert that evening, being far too full of the
afternoon’s adventure to want to study, and Bert, while granting that
there was no comparison in his mind between playing half-back and end,
advised Hugh to stick to his trade. “You didn’t do half badly, Duke,
for you’re certainly just about as quick as they make ’em. Sort of
reminded me today of a cat, the way you jumped off and squirmed around
there. But you’re not heavy enough to keep going, you see. It’s the
foot or two feet or yard that a fellow makes after he’s tackled that
counts. If it was all around-the-end work you’d be rather a star, but
it isn’t. Down near goal you’d have to put your head down and buck the
line, old man. And someone like Ted or Musgrave would stop you so soon
you’d go backward. You stick to being a good end, at least until you’ve
put on weight and grown a bit.”

“I say, I’m not so awfully much smaller than you are,” protested Hugh.

“You’re twenty pounds lighter than I am, at least, and you’re fully
two inches shorter. You――you’ve got to have punch when you go into the
line, Hugh. See what I mean?”

“Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” responded the other slowly, “but that
chap Zanetti isn’t awfully big and heavy, is he? And he played a mighty
good game today when he was in.”

“Jack Zanetti’s been at it four years, and he knows how to use what
weight he has got. So will you when you’ve been playing that long. Now
dry up and let me bone this beastly French rot. You’re worse than a
magpie!”

“All right, old dear. But, I say, Bert, do you think that by next
year――――”

“For the love of mud, shut up! I want to get this done and hit the hay.
If you had a rib that hurt like the dickens every time you moved or
took a breath――――”

Bert subsided with mutters and silence reigned.




CHAPTER XVII

FRIENDS IN NEED


Again, on Tuesday morning, there was no telegram, and when Hugh, at
Bert’s suggestion, called up the telegraph office in the village he was
informed that no message addressed to him had been received. Hugh was
by now at a loss to explain his mother’s silence and Bert was anxious
and a little bit unpleasant, intimating that Hugh had promised more
than he could perform.

“I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble,” he said stiffly. “If I’d
known, I might have got hold of the money somewhere else, I suppose.”

“You haven’t put me to any trouble, Bert, and I don’t understand why my
mother hasn’t answered. The only explanation I can think of is that she
has sort of dodged those telegrams, if you know what I mean. She might
have left New York before the one I sent there was delivered and gone
back to Shorefields. Then she may have gone to Philadelphia Sunday――――”

“I should think she’d stay in one place a minute,” Bert complained.
“Of course, if Fallow doesn’t come nosing around here before――――”

“I say, I might send a message to Bowles, eh? Tell him to wire mother’s
present address. I’ll do it at noon if we don’t hear before that. But
it certainly does seem as if mother must have got one of my telegrams
by this time!”

Bert couldn’t suggest anything better to do, and they went across
to School Hall for English 4. It was a full morning for them both
and neither had time to think a great deal about that telegram until
they were through with Greek at twelve. Then Hugh again called up
the telegraph office, received the same answer to his inquiry, and
forthwith dispatched a message to Bowles at Shorefields, demanding an
instant answer.

“That ought to be delivered by two o’clock,” said Hugh, “and if he
answers right away we should hear by four.”

“That’s all right as long as Fallow doesn’t take it into his head to
come over here and raise a row today. I promised I’d settle up with him
yesterday, you see. Maybe he will give me another day or two, though.
He would, don’t you think?”

“I’d say he should let you know before he went to faculty about it,”
said Hugh. “If he sits tight until tomorrow I dare say we’ll have the
coin for him.”

“That’s what we thought Saturday,” responded Bert morosely. “Well, we
can’t do anything now but wait and see what happens, I guess. I’m going
to dinner.”

Hugh had a conference with Mr. Rumford at two-thirty and when he got
back to Lothrop it was nearly half-past three and Bert had gone down to
the field. Hugh dumped his books, paused to scribble a memorandum, and
then, changing coat and waistcoat for a sweater, started for the door.
Simultaneously there was a knock on the half-opened portal and Hugh
swung it open, revealing on the threshold a very stout man with very
red cheeks and a very luxuriant mustache. That mustache so fascinated
Hugh for a moment that he merely stood there and gazed. It was
extremely black and it stuck out two or three inches on each side of a
big, round face. Hugh wondered if it was real. Then the visitor spoke
and Hugh realized that he had been rudely staring for several seconds.

“Mr. Winslow live here?” asked the caller in a voice that seemed to
come from well down toward the lower button of the black-and-white
plaid waistcoat.

“Yes, sir.” Hugh removed his gaze from the mustache with difficulty.
The man moved forward and Hugh drew aside. By that time his wits were
at work and he closed the door behind the visitor. “Sit down, won’t
you?”

“Thanks,” rumbled the man. “My name’s Fallow; Fallow and Turner, over
to Needham. Guess you know me, eh? Or ain’t you Winslow?”

“Mr. Fallow? Oh, yes, to be sure. I――I’ve heard of you, Mr. Fallow.”

“Guess you have,” said Mr. Fallow dryly. “A good many times. Well,
what’s the verdict?”

“Why――er――I say, take a seat, won’t you? Try the big chair there. Now,
sir, what can I do for you?”

For answer Mr. Fallow, grunting, plunged a hand inside his coat and
drew forth a folded paper which he waved slowly in front of him.

“For me?” asked Hugh interestedly. “What――is it?”

“Say, you’re a cool one,” remarked the visitor in unwilling admiration.
“Bless me if you ain’t. Well, this is a bill for thirty-four dollars
and sixty cents, son. I ought to add interest to it, too, I guess, but
I ain’t aiming to be hard on you. You all ready to pay it?”

Hugh shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry to say I’m not, sir.”

“Oh, you ain’t?”

“No. You see, Mr. Fallow, I’ve been expecting some money ever since
Saturday and it hasn’t come. I’m awfully sorry. It’s sure to be here
tomorrow and――――”

“Now look here, you!” Mr. Fallow scowled darkly. “That’s the same
song-and-dance you’ve been giving me ever since last spring, and I’m
sick of it. I ain’t in business for my health!”

“Certainly not, sir. Not that you don’t look jolly healthy, of course,
but――――”

“Say, don’t get fresh,” growled the other. “Never you mind how I look.
All you got to do is to hand over my money. If you can’t do that――――”

“But I can, sir, only I can’t do it today. Tomorrow――――”

“Yah! You promised it yesterday, didn’t you? Well, I expect folks to
keep their word, see? Tomorrow won’t do, son. You’ve had time enough.”
He looked about the room sarcastically. “Living in quarters like
these, eh, and can’t pay your just debts! Well, we’ll see what Mr.
Thingamabob, your principal, has got to say about it.” Mr. Fallow stood
up and with difficulty thrust the bill back into his pocket.

“But, I say,” exclaimed Hugh in alarm, “you’re not really going to do
that?”

“You watch me!”

“Well, but――I say, now, look here a sec! I give you my word that bill
will be paid this week, and――――”

“You said tomorrow.”

“I’m almost certain it will be tomorrow, but my――my mother is away from
home and I fancy she hasn’t got my telegram, don’t you know.”

“Well, tomorrow ain’t going to do――don’t you know! I’ve given you time
enough on this, Winslow. You ain’t――you ain’t square with me. That’s
what I don’t like. You’ve promised and promised. You begged me not to
send the bill to your folks, and I didn’t. But times are hard and we
need the money. What’s more we intend to have it.” Mr. Fallow moved
ponderously toward the door. “I’m square with folks that are square
with me, son; no one can’t say I don’t treat ’em fair; but I ain’t no
one’s fool.”

“No, indeed, sir; anyone could see that, Mr. Fallow.” Hugh was thinking
hard. “I say, would――would six dollars be any use to you?”

Mr. Fallow snorted. “It would not! Nor sixteen dollars! Nor――nor
twenty-six dollars! I want thirty-four dollars and sixty cents. That’s
what I want and that’s what I intend to have. If you can pay me that
now, all right. If you can’t, say so. I can’t waste any more time here.”

“Well, but, that’s a lot of money to get hold of on short notice,” said
Hugh ingratiatingly. “Suppose now I scrape up, say, twenty dollars,
eh? And then pay the rest this week.”

Mr. Fallow hesitated and frowned deeply. “If you’ve got twenty why
can’t you get hold of the rest?” he asked finally.

“I haven’t got twenty, sir. I’ve got only six. But I fancy I may be
able to scrape up the rest if you’ll give me a few minutes.”

“Well――I――all right.” Mr. Fallow reseated himself. “But, mind you, I
won’t take a cent less than twenty. And I ain’t going to stick around
here all afternoon, either. You get a move on, son.”

“I’ll be as quick as I know how, sir. You’ll find some magazines on
that table there. Just――just make yourself comfortable, sir.”

Mr. Fallow grunted.

A minute later there was a sharp knock on Cathcart’s door and in
response to his “Come in!” Hugh entered.

“Hello, Hugh,” greeted the occupant of the window-seat. “Why aren’t
you――――”

“Don’t ask any questions, Wal! I want some money. All you can spare,
please. I’ll pay you back before the end of the week.”

“Money!” Cathcart blinked. “Why, the fact is――――”

“I know! You’re going to tell me you’ve got only a couple of dollars.
That’s all right, old chap. I’ll take it, and thank you.”

“I’ve got about five, I guess, Hugh. What――what’s up?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’m in a beast of a hurry. Dig it up, will you?
Better keep out fifty cents or so, because I might not be able to hand
it back before Friday or Saturday.”

Cathcart’s countenance expressed bewilderment as he floundered to his
feet and crossed to the dresser. But he obediently handed over the
contents of a pigskin purse.

“Ripping!” said Hugh approvingly. “How much? Five and a quarter? That’s
eleven. I say, keep a note of the amount, will you? Shall I take it
all?”

Cathcart nodded. “I shan’t need any, I guess. Only,” he added
plaintively, “I wish you’d tell me what it’s all about!”

“Later,” replied Hugh, making for the door. “Thanks awfully, old chap!
So long.”

As he had feared, Guy Murtha was not at home, and, after making certain
that Guy had not conveniently left any change lying around in sight,
Hugh hurried out again. Ned Stiles roomed in Trow, and thither Hugh
went. He didn’t know Stiles very intimately, but he wasn’t going to let
that fact interfere if only he was so fortunate as to find Stiles in.
But it was a gorgeous afternoon and Stiles, like most everyone else,
was out. Disappointed, Hugh paused in the silent corridor and tried to
think of someone else to apply to. But since most of his acquaintances
were engaged in some form of athletics and would consequently be away
from their rooms the problem suddenly looked extremely difficult. Then
he remembered the office. He had never attempted to get money there
and didn’t know how his request would be received, but he clattered
down the stairs and sought out the secretary, Mr. Pounder, a gentleman
whom he had spoken to but once and then but briefly, the occasion
being the payment of Hugh’s fall term tuition fee. Mr. Pounder was
small, light-haired and blue-eyed, sharp-featured and dry of voice. He
received Hugh’s request coldly.

“Without instructions from parent or guardian, Ordway, we do not
advance sums of money to students, and in your case I believe that we
have not been――ah――so instructed. I am correct, am I not?”

“Yes, sir, but I need some money very badly, and there isn’t time to
get it from home, and I thought maybe you’d be willing to make a loan.
I could pay it back by Saturday surely.”

“I have no authority, Ordway. You might see Dr. Duncan or Mr. Rumford.
Possibly――――”

“I don’t believe there’s time. Where could I find Dr. Duncan?”

“I presume they will inform you at his house where he is to be seen,
Ordway.”

“Oh, piffle! All right, sir.” Hugh vanished, leaving a surprised and
somewhat shocked Mr. Pounder in possession of the room.

Turning into the main corridor Hugh very nearly collided with Mr.
Crump, the janitor. Mr. Crump was a sharp-visaged man of some fifty
years, with a leathery face, a pair of gimlet-like eyes behind
old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles, and a thin, querulous voice. He
was not popular with the fellows, nor can it be said that the fellows
were popular with Mr. Crump. In Mr. Crump’s belief the students spent
their waking hours devising ways to create dirt and dust in the School
Hall. Hugh, however, knew little of the janitor. He had seen him about
the building occasionally, had sometimes nodded to him, and had learned
his name. Just now Mr. Crump was a possible friend in need, and Hugh,
paying no heed to the man’s grumbles, cut off his advance.

“I say, Mr. Crump,” he exclaimed eagerly, “have you any money?”

Mr. Crump, suspecting that he was to be made the butt of some silly
joke, responded shortly and pithily.

“No! Get out o’ my way!”

“Haven’t you, honestly? I’m in a beastly fix, Mr. Crump. I’ve got to
get hold of five dollars somewhere. I tried Mr. Pounder and he wouldn’t
loosen up a bit. I’d pay it back by Saturday, cross my heart!”

Mr. Crump grasped his broom more firmly, straightened his bent back and
observed the boy with pardonable amazement. As long as he had been with
the school, and that was many years, no one had ever tried to borrow
money from him. Perhaps it pleased his sense of importance or perhaps
something of earnestness in Hugh’s voice appealed to him, for after a
moment’s scrutiny he asked quite mildly:

“What’s your name?”

“Ordway.”

“Oh, you’re the English boy, be you? And you’ve got to have five
dollars, have you? Ain’t any of your friends got that much?”

“I dare say, but they’re all over at the field, and I’ve got to have
the money right off, within a few minutes. I can’t explain, but that’s
the way it is. I say, I’d be jolly glad to pay you six for the loan of
five until Saturday.”

“Would you now? I want to know! How do I know I’d get it, eh?” Mr.
Crump chuckled. “Five dollars is a sight of money for a poor man to
risk.”

“But I tell you I’d pay you back!”

“Oh, you do, eh? I been told things before in my life, young man.”

Hugh flushed and turned away. “If you think my word isn’t good I don’t
care to borrow, thanks,” he said offendedly.

“Well, hold on now! I ain’t said I wouldn’t, have I? What you so het up
about?”

“I don’t like to have you insinuate that I don’t keep my word, that’s
all.”

“Tut, tut! Goodness me, but you’re a queer one! Five dollars, you said?
Four wouldn’t do you?”

“I’ve got to make up twenty, Mr. Crump, and I’ve got eleven. I’ll be
glad of four, of course, but I don’t know where I’m to get the rest.
I tell you!” Hugh pulled his gold watch from his pocket and placed
it, with the attached fob, in Mr. Crump’s hand. “That’s worth over a
hundred. Would you very much mind letting me have nine dollars on it?
I’d redeem it Saturday at the latest. I say, do that for me, will you?”

Mr. Crump looked admiringly at the watch. “My land, but that is a nice
watch, ain’t it now? And a coat-of-arms on it, too! Worth a hundred,
be it? I want to know! Well, I dare say it is. Here.”

He handed it back and Hugh accepted it disappointedly. “You won’t?”
asked the boy. “If I shouldn’t come for it you could easily get fifty
for it.”

“Could I now? Sakes alive, young man, I ain’t no pawnbroker! My folks
has lived in this county for a hundred and seventy years. One of my
ancestors fought with General Putnam; fought against you British he
did. Here, you wait just where you be a minute. I’ll be back.”

Mr. Crump leaned his broom against the wall and shuffled away down the
corridor until he came to the basement door. After that Hugh could hear
his footsteps clap-clapping down the stairs. Then there was silence,
save for the clatter of a typewriter in the office at the end of the
hall. Hugh looked at his watch and made a grimace of despair. It was
nearly four o’clock! He wondered whether Mr. Crowley would put him to a
lingering death or would dispatch him quickly and mercifully! Then Mr.
Crump came back.

“Here you be, young man,” he said importantly. “There’s nine dollars.”
He counted them slowly into Hugh’s hand, two twos and five ones, all
very soiled and creased. “I’m expecting you to pay it back to me like
you said, because―――― But I know you will,” he ended hurriedly. “I
ain’t doubting your word, mind. I can see you ain’t like the rest of
these scallywags here. Maybe it’s because you’re an Englishman and have
more sense of decency.”

“I say, I can’t begin to tell you how――how grateful I am,” said Hugh.
“It’s perfectly ripping of you, Mr. Crump, and I’m no end obliged! I’ll
pay it back to you just as soon as ever I can, by Saturday surely.
Thanks awfully!”

“You’re welcome, sir, you’re quite welcome. If it comes to that, I
guess the losing of it wouldn’t cripple me none. There’s――hm――I got a
bit more put away in the bank.”

Hugh found Mr. Fallow standing in front of the photograph of Lockley
Manor, his derby hat clasped behind him and an unlighted cigar
protruding from under one end of that enormous mustache.

“Get it?” he asked as Hugh closed the door behind him.

“Yes.” Hugh pulled the money from his pocket and laid it on the table.
Then he went into his room and returned with his own contribution of
six dollars. “There it is, Mr. Fallow. Twenty dollars. You might count
it, eh? And I dare say you’d better give me some sort of a receipt if
you don’t mind.”

“Quite a business man, you are,” chuckled Mr. Fallow, seemingly
restored to good humor by the money. “I’ll credit the amount on the
bill here. There you are. Balance due, fourteen and sixty. Sorry to
have to seem a bit pushing, Mr. Winslow, but in my business――――”

“By the way, what is your business?” asked Hugh.

“Eh? My business? Well, don’t you know what you bought from me?”

Hugh shook his head. “I buy so much, you see,” he replied carelessly.
“Boots, wasn’t it?”

“Clothes. A blue serge suit and a pair of flannel trousers. It’s set
down there on the bill. Look here, you don’t mean that you’ve forgotten
getting them, do you?”

“Quite.” Hugh yawned. “One buys a good many suits in the course of a
year, you know.” He moved toward the door. “Sorry to hurry you, Mr.
Fallow, but I’ve got an appointment.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” The man pocketed the money and buttoned his
coat across that gaudy vest. “But, look here now, we don’t want any
hard feelings over this――this little matter. We’d be sorry to lose your
trade, Mr. Winslow, we would so. You don’t need to hurry none about
that little balance. Just you take your time. And if you want anything
in our line just you let us know. Always glad to serve you. I guess
now, that suit you’re wearing the trousers of didn’t come from us, did
it?”

“No, it happened to come from London; Ponderberry’s.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Fallow bent and examined the trousers with vast
interest. There was a trace of awe in his voice as he nodded and
whispered: “Nice stuff, nice, nice!”

“You’ll get the rest of that this week, Mr. Fallow,” said Hugh, opening
the door invitingly. “As I said before, I’m sorry to hurry you, but――――”

“That’s all right, Mr. Winslow, quite all right. I understand.” Mr.
Fallow moved ponderously but quickly to the door. On the threshold,
however, he stopped and fumbled in a pocket. “Just so you won’t forget
us, Mr. Winslow,” he said with a smirk. “Our card, sir. We’ve got a
nice line of woolens just arrived. Glad to have you look ’em over any
time.”

“Thanks awfully. Good day.” Then, with the door half-closed, Hugh
added: “Oh, I say, Mr. Fallow!”

“Yes?”

“I wish you’d tell me something if you don’t mind. It’s been bothering
me a bit.”

“Why, certainly, anything I can tell you――――”

“Yes; well, is that real or does it――er――come off?”

“What?” inquired Mr. Fallow blankly.

“Why, that――that――” Hugh made a vague gesture――“that thing on your lip.”

“Oh! Ha, ha, very good!” Mr. Fallow laughed wanly. “Good――good
afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” said Hugh sweetly.

Afterwards, hurrying across the green, he said to himself: “It was
a bit caddish, and no mistake, but after what he put me through he
certainly owed me something!”




CHAPTER XVIII

BENCHED


Hugh remembered his reception by Mr. Crowley for many days. Practice
was just over when he reached the scene and the two teams were resting
for a few minutes before the scrimmage. Mr. Crowley, looking fiercer
and more disreputable than usual in the old gray trousers and faded
green sweater he wore, was talking to Coach Bonner near the bench.
Hugh had every desire in the world to avoid speech with him, but he
disdained sneaking to the bench and so his appearance was quickly noted.

“Ordway!” Mr. Crowley left the first-team coach and walked to meet the
culprit. “Let me see you a minute.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Hugh, very, very meekly.

“Aren’t you a trifle late?” asked the coach sarcastically.

“Yes, sir, I am. I’m very sorry, but something unforeseen――――”

“Yes, yes, of course! Grandmother died, maybe. Too bad, too bad!”

“No, sir, I――someone called――――”

“And you had to stay and serve afternoon tea? What a bore!” Mr.
Crowley’s bantering tone ceased abruptly. “Look here, Ordway, practice
is at three-thirty. I told you when I let you come back that you were
to stick. You’re not keeping your part of the agreement. Unless you
were detained by the faculty, in which case you should have notified
me, you have no excuse whatsoever. I don’t want any fellows here who
can’t be on time. Life’s too short to worry about them. Understand
that?”

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again, Mr. Crowley.”

“It certainly won’t!” growled the coach. He held Hugh with a baleful
gaze for a moment. Then: “What I ought to do with you is to tell you
to clear your locker, Ordway. Got any good reason to advance why I
shouldn’t?”

“Why, yes, sir. I didn’t intend to be late and I won’t be late again.
There was no way of notifying you or I’d have done it. I――I’m no end
sorry, sir.”

“Hm; regrets aren’t reasons, Ordway. Well, all right. But I’m hanged if
I know why I’m bothering with you anyway. I don’t need you. What the
dickens Hanrihan wished you on me for, I don’t know! Do you?”

Hugh wisely remained silent.

“Well, I shan’t want you this afternoon. You take the bench and watch.
See if you can get your signals straightened out. Try to forget your
social interests for a while!”

Hugh walked to the bench very conscious of the amused expressions on
the faces of his team-mates. He tried to look unruffled, but he knew
that his cheeks were red, and when Brewster Longley, tossing a ball in
his hands, met Hugh’s glance and drawled, “Hello, Royalty, old top!
Was the blighter rude to you, what? My word, we’ll cut his bloomin’
acquaintance!” Hugh felt angry enough to fight. But he only squirmed
in between Brunswick and Hersum and attentively studied his hands.
Then the coaches called and the benches emptied, and Hugh, with a
half-dozen other unfortunates, snuggled miserably into his sweater and
philosophically tried to accept his fate.

But it was hard luck, he thought, and while he couldn’t conscientiously
blame Mr. Crowley for being wroth, it did seem to him that the “calling
down” was punishment enough without dooming him to sit there on
the bench and lose a whole afternoon’s work. So absorbed was he in
self-pity and a mild resentment that he quite forgot about Mr. Fallow
and his recent activities and was only reminded of them when someone
took the seat beside him and a sympathetic voice inquired: “Isn’t he
going to let you play, Hugh?” Hugh glanced up and shook his head. “Not
today, Bert.”

“Too bad! He’s a regular Turk, anyway. What made you late?”

Hugh smiled. “Mr. Fallow.”

“_What?_ You don’t mean――――”

“Yes, I do, old chap. He came to the room just as I was starting over
here.”

“Great Scott! Did――did the money come? But of course it didn’t! Was he
mad? What did he say? He didn’t――didn’t go to Charlie, did he?” Bert’s
anxiety was so great that Hugh, although tempted, didn’t have the heart
to prolong his suspense.

“It’s all right, Bert. I paid him twenty dollars and he’s gone home
quite satisfied. In fact, he said I――that is, you needn’t hurry with
the rest of it, and that if you want any more togs all you’ve got to do
is let him know.”

“But where did you ever get twenty dollars?” gasped Bert.

Hugh laughed. “Borrowed it, of course. I had six myself, Cathcart
loaned me five, and Mr. Crump nine.”

“Mr. Crump! _Mr. Crump?_ Are you crazy?”

“No, only exhausted.”

“But you don’t mean Mr. Crump, the janitor?”

“Yes I do, old chap. I fancy it was rather a funny thing to do, but,
you see, I didn’t know who else to ask. Everyone was out and Mr.
Pounder turned me down and I happened to run into Mr. Crump in School
Hall. He was very decent about it. I offered to let him have my watch
and fob for security but he said his grandfather or grandmother or
someone fought with General Putnam, and wouldn’t take it. I didn’t
quite see what that had to do with it, though, do you?”

“Old Crump!” marveled Bert. “I didn’t suppose he had nine dollars to
his name!”

“Oh, yes. And he rather hinted that he had a lot more. I dare say
janiting is quite――quite profitable.”

“And Cathcart loaned you five? I sort of wish you hadn’t gone to him,
Hugh.”

“There wasn’t much choice,” replied Hugh drily. “I dare say if you’d
been there you’d have managed better, but――――”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Bert quickly. “I think you did finely, and
I’m awfully much obliged, Hugh. I only meant that――well, Wal and I
aren’t awfully good friends and――did you tell him what it was for?”

“No, there wasn’t time. I told him I’d explain later.”

“Well, don’t if you can help it. You see, he’s a proctor and if he
heard I’d been running bills he might think he had to report me. He’s
most frightfully conscientious nowadays.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Hugh, “but I don’t believe he would.
I’ll keep you out of it, though, if you’d rather.”

“What did Fallow say? Was he ugly?”

Whereupon, while the first and second teams battered each other
up and down the field, Hugh recounted the whole adventure for his
friend’s benefit, and Bert, alternately amused and alarmed, listened
with flattering attention. At the end he said, after a long breath of
relief: “Hugh, you’re a corker! And a wonder! I couldn’t have got away
with it like that to save my life! And I’m awfully much obliged, old
man. I――I hope I’ll be able to do as much for you some time.”

“It wasn’t anything,” returned Hugh. “In fact, it was rather good
fun; or it would have been if I hadn’t known all the time that I was
getting in wrong with Mr. Crowley. Mr. Fallow was quite amusing. I say,
Bert, _have_ you seen his mustache? It――it’s perfectly weird. I was so
fascinated by it that I just had to stand there and stare!”

“I don’t remember,” murmured Bert. Then, after a moment: “Look here,
though, if that money doesn’t come from your folks we’ll be in a mess,
won’t we? I don’t honestly believe I’ll be able to scrape it all up
before Christmas. I’ve got about four dollars and, of course, I’ll have
ten more the first of the month, but――――”

“Oh, that money will come today or tomorrow,” comforted Hugh. “Then
I’ll settle up with Mr. Crump and Wallace Cathcart.”

“But I’ll be owing it to you then,” said Bert in troubled voice. “I
guess it was pretty cheeky to go to you for it, anyway, but I was so
worried about that man Fallow that I didn’t know what to do. If he’d
got to faculty I’d been fired like a shot.”

“You needn’t worry about owing it to me,” said Hugh with a shrug. “I
don’t need it. Anyhow, it’s the mater’s and she won’t mind if she never
gets it. How’s the rib?”

“All right, I suppose. Davy says I can’t get back before next week,
though. Last year he fixed Musgrave’s broken collar bone up for him so
he was playing inside of ten days. I don’t see why he needs to be so
plaguy fussy about an old rib.”

“My word, you didn’t expect to get back today, did you?”

“No, but I thought they’d let me play Saturday against Hollywood. I’m
going with the team, though, anyway. You coming along?”

“Can’t say, old chap. If Crowley doesn’t forgive me I fancy I might as
well be there as here. If he does I dare say we’ll have practice just
the same. _Ouch!_”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, only Hanser dropped the ball then and Nick’s got it. He’s
clever at squirming through, isn’t he? It looked as if he got right
between Longley’s legs! That gives first a ripping chance to score,” he
added anxiously. “They must be on our twenty yards. I say, what sort of
a chap is Longley, Bert?”

“Brew? Why, he’s pretty good. I thought Bonner would have him on the
first this year. He would have, too, if Willard hadn’t showed up so
well before school opened.”

“Yes, I know he’s a good center, but is he――well, is he a gentleman?”

“A gentleman?” Bert looked surprised. “Depends on what you mean, I
guess, by gentleman, Hugh. I don’t suppose you’d call him that. I think
his father’s a contractor or something in Springfield or somewhere.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant is he considered a――well, do you like
him?”

“Like Brew Longley? N-no, not particularly. I don’t know him very well.
I guess he’s all right, though. Why?”

“Well, he seems to have it in for me, don’t you know. He’s made a
couple of――what do you call them, now?――a couple of ‘cracks’ that I
didn’t like. I wondered whether he did it because he didn’t know any
better or because he was just naturally a cad.”

“What sort of cracks?” asked Bert.

“Oh, he calls me ‘Royalty’ and things like that, and talks like a
silly ass on the stage, if you know what I mean, and is really rather
insolent. I fancy he tries to make fun of the way I talk, eh?”

“Oh, that’s nothing to get huffy about,” laughed Bert. “He probably
thinks he’s being humorous. You see, Duke, you’re sort of a novelty to
us. I guess Longley doesn’t know your sort.”

“That’s all right,” returned Hugh gravely. “But he mustn’t be too
humorous or I’ll just have to punch his head.”

“He’d make one mouthful of you,” laughed Bert.

“Oh, well, I couldn’t help that. I’m not awfully thin-skinned, I fancy,
but I don’t like Longley’s kind of humor. As the chap says in the
song, ‘It isn’t what he says, it’s the nasty way he says it!’”

“Oh, don’t mind Brew, kid; he’s harmless. I guess he doesn’t mean to
hurt your feelings.”

“Well, that’s all right. I certainly don’t want trouble, but I might
lose my temper some day. He can’t expect me to stick it forever. There
they go! Keyes is over! That right side of our line is a bit sketchy.
They didn’t half fool Bowen then.”

“We’re giving it to you on the twenty. Say, was Dinny awfully cross?”

“Rather waxy. Talked a lot of sarcasm. Advised me to forget my social
obligations or something like that.”

“I’m awfully sorry, chum. It was my fault. I wish Fallow would――would
choke or――――”

“Fall into his mustache and get lost,” suggested Hugh. “I wonder if
I’ll ever be able to raise one like that. Sometime we’ll go over to
Needham and pretend we want a suit. I’d like you to see that mustache,
Bert.”

“It seems to have made a big impression on you,” Bert laughed.

Hugh nodded soberly. “It did. It――it’s awe-inspiring, colossal,
epochal――er――――”

“That’ll be about all! Half’s over. I guess I’ll go back to the other
bench. See you later, Hugh. Hope Dinny will let you in this half.”

“He won’t. He doesn’t love me a bit today. As Mr. Smiley would say,
‘Non sum qualis eram.’”

“You’re a silly ass,” laughed Bert. “Put that into Latin!”

Hugh’s prophecy proved correct. Mr. Crowley did not relent. Nor did
he once appear even to recall Hugh’s existence. And after the game
was over and first team had won by two touchdowns――no goals were
attempted――Hugh followed the others up to the field house and changed,
denying himself, however, a shower since he had certainly not earned
it, and then proceeded rather disconsolately back to Lothrop to find
three messages in the O-P pigeon-hole of the letter box in the first
floor corridor. Some obliging person had written the telegrams down in
his absence. The first was from his mother in Philadelphia explaining
that an unexpected visit to friends in the country had delayed her
reception of his message and saying that the money had been sent
and that she hoped the delay had not mattered. Another was from the
telegraph office requesting him to call and receipt for a sum of
money, and the third, rather incoherent, was from an evidently greatly
perturbed Bowles. Hugh showed them to Bert when the latter came in.

“Mother says she has sent thirty,” said Hugh, “instead of twenty-five,
so we’ll be in funds again, eh? Poor old Bowles is all upset. It
rather sounds as if he meant to come right up here and rescue me from
something. I fancy I’d best send him a wire and calm him down. If
Bowles ever tried to travel anywhere by himself he’d get lost as sure
as shooting, poor old chap!”

Bert smiled as he read Bowles’ message. “My lady left Thursday for New
York. We have no address. Expect back Wednesday. If anything we can do
Master Hugh please telegraph immediate. Could leave on one hour notice.
Bowles.”

“You’d better send him a wire, Hugh, or he will be walking in on us.
Queer idea to call your mother ‘my lady.’ Mighty nice and respectful,
though. At home the servants always call my mother ‘the missus’! You’ll
have to beat it down to the village tomorrow and get the tin. I’ll go
along, if you like. It’s mighty decent of her to send that extra five.
I wish my folks had those pretty thoughts. It’s like pulling teeth to
get a dollar more than my allowance from dad!”

“Tell you what we’ll do with that pound,” said Hugh, looking up from
the telegram he was formulating for the troubled Bowles. “We’ll buy
some tuck and have a feast up here tomorrow night. What do you say?”

Bert looked wistful, but shook his head. “You forget that we’re in
training, old man,” he said regretfully.

“That’s so. We couldn’t, I fancy. Well, we’ll postpone the party until
after the Mount Morris game. It’s a long old time to wait, though,
what?”

“Rotten,” agreed Bert. “Besides, that fiver will be spent long before
that.”

“No, it won’t. Or, if it is, there’ll be another. There, that ought to
settle Bowles. ‘Mother heard from. Everything hunky here. Unpack your
bag.’ That’s only nine words, though, and I can send ten, can’t I?”

“You can send fifty if you make it a night letter.”

“Great Scott, Bowles _would_ come then! I know; I’ll just add ‘Boosh.’”

“Add what?”

“‘Boosh.’”

“What’s that?”

“Blessed if I know,” chuckled Hugh. “Neither will Bowles, and it’ll
give him something to study on a bit.” Hugh added “Ordway” to his
message and laid it aside until supper time. When one lived on the
fourth floor of Lothrop one didn’t make unnecessary trips over the
stairs!

The next morning the two boys hurried to the village after their
French recitation and secured the money, and later Hugh paid his
debts to Cathcart and Mr. Crump, and Bert dispatched a money order
to Fallon and Turner. Hugh managed to appease Cathcart’s curiosity
without involving Bert’s name, although he had a suspicion that
Cathcart remained rather puzzled. Mr. Crump seemed disappointed at
being paid back so soon and almost insisted that Hugh should keep the
money longer. But Hugh finally satisfied him with a solemn promise to
come to him again should he ever find himself in similar financial
difficulties, and Mr. Crump, after going into the history of his family
at some length and with much detail, tucked the bills in the pocket of
his overalls, shouldered his broom and wandered on.

That afternoon Mr. Crowley summoned Hugh into the line-up as though
the late unpleasantness had never been and Hugh played through two
twelve-minute periods with so much credit that he noticed afterwards a
thoughtful and speculative look on the countenance of Hanser.




CHAPTER XIX

BEHIND THE BOATHOUSE


On Thursday Coach Bonner did what the members of the first squad had
been expecting him to do for nearly a week. That is, he had what Nick
called “his annual mid-season spasm.” Declaring that the fellows had
apparently forgotten the very rudiments of football, he announced
no scrimmage and prescribed an afternoon of “kindergarten stuff.”
The words are again Nick’s. The tackling dummy, of late more or less
neglected, spent the most strenuous afternoon of its fall career. It
was banged and thumped and ground in the loam until had it possessed
a head, which it didn’t, its countenance must have proclaimed tragic
distress. Not satisfied with a full three-quarters of an hour of
tackling, Mr. Bonner put his charges at other degrading labors;
passing, starting, crawling, pushing the “tumbrel.” The “tumbrel” was
a wooden platform with what looked like a section of fence erected
along one side. The top rail of the “fence” was padded and covered with
canvas. The whole contrivance was some ten feet in length and under
it were two wooden rollers. The linesmen, five at a time, alternately
stood on the platform to weight the “tumbrel” down and pushed against
the padded rail. The affair was officially known as the charging
machine, but its operators, perhaps with the carts which bore victims
to the guillotine during the French Revolution in mind, called it the
“tumbrel.” Possibly it is unnecessary to add that it was just about as
popular with them as the other vehicle was with its occupants.

Mr. Bonner gave an excellent imitation of a slave driver that Thursday
afternoon, even looking the rôle as well as acting it. Simon Legree,
cracking his whip in a performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was a
genial, mild-mannered gentleman by comparison. After the others were
dismissed he exhibited an absolutely medieval cruelty by keeping the
punters and drop-kickers at work until it was too dark to tell a ball
from a head-guard.

The second team, with no scrimmage to take part in, was dismissed a
half hour earlier than usual. Most of the members hurried from the
scene, but a few heartless ones stood about and gloated over the
sufferings of their antagonists. One of these was Brewster Longley,
and he and Ned Musgrave, center on the first, and a natural rival,
almost came to blows on one occasion when Ned took exception to one of
Longley’s humorous gibes. Davy thereupon “shooed” the idlers away from
the side-lines in a fine flow of English strongly tinctured with Welsh
brogue.

Perhaps Longley resented having his pleasure cut short and perhaps his
resentment was accountable for what happened when he met Hugh and Peet
in front of the field house. Peet, although engaged in remorseless
rivalry with Hugh for a half-back position on the second, had taken
rather a violent liking to him and was becoming somewhat of a nuisance,
although Hugh didn’t let Peet suspect it. Peet was an upper middle
fellow, a few months younger than Hugh and extremely uninteresting.
He seldom ventured an original remark on any subject, confining his
conversational contributions to frequent giggles which Hugh was
beginning to find irritatingly monotonous. Today Hugh had lingered
long over his shower and dressing in the hope that Peet would take his
departure. But no such luck, for there was the other boy awaiting him
when he was ready to go, and they passed out of the building together
and almost into the arms of Longley and Bowen, the latter right guard
on the second and rather a crony of Longley’s.

Hugh murmured an apology for his share in the narrowly averted
collision and Peet laughed his inane giggle. Bowen nodded and pushed
past, but Brewster Longley seized Hugh’s arm and swung him round. “Hey
there, my cockney friend!” he exclaimed. “Want the whole place to
yourself?”

Hugh had a peculiar aversion to being “pawed,” as he termed it. Even if
Bert, of whom he was really fond, laid a hand on his shoulder, Hugh was
uncomfortable until it was removed. Longley’s unexpected and unwelcome
familiarity exasperated him instantly, and it was that grasp of his arm
and not the words accompanying it which sent the blood to his cheeks
and made him wrench himself indignantly away.

“Hands off, please,” he said. Tone and manner were distinctly haughty,
and Longley flared up at once.

“Oh, mama! Don’t touch me, I’m ticklish! Why, you blooming British ass,
don’t you try any of your high-and-mighty airs on me or I’ll slap you
on the wrist and break your watch!”

Peet giggled, and then, possibly realizing that appreciation of
Longley’s joke savored of treachery to Hugh, passed into a fit of
coughing. That giggle was the last straw to Hugh’s exasperation.

“I’ve had more than enough of your sort of humor, Longley,” he said
hotly, “and I don’t propose to stick it any longer. You steer clear of
me after this or――――”

“Or what?” demanded the other, thrusting his face close to Hugh’s.
“What will you do, kid? Go on, tell me! What’ll you do? Prick me with a
hatpin?”

“Oh, let him alone, Brew,” interposed Bowen, who had so far observed
proceedings with amusement. “We don’t want any international
complications.” He winked at Hugh. “Don’t want the British navy over
here blowing us up!”

“The British navy couldn’t blow a bubble up,” jeered Longley.
“Britishers are all bluff. Get that, Ordway? Just bluff and――and swank!
You wouldn’t hurt a――――”

“Take your face away from me,” interrupted Hugh. “I don’t like it. It’s
beastly unattractive.”

“Unattractive!” sputtered Longley. “Unat――why, you poor cockney
huckster, I’ve a good mind to punch your silly nose!”

“Try it!” said Hugh quietly.

Longley accepted the invitation, but Bowen jumped in and seized the
back-drawn arm. “Cut it out, Brew! You can’t fight here! Come on along!”

“Can’t I?” demanded Longley, struggling to get his arm away. “I’ll show
you whether I can or not! He can’t call me names and get away with it!
I’ll――I’ll――――”

“I’m ready to fight you wherever you say,” declared Hugh eagerly. “And
if you aren’t a coward you’ll fight, too.”

“Better not, Ordway,” cautioned Peet nervously, for once forgetting to
giggle. “He――he can lick you, I guess.”

“Oh, I’ll fight you, all right,” Longley was saying. “And I’ll make you
wish you’d stuck at home with the other English dubs. Come on down to
the boathouse if you want to get what’s coming to you!”

“Right-o,” responded Hugh calmly. “I say, Peet, nip it, like a good
chap, will you?”

“Nip what?” gasped Peet.

“Toddle, run along,” elaborated Hugh impatiently.

“N-no, sir, I’m going with you, Ordway, but you’re a fool to fight
Longley. Listen, won’t you? He can lick you easily. Why, he’s bigger
than you and older and――and he knows how to fight, too! Let’s――let’s
beat it!”

But Hugh was already stalking along behind Longley and Bowen, and
Peet’s remonstrances fell on deaf ears. Bowen appeared to be rather
half-heartedly trying to persuade Longley to turn back, but wasn’t
meeting with success. Longley’s big shoulders shrugged impatiently
and Hugh heard him say: “Didn’t he call my face unattractive? Well,
then!” And Bowen’s reply: “So it is, you silly chump, and what’s the
good of scrapping about it?” Peet pegged along at Hugh’s elbow, at once
excited and alarmed, hazarding an occasional remonstrance and giggling
nervously between. Hugh wished him at the bottom of the river!

The quartette passed the end of the gridiron, on which the unfortunate
first team members were still toiling monotonously, crossed the
practice field and finally reached the boathouse. Fortunately for their
undertaking, there was no one inside nor about the landing, and Bowen
led the way around the corner of the old building to where a piece of
fairly level sward sloped to the river almost in the shadow of the
bridge.

“Now go to it, you idiots,” he said indifferently, “if you have to.
But if I sing out, beat it! For I don’t intend to get yanked up before
Charlie, even if you do.”

Longley tossed his cap to the ground and impatiently tore off coat and
waistcoat, and Hugh, a bit more calmly, similarly divested himself.
Then his opponent, scowling ferociously, advanced across the turf, and
Hugh squared to meet him.

“Shake hands, gentlemen,” said Bowen facetiously, and Peet giggled.

“Oh, cut out the comedy stuff,” growled Longley. “Now then, you Little
Lord Fauntleroy, where’ll you have it?”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Some twenty minutes later, Bert, laboriously trying to get out of his
coat-sweater without hurting the damaged rib, heard the study door open
and close quietly.

“That you, Hugh?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the quiet reply. But Hugh didn’t appear at the doorway.
Instead he crossed to his own bedroom and Bert heard him pouring water
into the bowl.

“What are you so select for?” Bert sang out. “Aren’t you speaking to
your friends today?”

There was no audible reply from 29a, and having got rid of the sweater
at the cost of a few twinges, Bert sauntered across the study to Hugh’s
doorway. Then:

“_For――the――love――of――Mike!_” whispered Bert awedly. “Where’d you get
it?”

Hugh, looking up from his task of applying a wet sponge to a disfigured
countenance, smiled painfully.

“Longley,” he answered.

“Longley! Do you mean that Brew Longley battered you up like that?
What was the row? Great Scott, Hugh, you’re an awful mess! What did you
do to him?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” replied Hugh dejectedly. “I got in a few, but
he was too clever for me.” He turned to the mirror over the dresser and
viewed his reflection judicially, the wet sponge trickling water on the
rug. “He’s a ripping good fighter, Bert,” he added with what sounded
like unwilling admiration.

Bert, hands in pockets, gazed fascinatedly at his room-mate’s
countenance. He whistled tunelessly and under his breath. Hugh went
back to the basin.

“I fancy I flattened his nose for him, anyway,” he said more cheerfully.

“Well,” said Bert, emerging from his trance, “I hope to thunder you did
something to him! For he’s certainly just about ruined you! Here, turn
around and let’s see the damage.”

Obediently, Hugh stopped laving his face and Bert took stock of the
contusions and lacerations. “Your eye will be a wonder tomorrow,” he
murmured admiringly. “And you won’t be able to talk very well for a day
or two with that lip. Was he wearing brass-knuckles, for the love of
Mike? That cut on your cheek isn’t much――when it stops bleeding. Wait
till I get some peroxide. Keyes has a bottle. Keep on sponging. I’ll
be right back.”

When he returned Hugh, in spite of directions, had ceased using the
sponge and was thoughtfully studying two pairs of bruised and swollen
knuckles, wiggling his left thumb experimentally the while.

“Well,” exclaimed Bert, “you must have got in a few on him from the
looks of those! Thumb hurt?”

“Not much, I fancy. I was afraid maybe it was sprained. I say, Bert, I
can’t go to supper, eh?”

Bert, sousing peroxide on a corner of a towel and dabbing his friend’s
face, considered a moment. “Well,” he said finally, “you _could_, but I
wouldn’t advise it, Duke. Some of the faculty are horribly suspicious.”

“That’s what I thought.” Hugh sighed. “Well, I’m not awfully hungry.”

“I’ll fetch you something from downstairs,” said Bert cheerfully.
“And I’d better get word to Crowley, I guess. I’ll say you’ve got a
headache. That isn’t very far wrong, is it?”

Hugh smiled until it hurt his swollen lip. “It’s right as rain,” he
mumbled. “You don’t need to bring me any chow, though. It hurts to move
my mouth.”

“I’m not going to bring you chow, as you call it,” replied the other,
stepping back to view the result of his administrations. “I’ll fetch
you up a cup of cocoa and some toast. You can get that down. There now!
Got any plaster?”

“Yes, in the top drawer there. I’ll get it.”

“Hello, what have you done with your silver brushes? And where the
dickens did you get those awful things?”

“Put them away a week ago. Here it is. Use the flesh-colored. It won’t
show so much. I say, what about classes tomorrow?”

Bert shrugged. “You ought to have thought of that,” he answered
severely, “before you went and did such a fool trick. Look here, what
was it all about, anyway? Didn’t you know that Longley could beat you
to a pulp? What did I tell you the other day? Didn’t I say――――”

“I dare say you did, old dear,” agreed Hugh patiently. “But――_ouch_!”

“Well, hold still then. How do you suppose I can――――”

“He started on me again after practice and got nasty and I was beastly
tired of it. So――so we went down to the boathouse.”

“Just you and he?”

“No, there was Bowen; chap who plays right guard for us――――”

“I know him.”

“And young Peet. He’s a silly little ass. I tried to get rid of him,
but he would come. He――he giggles.”

“Lie down on the bed and rest your face. Did you fight rounds?”

“Oh, no, we just dug in and kept it up until Peet――er――buttered in.”

“_Butted_ in, Duke; not buttered. What was Peet’s trouble?”

“Well, you see, I was getting rather the worst of it; sort of groggy,
I fancy; my eye was bad and I dare say I wasn’t putting up much of a
fight by that time. So Peet, the silly duffer, thought we ought to stop
and he jumped in and Longley hit him by mistake and Peet hung on to
Longley and Bowen dragged me back and――well, that sort of stopped the
scrap, if you know what I mean.”

“I think you ought to be grateful to Peet,” said Bert drily. “It was
evidently time someone interfered! I hope you managed to smash Longley
some, Duke. He had no business picking a row with you, a fellow two
years younger and half a head smaller, and I mean to tell him so the
first time I see him.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Hugh, “don’t you go and get your face all beaten up,
too! One of us must keep looking decent, Bert.” He chuckled. “Rather
a joke on me, by the way. I told Longley I didn’t like his face,
you know; said it was unattractive; I fancy that was what got under
his skin; but he certainly got even, eh? You couldn’t call my face
attractive, could you, old chap?”

“Not without smiling,” said Bert. “Well, I must beat it to supper. You
take a nap if you can. When I come back I’ll get some witch-hazel and
wrap up your hands. They’ll be as stiff as pokers if I don’t. How do
you feel?”

“Perfectly rotten, thanks,” replied Hugh cheerfully. “Nip along. But,
I say, I wish you’d sort of keep quiet about it, eh? And don’t say
anything to Longley, like a good chap. I’m satisfied and I fancy he is.”

“I’m not,” said Bert grimly. “Go to sleep, you dunder-headed
Englishman, and see if you can keep out of trouble until I get back!”

Somewhat less than an hour later Hugh awoke from a nap and found Bert
lighting up. “Come on out here,” called the latter. “I’ve brought you
some cocoa, and some dipped toast and a beautiful hunk of chocolate
cake. Hungry?”

“Rather!” mumbled Hugh, getting stiffly off his bed and blinking his
way to the study. “I say, that looks awfully jolly. Thanks, old chap.”

“Well, eat it, while I go and dig up some witch-hazel. Got some old
handkerchiefs I can use?”

“I’ve got some new ones that are good enough. But don’t bother. I’ll be
all right. Feeling quite cocky already.”

“Well, you don’t look it!” laughed Bert. “And, say, I got a glimpse
of your friend Longley, Hugh, and if it’s any comfort to you, he’s a
sight!”

“Word of honor?” asked Hugh eagerly. “What――what’s he like?”

“Well, he isn’t disfigured for life, as you are, of course, but he’s
got a swollen nose that makes him look horribly silly and he’s got the
skin off his cheek-bone. He’s no prize beauty, any way you look at him!”

“But, I say, you didn’t――didn’t have any words with him, eh?”

“Oh, we passed the time of day,” replied Bert carelessly. “I’ll get
that witch-hazel.”




CHAPTER XX

“HOBO” WINS FAME


Hugh cut chapel the next morning, but there was French at ten and
Greek at eleven and mathematics at one, and so it wasn’t possible to
remain in retirement. Bert consoled him with the assurance that except
for a badly discolored eye he would pass muster anywhere as an ardent
pacifist. Hugh couldn’t quite credit that, but he had no course but to
attend classes. His appearance created interest and aroused curiosity
among his classmates, while Mr. Teschner observed him speculatively but
asked no questions. Plenty of questions were asked, however, and Hugh’s
ingenuity was sorely taxed in accounting for his contusions without
involving Longley. By the afternoon, though, the facts were pretty
widely known, probably due to the communicativeness of Peet, and Hugh
was no longer required to invent.

He and Longley had their first face-to-face encounter in the
field house before practice. If either experienced sensations of
embarrassment they failed to show it. Longley nodded to Hugh and Hugh
nodded back, and that was all there was to it except that each took
surreptitious views of the other’s countenance and, possibly, derived
a certain satisfaction from what he saw. To be sure, Bert had slightly
exaggerated the damage to Longley, but his nose _was_ noticeably
enlarged and there _was_ a generous-sized place on the left cheek where
the skin was missing. Peet, perhaps conscious of having talked too
much, admired Hugh from a discreet distance that day.

Although the first was due for a stiff contest on the morrow, Mr.
Bonner had no pity on them today and they were put through a long siege
of elementary work and two fifteen-minute periods with the second
during which, with the head coach driving them mercilessly, they
managed to score three touchdowns and would have held their opponents
safe had not Neil Ayer fortunately dropped a goal from the first team’s
eighteen yards after a well-managed forward pass that caught their
enemies napping. After practice Coach Crowley announced that there
would be no work for the second the next day and that all who wished
to accompany the first team to Leeds to see the game with Hollywood
would be taken along free of charge, since the morrow’s contest was
the only one played away from home that season. Needless to say, the
second team to a fellow declared their intention of profiting by the
generosity of the Athletic Association. However, when the train left
the next forenoon the entire roster was not present. A few were so
unfortunate as to have morning recitations which, for reasons that we
will not inquire into too closely, they dared not cut. Still, most
of them did make the trip, Hugh among them, and were well repaid by
witnessing a close and hotly contested game.

Hollywood School was a pretty big institution, with a registration
of close to four hundred students, and that the visitors held the
home team to one touchdown and scored a like number of points spoke
well for them. Oddly enough, both the Hollywood left half-back and
the Grafton full-back failed at an easy goal and the final score was
6 to 6, a result more satisfactory to Grafton than to Hollywood. All
things considered, Grafton had a right to and did consider the tie a
virtual victory, while the home team and its friends probably looked
on it as closely akin to a defeat. At all events, Grafton went home
well contented and a bit vociferous, the only fly in the ointment
represented by the fact that Mount Morris had overwhelmingly defeated
the St. James Academy team from which Grafton had barely won two weeks
before. Still, as Nick declared to Bert and Hugh on the way back to
the Junction, St. James had presented a make-shift eleven because of
injuries the Saturday previous and Mount Morris had probably had a much
easier task than Grafton had experienced. But Nick had to acknowledge
that 26 to 3 was a heap different from 12 to 10, by which score Grafton
had taken the measure of St. James.

Mount Morris had been having an unusually successful season. She
had met one more team than Grafton and had so far not only escaped
defeat but had won each contest decisively. On the other hand, the
Scarlet-and-Gray had been once beaten and once tied; and there was
a strong probability of its being defeated again next Saturday when
it played Lawrence Textile School. Mount Morris had a big, heavy
team, although its back-field had shown itself capable of speed, and
was playing this fall almost the same line-up as last; a couple of
new linesmen and a new quarter were the only changes in the eleven.
But today’s showing against Hollywood was distinctly encouraging
to Graftonians, and there were plenty of fellows among players and
supporters who refused even to consider the possibility of a win for
the green-and-white cohorts of Mount Morris. Captain Ted Trafford was
one of them, but Ted had the convenient faculty of being able to
believe what he wanted to, and his views had not very much weight with
his friends.

Bert was disappointed on Monday when Coach Bonner and Trainer Richards
refused to allow him to go back to work. Bert declared emphatically
that his rib was perfectly all right and that if he felt any better
he’d scream, but Davy wouldn’t sanction his return to work and without
that sanction Coach Bonner would have none of him. Bert watched
practice that day from the bench and scowled ferociously on friend and
foe alike. Many of the first-string players were excused and in the
scrimmage the first team was made up largely of substitutes. Derry was
in Dresser’s position at left end, Parker played left tackle instead of
Franklin, Hanrihan was in Ted Trafford’s place, Milford substituted for
Tray at right end, and the back-field, with the exception of Nick, who
played through the first period, was composed entirely of second-string
fellows. In the second period more changes were made, so that when
Hugh, playing right half on the scrub team, leaped into fame in the
middle of the last period of the game, he doubtless had the wholesale
substitution to thank for his performance.

First and second battled through fifteen minutes without a score, both
elevens booting the ball frequently in the hope that the strong wind
blowing across the field would result in a fumble. There were fumbles,
for that matter, but neither side profited much from them, and after a
five-minute rest they went back to work with the contest still to be
won or lost. The wind was noticeably less and first team took advantage
of the fact to try out her forward passing game. Substitutes are
somewhat like those persons who rush in where angels fear to tread,
and Gus Weston, who had taken Nick’s place at quarter-back, had all
the rashness of his kind. One pass went nicely to Derry and that youth
managed to outwit Forbes very neatly and reeled off twenty-seven yards
and put the pigskin on the second’s nineteen before he was brought down
by Spalding, after Hugh had made an ineffectual effort to reach him.
But where Weston made his mistake was in trying the same play a minute
later when a line attack would have probably secured him ground, and at
all events been far safer against a team smarting from the degradation
of that twenty-seven-yard gain. But Weston called for the same play on
first down and the ball went back to Leddy, at full, and Leddy heaved
to a supposedly waiting Derry. Forbes, though, was not fooled this time
and Derry had no chance of getting into position for the catch. Someone
else had, however, and the someone else was the second team’s right
half-back, who, sensing the play from the moment the ball was snapped,
had sprinted across the field as soon as Leddy had caught, avoided
the engaged ends and, raising an eager hand aloft in signal to Leddy,
had joyfully watched the approach of the arching ball. Whether the
full-back had been fooled by Hugh’s signal or whether he had trusted to
Derry to get free from his antagonist in time to make the catch is a
matter of conjecture. At all events, Leddy made an excellent throw and
Hugh made a correspondingly good catch, and the fat was in the fire.

What ensued occupied so little time that to the watchers, at least, it
seemed all over almost as soon as it had begun. Hugh had a practically
clear field for the first twenty yards and he made the most of it. Then
the pursuit moved to cut him off from behind and the race began in
earnest.

Hugh had captured the ball near his own fifteen yards, for the pass had
been more vertical than forward, and he was approaching the middle of
the field, running like a rabbit, as Bert told him afterwards, before
he was really challenged. Then it was Jack Zanetti who threw down the
gauntlet. Zanetti was a swift runner, with a commendable Track Team
record for the two-twenty, and had he and Hugh started even the latter
would never have had a chance of victory. But Zanetti was well behind
when the danger had been discovered and by the time he was close to
Hugh’s flying heels he had already run a punishing race. Behind Zanetti
streamed others; Gus Weston, Milford and Hanser possible contenders,
Leddy hopelessly out of it, and then a mingling of friends and foes.
Forbes, seeing the way the play was turning out, had left Derry to
his own devices and was making an earnest effort to catch up with his
team-mate and act as interference, but the handicap of distance was too
great and although Forbes did actually manage to be in at the death he
never got close enough to render any aid.

Nick had told Hugh that when one was making a long run with the ball
one didn’t do much thinking. But Hugh couldn’t agree with him, for it
seemed to him that he thought of about everything in the world! Only,
and this was a peculiar thing to his mind, he couldn’t remember any of
his thoughts afterwards! Near the first team’s forty-five yards Zanetti
made a heroic effort to reach the quarry. Calling on every last ounce
of strength, he sprinted and lunged forward with groping hands. Perhaps
Hugh guessed his danger, for he swerved at the right instant and
Zanetti’s arms, although they nearly reached what they sought and even
threw Hugh out of his stride, closed on empty air and he rolled over
twice and lay quite quiet until the rest of the pursuit had labored
past.

Milford found his second wind and gave Hugh a very pretty tussle all
the rest of the way, but the latter crossed the goal line with dragging
feet a good three yards ahead, touched the ball to earth and then
carefully snuggled it beneath him and ducked his head as the exhausted
Milford dropped down on him.

It was a spectacular performance, as all such long runs are, but it is
doubtful if Hugh deserved all the praise he received. Granted that he
had displayed football acumen in diagnosing the play and getting into
it as he had, the subsequent task had required little ability beyond
that of running as hard as he knew how. He had not been forced to worm
his way through a scattered defence or dodge a hungry quarter-back
on his way to the goal. He had merely made the most of a fortunate
opportunity. Probably if he had been playing against the full strength
of the first team he would never have been able to catch the pass,
or, having caught it, to get away with it. Much of this he explained
subsequently to Bert and Nick and Pop and others, for he refused to
view himself as a hero, but they all scoffed and reminded him that
he had made the longest run of the season on Lothrop Field. Just now,
having been released from the oppressive attentions of Milford, he was
being ecstatically thumped and beaten by his mates of the second team
as, ball under arm, he walked it out for the try at goal. Coach Crowley
even expressed mild commendation, and in Hugh’s belief every chap on
the team took an enthusiastic whack at his tired shoulders except
Longley; and Longley grinned at him in a most friendly and approving
manner.

Ayer insisted that Hugh should hold the ball for him, and Hugh was very
glad that he had watched that operation often enough and carefully
enough to be able to perform it. Ayer had mercy on his breathlessness
and gave him plenty of time before he said “Right!” and stepped
forward. Then Hugh carefully withdrew his fingers from under the end,
heard the thud of leather on leather and, prone on the turf――and very
willing to remain so, if the truth were known!――watched the pigskin
rise, turning lazily over end on end, up and away and――yes, over the
cross-bar!

Second team celebrated the advent of that seventh point by again
lavishing blows on his back and playfully maltreating Neil Ayer. Then
they scattered to take the kick-off and Peet tugged at Hugh’s elbow,
looking very, very admiring and very, very apologetic, and said:
“You’re off, Ordway. I’m sorry. Give me your head-guard, will you? Say,
that was a peach of a run!”

Hugh yielded his guard and place, acknowledging Peet’s compliment with
a nod, and walked off a trifle incensed with Mr. Crowley. Of course he
hadn’t done enough to have the fellows make such a fuss, he thought,
but he had scored a touchdown and it did seem that the coach might
reward him by letting him play the time out. Mr. Crowley, however,
only waved to him in the direction of the field house and Hugh got his
sweater and weariedly trotted off, turning deaf ears to the approving
remarks of those on the benches. If he had done anything, he asked
himself impatiently, why didn’t they let him keep on playing?

But he hadn’t missed much, as he soon realized, for he was still
tugging at his sticky togs when the released players burst in at the
doors. The second team fellows were jubilant indeed. They had for
once beaten the first in a straight practice game! Hugh was speedily
discovered and made the recipient of further boisterous honors, and
even Longley, grinning like a catfish, got in a slap on a bare shoulder
this time and told him he was “the pride of the noble Scrubs!” Hugh
made his escape finally and took refuge in the shower bath.

That day Hugh came into what might be termed official possession of his
nickname. One may pass uneventfully through four years of school life
and be known as plain Jack Jones, but once let him achieve a modicum of
fame and he is suddenly “Buster” Jones or something equally euphonious.
So it was with Hugh Oswald Brodwick. By supper time the school was
discussing, explaining and praising the eighty-five yard run of “Hobo”
Ordway.




CHAPTER XXI

HUGH MOVES AGAIN


Events took place so fast that week that even Hugh’s composure was
affected. On Tuesday Coach Bonner began preparations for the Lawrence
Textile game and every effort was made to develop the team’s offence.
To this end, following a more than ordinarily lengthy and severe signal
drill, during which three new plays were tried out, the scrimmage with
the second was changed from two fifteen-minute to three twelve-minute
periods. The second had to wait nearly twenty minutes for the first
team, and, since the weather had turned cold with a vengeance, they
wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together out of the teeth
of a brisk east wind. By the time Coach Bonner sent his charges on the
field the second team were pretty well chilled through and let-down.
The fact showed in their playing and the first ran away with the period
and scored a touchdown and a field-goal. In the second twelve minutes
the scrubs found themselves and put up a good defensive game, with the
result that the first failed to get nearer to the goal line than the
thirty yards. From there, in the last minute or two, Captain Trafford
tried a place-goal. But the wind was too much for him and the ball went
wide.

In the last period Hugh found himself in constant demand. So far
Brunswick and Manson, the left half and the full-back, had done the
brunt of the work, save when an end had run behind the line. Hugh had
been used but three times in the attack, each time taking the ball for
wide end runs and only once gaining. But now, Derry having replaced Roy
Dresser at left end, Captain Myatt changed his tactics. Second received
the ball on a punt a few minutes after the period started and it was
Neil Ayer who began the trouble. On the first play, faking a pass to
full-back, he plunged straight through the center of the first team’s
line for a down. Then came a fake end-around play, Bellows leaving
his place at left end and dashing behind Ayer and, followed by the
left half, plunging around the right wing of the line. Then, hugging
the ball a moment, Ayer shot it to Hugh, and Hugh, with full-back
interfering, went the other way. The play was good for nearly twenty
yards, for Hugh displayed an almost uncanny elusiveness, slipping
between tacklers, dodging, twisting and always going ahead. Manson
was soon upset, but Hugh feinted and fought on to the forty-eight
yards before he was finally stopped. The second laughed and taunted
as they lined up again. Manson shot into left tackle but was stopped
for a yard. Ayer tried a quarter-back run and made three. Then Hugh
heard the signals again summon him. This time it was a straight run
around his own left end. Derry was pulled out and Franklin was neatly
boxed and only the first team’s secondary defence kept Hugh from again
getting safely away. As it was he added six yards and made first down
once more. Brunswick fumbled on the next play and Manson recovered for
a five-yard loss. Hugh failed on a wide run around his own left end,
being thrown by Ted Trafford, and Ayer kicked from position.

The first came back hard then and tested the second’s defence pretty
severely. Siedhof gave place to Hanser on the first and Boynton took
Brunswick’s place on the second. The second also put in a new left
tackle and a new left guard. First was using straight line-plunges
and getting away with them. On the second’s fifteen yards Vail, right
half on the first, was hurt in a tackle and Zanetti went in. Twice the
second held the besiegers under the shadow of their goal and then Ted
Trafford tried another goal from placement and barely made it.

Second kicked off and Nick ran back to the forty-five yards, through
most of the second team. Then two line plays were stopped for small
gains and Keyes threw forward to Tray near the second’s thirty-five
and the right end made a clever running catch and added another five
yards of territory before Myatt downed him. With time almost up and the
ball on the second’s thirty, Nick again called for a forward, but this
time the ball grounded. A skin-tackle around Spalding netted four yards
and Keyes plunged through Longley for two more. Keyes then went back
to drop-kick and when the ball shot to him the first team’s left side
crumbled badly and Bowen hurled himself through and blocked. The ball
trickled up the field to the twenty yards before Zanetti fell on it.
Two wide sweeps by Keyes around the left end gained but four and once
more he tried for a field goal. But the angle was extreme and the ball
went astray.

Longley kicked off to Zanetti, who caught on his fifteen, fumbled,
recovered and was thrown by Forbes and promptly sat on by Hugh. The
first got to the twenty yards on two plunges and Keyes punted. Hugh,
playing back with Ayer, caught near his forty and ran across the
field, avoiding the first team’s left end, and Ayer and Forbes formed
into interference and disposed of two of the enemy. Hugh was still
running toward the other side line, zig-zagging miraculously between
his foes. Thrice he was almost caught and thrice he managed to escape.
Then his interference went to pieces and he was speeding down the
field some five yards from the side line with not one chance in ten of
getting away. A first team tackle dived and missed, Hanser loomed in
his path and Hugh went around him like a frightened rabbit and suddenly
only Nick was left to contend against, Nick running fast a few yards
behind and gaining a little at every stride.

Near the twenty-five yards Hugh shot a quick glance behind him and
then, with an unexpected increase of speed, cut across in front of Nick
just out of reach and headed straight for the goal. Zanetti and others
were trailing along some ten yards back and this change of direction
brought them nearer their prey, and Zanetti took courage and sprinted.
But it was Nick who was destined to save the day for the first. Try as
he might, Hugh couldn’t shake him off, and just short of the twelve
yards it was all over. Nick’s arms slipped around Hugh’s knees and all
the latter could do was hug the ball very tightly and go down. And as
he did so he heard Nick’s voice.

“Sorry,” panted Nick, “but――I――gotter――do it!”

Although second lined up quickly and shot Manson at the center, it was
not destined that they were to score. Manson got a scant yard, whistle
and horn sounded together, and the game was done.

“We’d have gone over in two more plays,” panted Neil Ayer as he walked
off beside Hugh. “I don’t believe time was up. They were afraid we’d
score on them! That was a pretty run of yours, Hobo. I thought you were
gone a dozen times. You sure can dodge like a rabbit. Where’d you learn
it?”

“I don’t know,” said Hugh. “Right here, I fancy.”

“Haven’t you ever played before?”

Hugh shook his head and Neil viewed him appraisingly. “You’re built
for it, I suppose. If you had another twenty pounds on you you’d be a
wonder.”

The school seemed much inclined to consider him a wonder as he was, and
his fame grew mightily. Hugh made the discovery that evening that his
circle of acquaintances was much wider than he had supposed. Fellows
who had previously never noticed his existence spoke to him almost
eagerly and seemed quite pleased if Hugh, disguising his surprise,
murmured a response. Juniors gazed upon him with bated breath, only
daring to nod, but upper-class fellows called him “Hobo” to his face
and grinned in friendly manner. Of course he liked it; no fellow could
fail to; but it made him feel, as he confided to Bert, “a bit of an
ass, if you know what I mean.”

He went to bed that Tuesday night a star half-back on the second
team. He awoke on Wednesday morning a substitute on the first, but
he didn’t know it because he hadn’t overheard part of a conversation
which had taken place the evening before in the front room of a little
white house in the village. The front room, used by Coach Bonner as
a sitting-room, held two persons beside the head coach. These were
Assistant Athletic Director Crowley and Trainer Richards. It was no
uncommon thing for them to meet there after supper and go over the
day’s work together, and now that the season was nearing its end
these conferences took place almost every night. The portion of the
conversation which would have interested Hugh had he heard it was this:

“That lays Vail off for most of the week, then,” mused Mr. Bonner. Davy
Richards nodded.

“When do you want Winslow to come back?” asked the coach.

“He might play Saturday if you need him. I’ve got a pad fixed up for
him.”

“Can he get into practice by Thursday?”

“Sure, if he don’t get into it too hard.”

“He will have to play Saturday, that’s certain. Half the game, anyway.
That leaves me short in the back-field. That fellow Hanser doesn’t work
very well, Dan.”

“He’s as good as I’ve got, Coach.”

“He may be now, but he won’t be if Ordway keeps coming. That kid’s a
wonder in a broken field. If you built up a game around him, Dan, you’d
have a mighty good attack for the middle of the field.”

“He’s clever,” acknowledged Mr. Crowley, “but he’s light. Next year――――”

“Tell you what, Dan, you take Hanser and let me have Ordway. Look here.
Mount Morris has a heavy, slow line and her ends aren’t remarkable when
you come right down to brass tacks. They haven’t shown anything against
any team they’ve met yet. Did you read the Mount Morris――St. James
game? Well, Mount Morris’ ends were never under the punts. St. James
ran the ball back five to fifteen yards every time. With ends like
those, why couldn’t this Ordway fellow get away? Wait a bit. Suppose
we worked up a shift formation that brought their tackle over to the
long side of their line. Then suppose we send a fake attack on that
side, pull Trafford out and send him and Ordway around the short end?
Why wouldn’t that make a good get-away play around the twenty-five-yard
line? I believe we could work up a play that could score for us. That
rascal is a marvel at squeezing through the tight places. All he needs
is a lot of work to give him experience.”

“Too light in weight,” growled Mr. Crowley. “They’d stop him quick.”

“Sure, they would if they caught him. But he’s something like an eel,
as I figure it. No, you take Hanser and give me Ordway, Dan, and I’ll
make a regular back of that kid. Or I will if he doesn’t get hurt.
That’s one trouble; he’s likely to bust something, I guess.”

“Not him, Coach,” said Davy. “He’s the supple kind.” (Davy pronounced
it “soople,” though.) “There ain’t a stiff bone in his body, sir.”

“Well, you can have him, of course,” said Mr. Crowley. “Maybe you’re
right, too. He is clever, and he――he’s neat; handles the ball nice,
travels nice; sort of clean-cut in his style.”

“Good! Send him to me tomorrow, Dan.”

And that is why Hugh, or, as he was popularly known now, Hobo Ordway,
again transferred his ketchup bottle and marmalade jar, this time back
to Lothrop and the first-team training table, and also why he came to
find himself at four-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon sitting beside
Bert on the first-team bench, very much surprised and a little bit
frightened at what was before him!




CHAPTER XXII

POP ELUCIDATES


Bert got back to light practice the next afternoon but not into the
game with the scrubs. Siedhof and Zanetti were the halves that day,
with Hugh substituting for Zanetti toward the end of the last period.
If the truth must be told, Hugh did not cover himself with glory, for
he fumbled once at a critical moment and lost his team a chance to
score and never made a gain worth recording. But it was perhaps more
due to stage fright than anything else, and Coach Bonner realized the
fact and dealt out no criticism. Oddly enough, it was the released
Hanser who performed the only spectacular feat of a slow and listless
game when he squirmed through the left of the first team’s line, threw
off Siedhof’s tackle and romped straight down the field for twenty-five
or -six yards before Nick stopped him. That incident spelled the end of
Kinley as regular left guard. Yetter succeeded him before the next play
and held the position the balance of the season. Kinley had been a
troublesome problem all the fall and with his retirement the left side
of the line stiffened considerably. Mr. Crowley had his joke with Coach
Bonner on the performances of the exchanged half-backs, but the latter
only smiled and said “Wait.”

There was only signal work on Friday for the first-team members and
most of the school attended the final class game over on the practice
gridiron and saw lower middle triumph over upper middle by the score of
7 to 0.

Lawrence Textile School presented a strong team the next afternoon and
started the proceedings by dropping a kick over Grafton’s goal six
minutes after play began. Grafton put on her strongest line-up, Vail,
whose injury had proved more stubborn than expected, being the only
regular member absent. Bert showed the results of his idleness and was
off his game. Hugh did not get in.

Grafton’s only score came in the second period when two forward passes
took the ball from her forty yards to Textile’s eighteen and Zanetti
gained around the left end and Keyes gathered enough to make it first
down by a plunge on the Textile right guard. From the seven-yard line
the ball went over in three plays, one a delayed pass to full-back, who
got three yards through center, another a skin-tackle play by Bert
that put the pigskin on the two yards, and the third a straight plunge
by Keyes with the whole team behind him. Keyes kicked an easy goal.

But that was the only time Grafton was dangerous. In the last half it
was all Textile, and the visitors secured a touchdown in each period
and kicked a goal each time. The final score was 17 to 7.

The game proved one thing long suspected, which was that the
Scarlet-and-Gray line was far from a perfect machine on defence. Time
and again Textile opened holes wide enough to drive a wagon through.
The power was there and the knowledge, but the fellows didn’t work
together. It was the secondary defence alone that kept the opponent’s
score down to anything like what it was. On the left, Yetter, while
showing up superior to Kinley, was constantly fooled on plays inside
his position. He worked at odds with his center and was, besides,
slow at getting into plays. On his left, Franklin was another weak
defender, although a brilliant tackle on offence. Pop Driver was steady
and dependable, a trifle slow, perhaps, but a hard man to fool. He
and Musgrave, at center, and Ted Trafford at his other shoulder, made
that side of the line fairly impregnable, although Ted, like the other
tackle, was a better offensive than defensive player. The ends had
showed up satisfactorily, with the honors, if any, belonging to Roy
Dresser. As to the back-field, it was hard to judge, since it was a
patched-up affair, with Bert playing only a part of the game and Vail
not getting in at all. Neither Siedhof nor Zanetti were better than
average backs. Nick, at quarter, had played as he always did, hard and
cleverly, handling punts in the back-field faultlessly, running back
well and choosing his plays wisely. Keyes had gained as consistently
as usual with the ball, had been a tower of strength on defence and
had punted excellently. Leddy had proved himself a good substitute
for Keyes. On the whole, there was no fault to be found with the
material. Grafton possessed eleven good players and was well off for
second-string men. The team simply hadn’t developed as it should have.

The Lawrence Textile School game was played just a fortnight before
the date of the Mount Morris contest, and there were those a-plenty
who declared that two weeks was all too short a time in which to bring
the Grafton team to championship form. What Coach Bonner thought, no
one knew, but on Monday it was evident that the first team was in for
strenuous work and that if it was humanly possible to lick it into
shape Mr. Bonner meant to do it. The second team was given the ball at
the start of the scrimmage and told to put it over by line-plays. When
she lost it, as she frequently did, it was promptly handed back to her.
Both coaches were on the field and the playing was often stopped while
they corrected and explained, scolded or commended. The second, driven
to a sort of berserker rage, hammered every position in the opposing
line desperately, Mr. Crowley barking and growling and urging them on.

Hugh got into it in the second ten-minute period and played through
that and most of the third, until a blow on the head turned him so
dizzy that Davy Richards, hovering about the scene like an anxious
mother hen, called him out. He did good work on the defence, too,
considering his lack of weight. He seemed gifted with the faculty of
anticipating the play and getting into it almost before it reached the
line, although it was really less a gift than it appeared. What Hugh
did was to watch the ball, instead of the players, and more than once
Nick’s shouted warning proved wrong and Hugh’s diagnosis correct. He
was pretty roughly used, for the second was in no mood to deal gently
with objects in its way, and frequently he fumed in secret at his lack
of weight.

In the final period――the second had so far failed to cross the
defender’s line――the second was given the ball four times in
succession on the first team’s ten yards and urged to take it over. But
it was not until they had been allowed an extra down, with the ball on
the two yards, that Manson piled through between Musgrave and Yetter
and scored the single tally. It was in that mix-up that Hugh got his
knock-out and Vail went in to finish the game.

Monday’s practice was a fair example of every day’s proceedings until
Thursday. On Thursday the lower middle team, champions of the school,
trotted over and faced the first. They proved an easy prey, and the
first had little difficulty in running up twenty-seven points while the
lower middlers were earning a scant six by the air route. Coach Bonner
tried out two new plays which the first had been learning, and was able
to gain with each several times. The best for all-round purposes was a
split play in which an end shifted to the other side of the line and
played some two yards back. The backs arranged themselves in oblique
tandem, the ball went to full-back, quarter and the back-field end
swung around one wing, the two half-backs around the other and the
full-back plunged straight ahead, usually finding his passage clear. It
was rather a difficult play for the opponent to diagnose, for it had
all the earmarks of a forward-pass to either side of the field. The
lower middlers never did solve it, although that by no means guaranteed
that it would succeed more than once against Mount Morris.

The other new play, although he didn’t know it, was designed to make
use of Hugh’s running ability. It was a tackle-over shift, with the
back-field in square formation and the ball going to right half――in
this case Hugh――on a direct pass. The attack was faked at the long
side, and right half, with left interfering, went around the short
side, the runner turning in sharply when the way was clear. The same
formation was used for a variation in which left half ran wide beyond
the short side and took a forward pass from full-back. The variation
proved less certain of success, however, and was abandoned after a few
subsequent try-outs against the second. But the play in which Hugh
figured was tried four times in that Thursday game and gained each
time. Once Hugh got clean away and covered half the field before he
met his Nemesis in the shape of the opposing quarter, who, in spite of
Hugh’s attempt to elude him, stopped further progress with a neat and
decisive tackle. Another time Hugh gained twelve yards before he was
brought down from behind, again he almost got clear and reeled off the
better part of twenty, and, on the last attempt, with the ball under
the shadow of the enemy’s goal near the eighteen yards, he dodged his
way through at least a half-dozen opponents and scored the first’s
fourth touchdown.

All that sounds as though Hugh played most of the game himself, but it
is needless to say that he didn’t or that his part was only a small
part after all. He held his own well on defence and several times made
short gains on the wings, but lack of weight told against him. One
thing he did not do, however, was fumble. Unfortunately the same cannot
be said of either Bert or Vail. Bert played three periods at left half
and Vail one period at right, going out in favor of Hugh. Vail’s fumble
was not costly, but Bert’s was, for he dropped the ball when tackled
in the line and a lower middler fell on it and three minutes later the
pigskin was floating over the cross-bar for lower middle’s first field
goal. The whole truth is that Bert played poorly that day. His sins
were not only of commission, like that fumble on the twenty-yard line,
but of omission, as when, time after time, he was stopped short in his
tracks before he had penetrated the enemy’s first line of defense.
Siedhof, who replaced him, while not especially effective, at least
gained occasionally through a not very strong line.

Bert was ill-tempered and depressed that evening, and when Hugh,
feeling very happy over his showing, tried to cheer him up, Bert
sneered at him. “You think you know a whole lot, don’t you?” he asked.
“Think you’re a regular fellow now, I guess. You’ve got a whole lot
to learn yet about playing half, let me tell you. When George Vail
gets back you’ll last about ten seconds and then you’ll find yourself
‘chewing the blanket’ again.”

“I dare say,” responded Hugh good-naturedly. “Don’t know just why Mr.
Bonner has been so decent to me, anyway. Of course, I know I can’t play
like you and Vail, old chap. Never thought so for a minute.”

“You act so,” growled Bert. “Coming around and patting my head! I’ll be
playing half when you’re shouting ‘Rah! Rah!’ on the stand.”

“Right-o! Sorry I spoke.”

“You kids,” continued Bert, “have a lucky day and make a couple of runs
and then think you’re the whole shooting match! You make me tired!”

Hugh made no reply, and presently went off down the corridor to
visit Cathcart, who was nowadays voicing regret that the other had
gone over, apparently body and soul, to what Cathcart called “the
muscle-worshippers.” But Cathcart was entertaining three professed
“grinds,” and the conversation soon bored Hugh and he left. On
the way over to Trow he wondered whether football was as Cathcart
predicted, really lessening his interest in what that same youth would
probably have termed, “more vital matters.” Certainly, a month ago the
conversation he had listened to almost in silence would have engrossed
him far more. He confided his doubts to Pop, whom he found quite alone
for once, and Pop replied that he thought it didn’t much matter.

“Of course, a fellow gets his mind pretty well filled with football
about this time of year. It’s natural, Duke. But I don’t see that
it does him any harm. After the Mount Morris game he comes back to
earth, sometimes with a bit of a thump, and has time to think of other
things. Cathcart’s an awful high-brow, anyway. He will have brain fever
some day or go to the funny-house. If I did all the worrying over the
whichness of the what that he does I’d be food for the squirrels.
Forget it.”

Being in an unusually confidential frame of mind this evening, Hugh
told of Bert’s ill-temper, and Pop smiled. “You really mean,” he asked,
“that you don’t know what’s troubling Bert?”

“No, I don’t, really. Should I?”

“Well, you would if you stopped to think a minute. Look here. George
Vail’s not fit to play much yet, and won’t be, I guess, before next
Saturday. Siedhof and Jack Zanetti aren’t first-team caliber yet,
although Billy may be by next year. That leaves Bonner in a hole,
doesn’t it? He knows that he’s got to make up his backs from Bert and
George and, if you keep on coming, you. Well, Vail isn’t in shape yet,
and Bert isn’t doing much either, and there you are.”

“Yes, but――where am I?”

“Why, Bonner is looking to start the Mount Morris game with two of you
three fellows, don’t you savvy? Now the question is, which two? Bert
and George? Bert and you? George and you? He can’t tell yet, and you
can see that he’s doing a lot of thinking. Well, Bert sees that and
he’s thinking too. Just at present you and he are about an even choice.
Vail will probably come around all right and be sure of his position,
but you and Bert will have to fight it out for the other place. That’s
the way it looks to me, Duke. And that, I guess, is what’s worrying
Bert. When the season began he was the only possibility for left half.
Then he got up in the air about something, played like the dickens,
got a busted rib because he was thinking of something else instead of
playing the game, went off on his work――natural enough after a week or
ten days’ lay-off――and now doesn’t seem able to come back. It’s got on
his nerves, I suppose. And he’s taking it out on you. He has a punk
temper, anyway. And then, too, you’ve suddenly sprung up as a rival.
And Bert resents it. Hasn’t any right to, but I guess he does, because
I know Bert pretty well.”

“I wish I’d never gone in for football,” sighed Hugh after a moment’s
silence. “I never thought for a minute, you know, that――that anything
like this would come up. What’s to be done?”

“Done? Nothing’s to be done. Don’t be a chump. Bert will get over his
grouch tomorrow and then you and he will fight it out, just as lots of
other fellows have, and the best man will win. Or, anyway, the one who
promises to be the more useful a week from Saturday will win. It’s up
to Bonner, you know.”

“But I thought that Bert was absolutely certain,” faltered Hugh.

Pop shrugged his big shoulders. “So he was until a while back. He
started off finely. There isn’t a better half-back on a prep school
team today than Bert Winslow when he’s playing right. But he hasn’t
been playing right for nearly a month. Well, three weeks, anyway. What
a fellow has done doesn’t count much. It’s what he’s doing and can do.
Frankly, Duke, if you keep on getting a little better every day, as
you’ve been doing, you’ll play against Mount Morris as sure as I’m a
foot high; perhaps not all through, but half the game, anyway. You
take my advice and quit worrying about things. Just put everything out
of your mind but playing half and try like the dickens!”

“I don’t know that I want to do that, though, if I’m crowding Bert out
and――――”

“Piffle! If you don’t crowd him out Jack Zanetti will, or Billy
Siedhof, unless he gets a move on and fights for his place. Nick and
I were talking about it last night and Nick wanted me to give Bert a
hint. But what’s the use? He knows it as well as I do. He’d only tell
me to mind my own business. Quite right, too. So I’m going to.”

“Then you think I ought to keep on?”

“Of course. What else? We’re here to lick Mount Morris, aren’t we? If
you can help, it’s up to you to do it. Be as sorry for Bert as you
like, but don’t let it interfere with your game, Hugh. It’s up to him.”

The entrance of Roy Dresser put an end to the topic, and presently Hugh
went back to Lothrop. Bert was not there, for which Hugh was glad. He
got ready for bed, found a magazine to read and crawled in. But the
magazine lay face-down on the spread, for the talk with Pop Driver had
provided him with material for much perplexed meditation.




CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE LIME-LIGHT


The next morning Bert had apparently forgotten his grievance, although
he looked as if he had spent an unrestful night and was fidgety and
troubled. Hugh saw little of him until practice time. That afternoon
there was only light work for the players and the scrimmage with the
second team was short, if lively. Bert and Zanetti started the game and
later Bert went out in favor of Hugh, and Zanetti gave way to Vail. The
latter seemed as good as ever today and went to work with a will. Hugh,
during the time he was in the game, had few opportunities for offensive
work but made one good rush of some ten yards when he was let loose
outside left tackle. Siedhof played a few minutes in Hugh’s place at
the end of the scrimmage.

The first showed the effect of the week’s work and undoubtedly
displayed a better defence than theretofore. During the fifteen minutes
of actual playing time it scored twice on the second and held its
opponent safe.

Football enthusiasm had been rampant for over a week and already two
mass-meetings had been held. The third came off that Friday evening and
everyone piled into the assembly hall and cheered and sang and whooped
things up generally. The Mandolin and Banjo Club occupied the stage and
supplied music for the songs. Hugh secretly thought the enthusiasm a
bit “made-to-order” as he expressed it. But Hugh had not yet accustomed
himself to the idea of organized cheering, which he still considered a
trifle ridiculous. But he liked the singing and got into the songs with
a will. Captain Trafford predicted victory for the Scarlet-and-Gray;
Coach Bonner warned them against overconfidence, and Mr. Smiley quoted
much Latin and made them laugh frequently. As a demonstration of
loyalty and faith in the team the meeting was a great big success, but
it didn’t affect the result of next week’s game the least particle,
and so, in Hugh’s mind, was rather a waste of energy. Even Wallace
Cathcart attended, and Hugh, to his surprise, caught him with his mouth
very wide open and his face very red, cheering like mad. The first and
second team players sat together in front and Hugh found himself beside
Tom Hanrihan. Hanrihan had displayed a kindly interest in Hugh’s career
from the first, and tonight, in a lull between a cheer for Coach
Bonner and a song, he said confidentially:

“You’re doing fine, Hobo. Just you keep it up, son, and you’ll have
your letter. If you do you’ll be one of the youngest fellows to get it.
Bonner can’t keep you out of that game if he wants to, by gum! I sized
you up right the first day I saw you; remember? Yes, sir, I liked your
style right then, and I told Bonner so, too. I sort of discovered you,
Hobo, and if you don’t play a regular star game next week I’ll beat you
up!”

Then the mandolins and guitars and banjos struck up “Here We Go!” and
Hanrihan and Hugh, the latter referring to the printed slip in his
hand, joined in the rollicking refrain:

    “Grafton! Grafton! Here we go,
       Arm in arm with banners flying!
     Pity, pity any foe
       When it hears us loudly crying:
     ‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’
       All together! Now the chorus:
     ‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’
       Victory today is for us!”

Finally, “Nine long ‘Graftons,’ fellows, and put some pep into it!”
and then the exodus, with much scraping of settees and laughing and
whistling. And afterwards, for Nick and Guy Murtha and Harry Keyes and
Hugh, a Welsh rarebit in Nick’s room, made over an alcohol lamp and
extremely hot with cayenne pepper!

Southlake Academy was the visitor the next afternoon. Southlake had
played Mount Morris earlier in the season and had been soundly drubbed
by the score of 19 to 0. But Grafton did not hope to make so good a
showing. Nor did she. Southlake was a better team that day than she
had been when the Green-and-White had vanquished her, and she soon
proved the fact. Coach Bonner started with two substitutes in the line,
Hanrihan for Captain Trafford and Willard for Musgrave at center. But
Musgrave was hurried in before the game was five minutes old and,
although Captain Ted stayed out of the conflict until the third period
began, he, too, had to be sent to the relief. The back-field was Blake,
Winslow, Vail and Keyes during the first half. Then Weston took Nick’s
place, Siedhof went in for Vail, and Leddy played full. Hugh was half
sorry and half glad that he was being kept out. He wanted to play
hard enough, but he feared that if he did go in it would be in place
of Bert, and their relations were strained enough as it was. Bert
had hardly spoken a word, civil or otherwise, to his roommate since
yesterday’s practice!

There was no scoring on either side until the second period was ten
minutes along. Then a lucky fluke gave Grafton the ball on Southlake’s
twenty-two yards and she took it over in seven smashing attacks on
the center. Keyes missed goal. After that Southlake sprang some open
plays which, if they didn’t gain very much ground, considerably worried
and exasperated the enemy, who, for a while, didn’t know how to meet
them. Still, the nearest Southlake came to a score was getting down
to Grafton’s seventeen yards, where she was held for downs, and Keyes
kicked out of danger.

Hugh watched the work of the half-backs attentively. Vail was covering
himself with glory and Bert was doing considerably better on attack
than he had been doing of late, but was frightfully weak on defence.
Time after time he was outside the play entirely, while, when he did
get into it, he was quite as likely to miss his tackle as make it.
Even Hugh, who was desperately anxious to make the best of Bert’s
performance, could not fail to see that he was trying the patience of
his team-mates and, probably, of Mr. Bonner as well.

Southlake tried two forward passes in the third period and again got
within scoring distance. She faked a drop-kick and sent a back on a
wide run around Roy Dresser’s end and Roy, for once, was neatly boxed.
Bert was the man to stop the runner and Bert made a miserable failure
of the attempt, getting his man and then losing him again. Just how
Yetter got into the affair was a mystery, but it was the left guard who
pulled the Southlake runner down just short of the goal line.

Franklin had been showing distress for some time and now Parker was
sent in to play left tackle. At the same time Keyes was put back
again, and it was perhaps the big full-back’s presence which stopped
the enemy’s advance. Two tries lost her a yard and then she tried a
drop-kick and it was Keyes who leaped into the path of the ball and
beat it down. Southlake recovered on the fifteen, but she fumbled a
minute or two later and the pigskin was Grafton’s.

It was then that the Scarlet-and-Gray showed real form. From her own
fifteen-yard line to the middle of the field she went in five plays,
Keyes and Roy Dresser bringing off a forward pass that covered more
than half the distance, and Vail and Siedhof, and once Keyes, plunging
through the line for the balance. A second attempt at a forward pass
grounded, but Vail got away outside the Southlake right tackle and
reeled off fifteen yards, and from there down to the sixteen Grafton
plugged relentlessly. There was a mistake in signals then and some four
yards was lost, and Weston elected to try a goal from the field and
Captain Trafford went back. But the line weakened somewhere and Ted
had no chance to kick and Weston, holding the ball for him near the
thirty-yard line, could only snuggle it beneath him and yell, “Down!”

It was then that Coach Bonner beckoned Hugh from the bench. “Go ahead,”
he said, “and see what you can do. Tell Weston to use Number 17,
Ordway.”

Hugh pulled off his sweater and legged it across with upraised hand,
and the stand cheered him. Bert saw him coming and began to tug at his
head harness. Then he stopped and waited.

“You’re off,” said Hugh. “May I have that, please?”

[Illustration: “‘You’re off,’ said Hugh. ‘May I have that, please?’”]

Bert handed over the leather guard silently, but his expression wasn’t
pleasant and Hugh heartily wished that the coach had chosen Zanetti
instead of him. But there was no time for regrets then. He whispered
his instructions to the quarter-back, repeated them in reply to Captain
Ted’s anxious question, pulled the head guard on and sprang into place.

It was third down and about fifteen to go. Weston called the signals,
Trafford crossed to the other side of Parker, and Keyes stepped farther
back and held his hands out, the halves crouched wide apart, and
Weston, stooping behind Musgrave, repeated the signals. Then the ball
came back, straight and fast, and Hugh snuggled it in the crook of his
arm, started quickly, and, running low and hard, swept past his line
on the heels of Siedhof, while Weston and Keyes sped toward the other
end. For a moment, a critical length of time just then, Southlake lost
sight of the ball. When she had solved the play Siedhof had spun a
Southlake tackle from the path, and Hugh had responded to the frantic
cry of “_In! In!_” and was through. Siedhof met the charge of a half,
but went down in the encounter, and Hugh, twisting aside, circled out,
passed the twenty-yard line, dodged another back and, with the hue and
cry close behind, raced over the remaining four trampled white marks
and was only stopped when a despairing quarter, wrapping tenacious arms
about his legs, brought him to earth well back of the goal line!

Grafton shouted herself hoarse, only letting up for a minute while
Keyes directed the ball and subsequently booted it deftly over the bar.
After that Grafton played on the defensive for the rest of that period
and the next, and, although there were some anxious moments, kept what
she had earned. While 13 to 0 didn’t sound as well as 19 to 0, it
perhaps stood for quite as much if we consider the fact that Southlake
was a stronger team today than when she had met Mount Morris.

Being a hero is a trying business, as Hugh soon discovered. Naturally
somewhat retiring, he disliked the sudden publicity that enveloped him,
and, being modest, he felt uncomfortable under the praise bestowed
on him. Fellows took, he thought, a ridiculous amount of pains to go
out of their way to shake his hand or even slap him familiarly on the
shoulder and tell him what a wonder he was. He knew very well that he
wasn’t a wonder and he didn’t like being called one. He belonged, in
part at least, to a people who abhor being conspicuous and who view
askance anything savoring of hysteria, and, in spite of his American
experiences, he had not lost those feelings. No, on the whole the
succeeding week was not a very comfortable one for Hugh. He hoped that
after a day or two the school would cease its “bally nonsense,” but he
was reckoning without the fact that it was wrought up to a fine state
of tension and that the tension increased every hour as the Mount
Morris game approached. Consequently the “bally nonsense” continued and
Hobo Ordway was never allowed to get out of the lime-light for a minute.

But what troubled Hugh far more than fame and its consequences was
Bert’s attitude. After the Southlake game no one, and surely not
Bert, doubted for an instant that Hugh had won his position. Another
fellow might have swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled, or,
being resentful, might have hidden the fact. But not so Bert. He made
no secret to Hugh or anyone else that he thought he had been badly
treated. Or perhaps, which is more likely, he pretended to think
so. At all events, life in Number 29 was difficult and increasingly
unpleasant. Bert seldom spoke unless addressed by Hugh and then
answered coldly and sneeringly. By the middle of the next week Hugh
kept away from the study as much as he could and gave up trying to
bridge the chasm. On one occasion, driven out of his usual patience
by a surly response, he got thoroughly angry and wanted to fight on
the spot. Bert, though, refused to afford him that much satisfaction,
telling him sarcastically that if he (Hugh) got hurt and couldn’t play
they’d surely lose the game!

Nick and Pop each told Bert that he was making an utter ass of himself,
but beyond such satisfaction as they got from airing their opinion,
nothing came of it.

There was light work on Monday for the regulars, although those who
had not participated strenuously in Saturday’s contest were given the
usual medicine. On Tuesday there was a hard practice, and, in the
evening, an hour’s signal drill in the gymnasium. The program was the
same the next day. That afternoon, Bert, if he still entertained hopes,
must have seen the futility of them. For he spent the whole period of
scrimmaging on the bench and saw Hugh occupying the place he had looked
on as his. Although no official statement to the effect was made by
the coaches, it was generally understood that the line-up that day
was the one which would face Mount Morris on Saturday. Of course Bert
would get into the game for a while beyond the shadow of a doubt, but
that brought no satisfaction to him. What increased his sense of injury
was the fact that the day before, playing two of the four ten-minute
periods against the scrubs, he had held his own with any of them. And
he knew now that if he could only get in on Saturday he could play the
game of his life!

Perhaps it was a final realization of his defeat that changed his
attitude toward Hugh that evening. When both boys were back in the
study after the signal work in the gymnasium Bert volunteered a remark
in a very casual but surprisingly inoffensive voice. Hugh answered
in kind, and, rather embarrassedly, they fell into a discussion of
the plays they had rehearsed, of the team’s chances, and of kindred
subjects. Then, when Hugh had gone to bed and his light was out,
Bert’s voice reached him from his doorway.

“Say, Hugh!”

“Yes?”

An instant’s silence, and then: “I’m sorry I’ve been such a rotter.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Bert!”

“Yes, but――――” Another silence, and finally: “It isn’t all right at
all! I――oh, well, what’s the use? I’m sorry. I guess that’s the whole
yarn. It isn’t your fault, you know, and I――I hope you do fine, old
man! Just rip ’em right up the back!”

“Thanks,” replied Hugh in the darkness, “but I wish it were going to
be you, Bert, honest! I don’t want to play a mite. I’m beastly sorry
I――I――――”

“Oh, rot!”

“But I am, though! I feel an awful ass, if you know what I mean;
butting in like this and doing you out of your place on the team when
I can’t begin to play the way you do, old chap! It――it’s piffling
poppycock! That’s what it is! Piffling poppycock!”

He appeared to derive a lot of satisfaction from the phrase, and Bert
heard him mutter it over again to himself as he felt his way into the
room and sat on the foot of Hugh’s bed.

“No,” he said, tucking his feet up out of the draft from the open
window, “no, that’s not true. You play just as good a game as I ever
did, Hugh. You can’t get around that. And what’s a heap more, you’re
steady. I never was. I’d play good enough one day and then be perfectly
rotten the next, maybe. What gets me, though, is how the dickens you
ever learned in only about eight weeks!”

“Oh, I don’t know. And, anyhow, that’s got nothing to do with it. I
never imagined that I’d get in your way, Bert. If I had I’d never have
gone in for the silly game. Now look what’s happened!”

“Well, what has happened? I’m out and you’re in because you deserve to
be. Besides, there’s another year coming, isn’t there? Football doesn’t
stop after Saturday, you know.”

“That’s taking it mighty well,” said Hugh warmly. “But――just the same I
don’t like it. It makes me feel an awful rotter, an out-and-out rotter,
old chap! If there was any way to――to――to back out――――”

“Don’t be a chump! There isn’t, and if there was you’d have no
right――――”

“Why not? I know there isn’t, of course, but I don’t see why I
shouldn’t have the say about playing. Of course I can’t go to Mr.
Bonner and say ‘Look here, you know, I’ve changed my silly mind and
don’t think I’ll play Saturday.’ That wouldn’t do, of course. But, just
the same, it’s tommyrot to say I haven’t the right, you know.”

“You haven’t,” declared Bert decidedly. “The team needs you and it’s up
to you to do your level best.”

“My level best is no better than yours, though; not so good, in fact.
How do you know that I won’t have stage-fright Saturday and drop the
ball or――or try to swallow it? You can’t make me believe that if
something happened so I couldn’t play you wouldn’t do just as well and
probably better than I would!”

“I don’t know what I’d do,” answered Bert thoughtfully. “Yes, I do,
though, old man. I’ve got a perfectly magnificent hunch that I’d play
good ball if I got a chance. But that’s got nothing to do with it. I
shan’t have the chance unless Bonner puts me in for a little while at
the end. He probably will, you know; after we’ve got the thing cinched
or we’re so far behind that nothing matters!”

“Well, there it is, then!” said Hugh triumphantly. “You _know_ what you
can do and I don’t! What I say is――――”

Bert laughed. “Oh, you dry up and go to sleep, Hugh. It’s all right,
old man. I did act like a beast, and I’m sorry, and I beg your pardon.
And that’s all of that, I guess. For the rest of it, I hope you’ll play
a rattling good game, Hugh, and if I’m to substitute you I hope I won’t
get in at all. Good night!”

“Well, but――now hold on, old dear! I want to tell you――――”

“Not tonight. It’s after eleven. Go to sleep.”

Hugh grunted as he heard the bed creak in the other room. Then he
thumped his pillow and settled down again.

“Just the same,” he murmured, “it’s piffling poppycock! That’s just
what it is, piffling poppycock!”




CHAPTER XXIV

HUGH GOES TO THE VILLAGE


There was the lightest sort of practice on Thursday for the regular,
but the third-string players, reinforced by three or four first subs,
among them Bert, gave the second a hard tussle for two fifteen-minute
halves. Hugh didn’t see that game, for with the other first-choice
players he was dispatched to the showers the minute practice was done,
but he heard about it afterwards from Peet, who, at least according to
his own story, was the one particular bright spot in the second team’s
back-field. Peet wasn’t a very eloquent conversationalist and his
report was vague and jerky, but Hugh gathered that Bert had more than
distinguished himself that afternoon. There had, said Peet, been one
burst through the whole second team that had netted forty-odd yards.
And he had frequently piled through Myatt and Bowen for three and four
at a whack. You just couldn’t stop him! He’d gained two once with both
Hanser and Ayer hanging around his neck! And, in the end, he had
crashed his way through the second team’s center from the six yards for
the only touchdown scored by the substitutes. Hugh was very glad and
hoped that Coach Bonner, who, according to Peet, had watched the game
through, would change his mind and let Bert start on Saturday.

That was the second team’s final game of the season and they won it
10 to 6. When it was over they cheered the first team, the coaches,
the school, themselves and whatever else they could think of, and
joyfully――and perhaps a little regretfully――disbanded.

Bert was in good spirits that evening. He had had a fine time in the
game and told Hugh all about it while they sat on the steps of Lothrop
after supper and waited until it was time to go over to the mass
meeting. But when Hugh suggested that perhaps, because of the good
showing he had made, Mr. Bonner might put him into the line-up instead
of one Hobo Ordway, Bert shrugged.

“He won’t. I know Bonner pretty well. Anyway, I don’t care so much
now. I had a bully time knocking around this afternoon and I’ll get
a whack at Mount Morris if only for five minutes or so, I guess, and
that’ll do. What time is it? We’ve got to sit on the stage tonight
like a lot of wax figures. That’s what I always feel like when I’m on
exhibition. Joe Leslie’s going to talk tonight. Have you heard him? Oh,
yes, he jawed at Lit one time you were there, didn’t he? Well, he’s a
dandy at it and no mistake. Joe always calls the turn, too. Last year
he said we’d lose and we did. Year before he said neither team would
score more than once, and, by Jove, he was right then, too. We played
a nothing-to-nothing tie! Joe knows football from A to Izzard, and he
would have been a peach of a player if he could have gone in for it.”

“What was the trouble?”

“Folks didn’t want him to. He――what?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Thought you did. Well, let’s go over.”

Sitting on the stage to be admired was a little uncomfortable, Hugh
thought, even though he and Bert secured chairs in the third row and
were not much in evidence from the floor. As on previous occasions of
the kind, the Mandolin and Banjo Club did its best――and sometimes it
sounded like its worst!――speeches were made, cheers were given and
songs were sung. To the delight of everyone, the prophetic Joe Leslie,
senior class president, predicted a Grafton victory, although he warned
his hearers that the team would have to work for it and that its margin
of points would be scanty. Joe could talk to the fellows in what Vail,
who sat at Hugh’s other side, called “words of one syllabub,” and he
was always a big success as a speaker. Tonight he had his audience with
him from the first moment and before he was through had worked them up
to such a stage of enthusiasm that they threatened to lift the roof off
the building.

When the meeting was over the football players disappeared quickly,
for tonight and tomorrow night they were supposed to be in bed by ten
o’clock, and, lest they be disturbed, all noise in rooms or corridors
after that hour was taboo. Hugh, who had been noticeably distrait all
the evening save when Joe Leslie’s eloquence had absorbed him, piled
promptly into bed, beating the clock by ten minutes. Bert was disposed
toward conversation, but found scant encouragement from his chum, and
at ten all lights were out in Number 29. Bert was just falling into a
delicious state of drowsiness when a sound from the opposite bedroom
brought him back to consciousness and he sat up suddenly. It seemed to
him that Hugh had said “That’s it!” very loudly. However, as all was
silent, he concluded that he had dreamed it, and so sank back again and
went to sleep.

The next forenoon, clad in a yellow slicker, since it was drizzling,
Hugh inconspicuously let himself out the service door on the basement
floor of Lothrop, climbed two fences, cut across a corner of a meadow,
and finally, a bit wet as to lower extremities, reached the village
road and trudged off into the mist. He was back a half-hour later,
in time for French, and, so far as he knew, his absence was passed
unnoticed.

It drizzled all day, and toward evening grew colder. The gridiron,
covered with a sprinkling of marsh hay, remained deserted. At four
o’clock the team met in the gymnasium and had a half-hour’s drill on
signals, and then again, at half-past eight, there was a blackboard
talk. But the day went slowly to most of the fellows and the weather
affected tight-strung nerves, and everyone from Coach Bonner down to
the least important third-string substitute was heartily glad when
bedtime came. The school held an impromptu celebration――if you can call
it a celebration when the thing to be celebrated hasn’t occurred――on
the campus and did a good deal of singing and cheering and shouting
while it marched around the buildings. But the drizzle soon discouraged
it and long before ten o’clock Grafton School was as quiet as the
proverbial mouse. Hugh had a good deal of trouble getting to sleep
that night. He could hear Bert’s hearty and regular snores from the
opposite room and envied him. Probably, he reflected, Bert had a clear
conscience, while his own――well, he didn’t quite know whether it was
clear or not. He only knew that he had done something that morning
which might or might not prove to have been for the best. Sometimes,
he concluded, as he thumped his pillow into a new shape, life was most
beastly complicated.

When he awoke after a none too refreshing night it was still dull and
foggy outside, although the drizzle had ceased. There was a light glaze
of ice over everything and the limbs of the trees outside the windows
crackled when a slight puff of wind blew the gray mist across the
campus. It was a dispiriting scene, Hugh thought, but Bert, who came
yawning in a moment later, appeared to find it quite to his liking.

“Ugh! Put that window down! Say, this is a bully day for the game,
isn’t it? Just snappy enough!”

“The field will be wet, though, won’t it?” asked Hugh.

“Not to mention. The sun will be out before noon, and that hay will
keep it pretty dry, anyway. Had your bath――pardon me, tub?”

“No. You go ahead if you like.”

“All right, your ’Ighness, I’ll do that very thing. Say, what’s wrong
with you? Got the pip or anything? You look like a last summer’s
straw!”

“Me? Oh, I’m all right, I fancy, thanks. I――didn’t sleep very well.”

Bert chuckled and playfully shied a pillow at him. “Nerves, me dear
boy, nerves! You’ll feel better after you’ve got some food――that is,
chow, inside you. I’ll yell if there’s a tub not working.”

Bert’s prediction was verified. Hugh did feel better after his
breakfast. Possibly the discovery that he was not the only fellow at
the training table that morning who resembled a last summer’s straw
helped as much as the food. As has been said before, Hugh had a horror
of being “different.”

There was no school that day. Experience had proved to the faculty that
holding recitations on the morning of the Big Game was about as useless
a thing as could be imagined. Many fellows headed for the village
shortly after breakfast, but the players were not allowed that means of
working off any superabundance of spirits. Instead, being instructed
to remain out of doors as much as possible, they dawdled around from
one set of steps to another and tried to be very jovial and carefree.
The sun came through about ten and the trees glittered as though strung
with diamonds. Then the diamonds turned into very wet water and dripped
down fellows’ necks.

Bert and Hugh and Nick and several others were seated on the steps of
Trow at about ten-thirty. Talk had been desultory and fragmentary for
some time, and Nick, the only one of the group apparently unaffected by
nerves, had just informed the rest candidly but for their own good that
they were a “bunch of nuts,” when Mr. Bonner came into view down the
steps of School Hall, looked this way and that and then walked briskly
along to Trow. He had the appearance of one who, having completed a
home-run, is informed by the umpire that he is out for not having
touched second. Every fellow in the group there knew that something had
greatly disturbed the coach’s equanimity, and when, pausing a dozen
yards away, he called to Hugh, his tone confirmed the look on his face.

“Ordway, please!” he called. “Just a moment!”

Hugh arose and wormed his way between the others. Probably they all
glanced curiously at him as he passed down the steps, but I doubt if
any save Bert read the expression on his face aright. To Bert it was
one of relief.

Hugh joined Coach Bonner and together they walked toward School Hall
and disappeared through the entrance. Speculation was rife in front of
Trow. Nick shook his head dubiously.

“Something’s gone to pot,” he said.

“Faculty’s jumped on Hobo, probably,” suggested another. “Thought,
though, he was rather a shark for study.”

“It isn’t that,” said Nick. “What do you think, Bert?”

But Bert only shook his head. If it was what he really thought, it
wasn’t a thing for him to talk about.

Five minutes later Hugh came out of School Hall and walked toward
them again. Seeing his face, Nick breathed easier. If it was anything
bad the Duke wouldn’t smile like that. When he reached the steps Hugh
stopped. By that time the smile didn’t look so good to Nick. There was
something not quite regular about it!

“Anything wrong?” asked Yetter.

“Rather, in a way,” answered Hugh. Bert noticed that his friend
avoided looking at him as he made the announcement. “My folks――that
is, my mother doesn’t want me to play. She telegraphed the faculty.
Bonner――Bonner’s a bit――peevish.”

The silence was broken by the dry tones of Nick.

“Strange he should be,” he murmured.

Hugh nodded, smiled, and turned away in the direction of Lothrop. A
chorus of regrets, of protests, of questions went after him, but he
kept on. Bert watched him disappear into the building before he jumped
up and hurried after.

“What,” demanded Bert, as he closed the door behind him, “what is
this――this”――unconsciously he adopted Hugh’s phrase of the other
evening――“this piffling poppycock?”

Hugh, standing at the window, one knee on the cushion, turned and
smiled conciliatingly. “Mother telegraphed to faculty. She doesn’t want
me to play. She――she’s afraid I’d get hurt, don’t you know. Of course,
it’s bally nonsense, but there you are, what?”

Bert advanced into the room and shied his cap to the table. Then he
plunged his hands in his pockets and observed sweetly:

“Must have been an awful surprise to you!”

Hugh colored. “Well, there it is, eh?”

“Most breaks your heart, doesn’t it?” continued Bert with suspicious
sympathy.

“Oh, well, now, old chap, of course a fellow’s disappointed, and all
that, but――――”

Then Bert let loose. I’m not going to try to say what he did, partly
because it was all dreadfully incoherent and partly because he used
expressions and called names that barely escaped being in shocking bad
taste. One of the nicest things he called Hugh was a “dunder-headed
ass”! And Hugh took it all quite good-naturedly and very calmly, even
seating himself as though in order to listen more attentively. And
when, at last, Bert petered out for lack of breath or language, Hugh
only grinned at him!

“You can’t prove anything you’ve said,” he remarked finally, just when
Bert showed a disposition to go on again. “And, anyway――――”

“I don’t have to prove it; I _know_ it!” bellowed the other. “I’m not a
complete fool!” He glared at Hugh a space longer and then subsided in
the Morris chair. “What――what did you do it for, Hugh?” he asked almost
pathetically.

Hugh blustered weakly. “I haven’t said I’d done anything, have
I? That’s your story. If you don’t believe me when I tell you
that――that――――”

“Well, go on,” said Bert sarcastically.

But Hugh didn’t. “Anyway, it’s done and that’s all there is to it.
What’s the good of cutting up rough?”

“Hugh, you’re an ass.”

Hugh smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I say, you know, you’ve told
me that before a number of times.”

“And I tell it to you again, you――you chump! If this ever gets out
Bonner will scalp you and the school will chase you from here to the
Junction!”

“Why should it get out, as you say? And――and what is there to get out,
anyway?”

“There’s this. You wrote home and got your mother to send that
telegram, and if that isn’t――――”

“I didn’t!” denied Hugh.

“You didn’t! Look here, can you look me in the eyes and say you didn’t
put your mother up to it?”

“I didn’t write home,” replied Hugh evasively.

“Oh, that’s it! You telegraphed! Of course you did! And that’s what you
were thinking of when you said ‘Oh!’ or something when we were talking
about Joe Leslie. That put the silly stunt into your head, didn’t it?”

“I say, what’s the good of getting all excited about it?” said Hugh
soothingly. “It’s quite all right, old dear. All you’ve got to do, you
know, is calm down and go in this afternoon and give ’em ballywhack!”

Bert was silent for a moment. Then: “What did Bonner say?” he demanded.

Hugh smiled ruefully. “He was crusty a bit, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” said Bert grimly. “Does he――suspect anything?”

“Oh, dear, no! Why should he?”

“Well, he might. Hang it, Hugh, I’ve got a half a mind not to play!”

Hugh laughed. “Change it, old dear! Bonner’s fit to be tied now. If you
tried anything like that on he’d just simply blow up――_Bing!_ Just like
that! Don’t be a silly ass, please.”

“But, Hugh, I wish you hadn’t! I feel so mean, don’t you see? And
suppose Bonner doesn’t put me in, after all! Suppose he plays Siedhof
or Zanetti! Suppose, even if he does put me in, I don’t play decently,
or――――”

“Suppose you’re a piffling idiot, and shut up! Bonner’s got to put you
in. And you’ve got to play the way you did Thursday and you’re going
to! Now come on out and get some air.”

Bert didn’t stir at once, though. Instead, he studied his knuckles a
long moment, leaning forward in his chair. Then, rather huskily: “Hugh,
you’re a mighty good sort,” he faltered. “And I’ve been such a rotter
that I don’t see why you want to――to――――”

“Piffling poppycock!” said Hugh.




CHAPTER XXV

BOWLES ATTENDS A FOOTBALL GAME


At a little before three that afternoon a carriage, drawn by a
weary-looking gray horse, turned into the campus from River Street and
finally stopped in front of School Hall. The single occupant alighted,
paid the driver and ascended the steps with a suggestion of dignified
haste. Some three minutes later, by which time the carriage which had
brought him from the Junction was out of sight around a corner, the
passenger reappeared and crossed the campus in the direction of a large
open plot of ground from which loud and at times quite appalling sounds
broke upon the afternoon air.

He was a neatly attired man of about thirty-five, clean-shaven, and
of a serious cast of countenance. He was quite evidently English, and
self-respecting to a degree. That was apparent in his carriage, his
expression, and his attire. He crossed the green, entered the gate
of Lothrop Field, and paused inquiringly in front of a youth with a
scarlet ribbon on his coat who guarded the entrance to the stands.

“Fifty cents, please,” said the youth.

The latecomer put a well-gloved hand in a pocket, drew forth a pigskin
purse and selected the required amount. Then he passed around a corner
of a grandstand and found himself confronted on one side by sloping
tiers of seats crowded with onlookers and on the other by an expanse of
yellowing turf over which a number of persons were hurrying about in an
apparently purposeless way. A second ribbon-badged youth arose from the
steps of the stand and said:

“You’ll find a seat further along, sir; about three sections down.”

“Thank you, sir, but I am looking for――for Mr. Ordway.”

“Ordway?” The youth shrugged. “I can’t tell you where he’s sitting. He
was to have played, but something happened. I’m afraid you can’t stand
here, sir. You’re obstructing the view of people in the lower seats.”

Already requests to “Move on, please!” were being made, and the man,
still searching the crowd as he went, proceeded in the direction
indicated. But finding anyone in that throng was like looking for a
needle in a haystack, and he began to realize the futility of his task.
Half-way along he stopped very suddenly and clutched at his very
respectable derby hat. Someone had almost knocked it from his head with
a waving flag, while a most barbaric and disconcerting shouting caused
him to gaze about, startled. He could, however, see nothing to account
for such an outburst, and, prompted by cries of “Down front!” and “Keep
moving, please!” he went on and was finally taken pity on by a third
ribbon-adorned usher and conducted up a number of steps and placed
precariously on the last eight inches of a narrow seat.

He looked about him carefully. There seemed to be hundreds of persons
there, old, middle-aged and young, and many were waving flags of vivid
scarlet bearing white G’s, and all, or so it seemed to him, were
shouting. Beside him was a boy of possibly sixteen years, a rather
nice-appearing youth, but one who continually jumped half out of his
seat or prodded the man’s ribs with a sharp elbow. The newcomer made a
careful and systematic survey of as much of the audience as was within
his range of vision, but without finding Mr. Ordway, after which he
philosophically settled down, if such a thing is possible when your
neighbors’ knees and elbows are continually being poked into you, and
did his best to understand what was going on.

Before him, on a white-barred field, two groups of young gentlemen
were facing each other. Those of one group were bright red as to
arms and legs and those of the other dark green. Besides the number
engaged in the contest――the man placed that number as between twenty
and thirty; possibly because several of them kept moving about all
the time――there were two older persons on hand, one of whom was an
extremely active gentleman, judging from the manner in which he ran
back and forth. While he looked someone blew a whistle and the two
groups of players suddenly became inextricably confused. Some ran one
way and some another and each seemed mainly bent on getting into the
next fellow’s way! And then, quite from nowhere, a green-stockinged
youth shot into prominence and ran very fast across the field in the
observer’s direction. He had a football in one arm and held the other
stiffly before him. The reason for this was presently made plain when
a scarlet-legged youth tried to interfere with him. That extended hand
came into contact with the scarlet-legged youth’s face and the latter
swerved quickly aside. But the lad with the green stockings didn’t get
much farther, for two other scarlet-legged players literally hurled
themselves on him and he was sent headlong across the white line and
into a windrow of hay. The man, rather startled by such violence,
understood at once that the hay had been placed there for humanitarian
purposes.

Everyone shouted things then, while, to the surprise of the man, the
assaulted youth arose nonchalantly, shook himself, and trotted further
into the field, where, presently, the whole performance was gone
through with again. The man was perplexed. Football he had heard of but
never witnessed, and it was very difficult to understand. On a board at
one end of the inclosure was the legend:

                               GRAFTON
                               VISITORS

That, of course, meant that neither side had as yet succeeded in
making a tally. The man wondered what they did to make a tally, and
while he was still wondering a gentleman wearing a white sweater ran
frantically onto the field and tooted an automobile horn. Whereupon,
with one accord, the players of both sides drew apart and then trotted
diagonally down the field and disappeared from sight.

The man started to get up, saw that only a very few were following his
example, hesitated, and resumed his seat.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he said to his neighbor, “is there more of it?”

“Oh, yes, that’s only the first half,” replied the boy, a note of
surprise in his voice. “You got here late, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. The train I reached Needham Junction on did not connect with
any train for this place and I was obliged to take a fly――er, carriage,
that is to say. It took some time.”

“I guess it did!” The boy observed his neighbor interestedly, a bit
puzzled. “Too bad to miss a whole quarter after coming so far, sir.”

“I beg pardon, but I’m not――that is, you――――” But he gave it up. He
wanted to tell the boy that he preferred not to be called “sir,” but he
couldn’t think of a way to do it.

“Come from New York?” the boy was asking, frankly curious.

“Yes, sir, but from Baltimore before that. I left there last night. I
came to see Mr. Ordway; Mr. Hugh Ordway. You might know him, sir?”

“Know Hobo! Well, I guess! Everyone knows Hobo Ordway!”

“No, sir, Hugh, if you please, sir.”

“I know; that’s him. The fellows call him Hobo on account of his
initials; H. O. B. O. don’t you see? Friend of yours, sir?”

“My master, sir.”

“Your――I didn’t get that!”

“I’m Master Hugh’s man, sir. We were a bit worried about him and my
lady sent me up to see if everything was all right.”

“Oh, then you’re the valet chap he brought along with him when he got
here?”

“Yes, sir; Bowles, sir.”

“Well, what do you know about that?”

“You mean, sir――――”

“Why, say, Mr. Bowles――or ought I to call you just Bowles?”

“Just Bowles, if you’ll be so kind, sir.”

“Well, then, Bowles, you don’t need to worry your bean about Hobo. He’s
as right as a trivet, or tight as a rivet or whatever you say. Only
thing that’s bothering him, I guess, is that his folks butted in at the
last moment and told him he couldn’t play. But I guess you know all
about that?”

“Oh, yes, sir. You see he telegraphed――――” Bowles stopped and coughed
discreetly. “That is to say, we telegraphed――――”

“Fine piece of business, I don’t think, Bowles! What’s the big idea?
Think he’d get killed?”

“Can’t say, sir. It was her Ladyship’s idea. It’s an extremely rough
game, this football.”

“Rough! Sure, it’s rough, but――who’s her ladyship?”

Bowles again coughed behind his hand. “Mrs. Ordway, sir, Master Hugh’s
mother. We――we always call her that. It’s a habit, sir.”

“Well, say, if you want to find Hobo you’d better beat it right now.
He’s on this side somewhere, I suppose. Say, Jennings, seen Hobo Ordway
lately?”

“Sure! He was on the bench with the subs during the first half,”
responded the next boy.

“Then you go down there where you see those benches and he will be back
again pretty soon.”

“Thank you, sir, but possibly I’d better wait now until the football is
over. That is to say, if you’re quite certain he is all right.”

“Was this morning, anyway. I talked to him coming out of dining hall.
There they come! _Grafton! Grafton!_”

There had been a good deal of singing and cheering during the absence
of the teams, but now the uproar became positively deafening. Everyone
stood up and shouted long and loudly and, if they had pennants, waved
them. Bowles stood up too, but he didn’t shout, although he almost
wanted to! Then a quick, sharp cheer broke forth from one side of the
field, and a long, growly cheer floated back from the other, and the
players came into sight again around the corner and went to their
benches. And Bowles, watching eagerly, saw Master Hugh! But what a
disreputable looking Master Hugh! Bowles almost dropped in his tracks!
No wonder, indeed, that they called him “Hobo”! A pair of old gray
summer trousers, a faded blue sweater, a diminutive cloth cap on the
back of his head, and a pair of kicked-out tan shoes on his feet!
Bowles groaned and was, oh, so thankful that her Ladyship was not there
to witness the disturbing sight! And then others cut off his view and
somewhere a whistle blew and the cheering began again and――

“Come on, Grafton! Let’s score now!” yelled a voice in Bowles’ ear,
and an elbow dug sharply into his side and someone behind him sent
his respectable derby over onto the bridge of his respectable nose.
Bowles rescued his hat and gave his attention to the field. The ball
was floating lazily aloft in the sunlight and under it the players were
running together. Then it came down, a boy got under it and clasped it
to his stomach, dodged this way, feinted that, was caught, escaped, ran
a few yards and was pulled down. Bowles thought he could almost hear
the thud of that body!

“Extremely rough,” he murmured, “oh, very.”

But after that he gazed, at first interested and then fascinated, and
soon forgot whether football was rough or otherwise! His neighbor,
supplying the unsought-for information that his name was Stiles, threw
light on the endeavors of the conflicting groups briefly, succinctly,
and Bowles began to fathom the philosophy of the game. Minutes passed.
The play surged this way and that, the ball, however, straying never
very far from the center of the gridiron. The teams were evenly
matched, it seemed. Toward the end of the third period Mount Morris
tried a difficult field-goal from the enemy’s thirty-eight yards, but
the ball fell far short of the goal and came speeding back in the
arms of Nick Blake. They seemed now to be doing more kicking, for the
pigskin was frequently in air. Once Vail, playing back with Nick,
fumbled a punt and a groan of horror arose from around Bowles, but the
next instant Vail had shouldered a Mount Morris end aside and himself
fallen on the bouncing ball.

Beside Bowles, his neighbor sat on the edge of the seat and squirmed
and yelped and shouted: “Get him, Ted! Get him, you chump!... Here
we go, fellows! Oh, look at that! Forty-five yards if an inch! Keyes
can’t punt a bit, can he? He’s no good at all, is he? Forty-five yards!
That’s all! Just forty―――― ... Oh, bully, Winslow! Oh, great stuff!
Right through! Three yards easy! How many downs is that? What? It can’t
be! Oh, all right. We’ll do it, just the same! They can’t stop us now!
We’re on our way to a touchdown! Get into ’em, Keyes! That’s the stuff!
Rip ’em up! What’d I tell you? Four more! Oh, there’s nothing to it, I
tell you, nothing to it at all!”

Down on the Green-and-White’s twenty-yard line now. Mount Morris
weakening a little. Two subs going into her line. Grafton as fresh as
ever, barring Trafford, perhaps. Trafford had a fierce jolt that time
in the third quarter. Enough to put most fellows out of the game. All
right now! Second down and eight to go! No gain? Well, Vail can’t do it
every time. Besides, they were looking for him. Two downs left. Seven
to go? Then he did gain a little. Here we go! Right through―――― Nothing
doing! Who had the ball? Keyes? Too bad! Bully chance to score! Have to
kick now. Well, three points is better than nothing, let me tell you!
Who’s going to―――― What’s the matter? Oh, quarter over? Gee, but that
was short! All right, everyone up now! Let ’em have it! “Rah, rah, rah,
Grafton! Rah, rah, rah, Grafton! Grafton! Grafton! _Grafton!_”

Bowles found he was clutching his knees tightly, doing no possible
good to his respectable trousers, and straining his respectable
gloves. Odd how excited one got about football! Extremely rough,
football, but――er――most interesting and――er――manly, of course. Oh,
rather! Ah, they were starting again at the other end of the field!
A scarlet-legged youth was standing well behind his fellows with
outstretched arms. Hello, he’d kicked it! Why didn’t the people
applaud? What was wrong? Oh, it had to go over that stick, eh, and it
hadn’t gone over? Oh, yes, of course. Most regrettable!

Back to the kicking game again now. Long punts, thrilling catches and
wonderful runs nipped in the bud by desperate tackles. Now and then an
attempted forward pass by Grafton, but never successful. Mount Morris
playing as if she’d be satisfied with an 0 to 0 tie, taking no chances
with the ball in her possession, playing it safe always. Grafton
growing more desperate every minute as the time shortens. Sending
Vail and Keyes banging into the left of the Green-and-White line for
short gains, whisking Blake and Winslow past tackle or outside end for
slightly longer ones, until again the ball is near the twenty-five
yards. Now the gains are shorter. Mount Morris plays doggedly, hurling
back attack. Three downs and only five yards gained. Back to the
thirty-two stalks Keyes. A hush settles over the field and stand. The
quarter’s signals are heard plainly. A brown streak into Keyes’ hands,
a swinging foot, a moment of suspense, and a groan of disappointment.
Again he has failed!

Across the field Mount Morris is cheering slowly over and over and
over. Only six minutes now. Here and there people are already leaving
their seats, to the discomfort of others. Mount Morris’s ball on her
forty-six yards. Rush――rush――rush――punt! That’s her game now. Hold them
off! No score for either side! Back comes Grafton. Four yards――that was
Winslow through tackle-guard on the left. Three yards more――that was
Vail outside tackle. Third down and only three needed. Nick makes it on
a delayed run, gets it by an inch only, but gets it! First down again
on Grafton’s twenty. Hello, what’s this? A punt on first down? Not
likely! A forward pass then. Yes! And made it, too!

Near the forty now and still going. But she’ll never get to the goal
that way. There isn’t time enough. Three minutes left? Is that all? Why
don’t they try another forward pass or run the ends? It’s the only way.
Plugging the line will never――There he goes! He’s off! It’s Winslow!
No, it’s Vail! Ten yards――fifteen――! Oh, bully tackle, Mount Morris!
First down again, though, and on their thirty or thereabouts. Here’s
where we score! Bust ’em up, Grafton!

Time out for someone. A Grafton player? No, he’s got green legs. It’s
Milton, their right half. No, it isn’t, it’s that big left guard of
theirs. Looks groggy, doesn’t he? Pretty near all in, if you ask me.
Here comes a Grafton sub; Zanetti, isn’t it? Wonder who they’ll take
out. Winslow, by thunder! That’s wrong! Winslow’s playing a dandy game.
What? I don’t care if Zanetti does want his letter. Let him wait until
next year. He’s only an Upper Middler, anyway. Yah! Ted Trafford’s sent
him off again! Now go ahead, Winslow, and show them we don’t _need_ any
subs!

The Mount Morris chap’s up. He’s going off. No, he isn’t! That’s
right, give him a hand. Here we go! Put it over, Grafton! Touchdown!
Touchdown! _Touchdown!_

Vail fails to gain on a crisscross and Dresser, running from position,
takes the ball from Nick and makes two around the other end. Grafton’s
trying to work over in front of goal. Once more, and Vail gets another
two yards through center. Hard luck! Fourth down now and we’ll have
to kick. Unless―――― No, it’s a kick. You can tell from the formation.
Wait a bit, though. Blake’s edging over. It’s a forward pass! If it
only works! Watch ’em now! Who’s got it? What’s wrong? Hi! There he
goes! _There he goes!_ Around this end! It’s Bert Winslow! Oh, go
it, you Winslow! Oh, go――They’ve got him! No! He’ll do it, he’ll do
it! Ten yards more! Look out for that man! Dodge him! That’s it! Oh,
bully! He’s past! He’s――_he’s over_! HE’S OVER! _Touchdown! Touchdown!
Grafton! Grafton!_ WO-A-OW!... I beg pardon, sir, did I break your hat?




CHAPTER XXVI

HUGH IS UNMASKED!


Grafton had won!

That she had done so only by the slimmest of chances and in the last
moments of time, that Mount Morris had held her helpless through
fifty-eight minutes of that long-drawn sixty, that the Green-and-White
had actually gained more ground by rushing, and had, all in all, shown
more football skill, was of no moment now. Tomorrow, in a calmer frame
of mind, Grafton might realize all this, but today the fact of victory
was all she heeded!

She captured the scarlet-legged players, who, wearied and panting,
begged for mercy, and carried them shoulder-high about the field. She
snake-danced and tossed hats and caps over the crossbars. She cheered
and sang and cavorted and laughed and triumphed. And finally she
crowded in front of the field house and, Joe Leslie waving his scarlet
megaphone and leading, cheered every member of the eleven and Coach
Bonner and Coach Crowley and Trainer Richards and Manager Quinn, and
then cheered the Team and the School! And, at last, as twilight settled
down, she dispersed across the green and back to the buildings, still
laughing, still singing, still shouting.

The final score was 7 to 0, for Captain Ted Trafford, with Nick holding
the ball for him, had finished his football career at Grafton by
sending the pigskin straight and high over the crossbar and registering
the last point for the Scarlet-and-Gray.

But where all had played well and some more than well, it was Left
Half Winslow who had emerged the hero of the game and of the season.
It was Bert who had torn off that last thirty yards on a brilliant,
zig-zag rush around the unsuspecting Mount Morris left end and past
a half-dozen desperate defenders, and one cannot perform a feat like
that and escape the consequences. As Mr. Smiley said when he stopped to
shake hands with Bert at the entrance of Lothrop later, “_Sic itur ad
astra_,” very freely translated by Nick into “Thus one becomes a star”!

Hugh, who had patiently waited for Bert to emerge from the field house
and had walked back through the dusk with him and Nick and Pop and
several others, was still bubbling praise and congratulations as,
having left the rest, they toiled up the last flight.

“It was simply corking, Bert!” he declared for the tenth time. “I don’t
see yet how you ever got through! Why, there were at least five fellows
between you and the goal line! Twice I was sure you were done for and
closed my eyes, and each time, when I looked again, you were still
nipping it! It was perfectly ripping!”

“Just the same it ought to have been you, old man. I don’t forget that,
you bet!”

“I’d never have done it,” replied Hugh with conviction. “They’d have
nailed me sure as shooting.” He swung open the door of the study and,
followed by Bert, groped his way toward the switch. As he did so a
discreet cough sounded in the gloom. “Hello,” exclaimed Hugh. “Who’s
there?”

“Bowles, sir. I tried to find the switch, sir, but――――”

“_Who?_”

“Bowles, sir. I――――”

“_Bowles!_” The light flared and Hugh faced the occupant of the study
in amazement. Then he sprang forward and seized the embarrassed Bowles
by the hand. “Bowles! I say, wherever did you drop from? What are you
doing here, eh?”

“Her Ladyship thought――――”

“You remember Bowles, Bert? He was with me that day I came.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Bert, shaking hands rather, as it seemed, to Bowles’
horror. “How are you, Bowles?”

“Nicely, thank you, sir. I――――”

“But, I say, what’s the idea?” demanded Hugh. “Is the mater here?”

“No, sir. Her Ladyship――_Ouch!_ Beg pardon, sir!” Bowles discreetly
stepped out of the reach of Hugh’s toes. “I mean to say, Master Hugh,
that your mother was worried when she received your――――”

“Shut up, Bowles! Don’t be a babbling ass! You mean my mother sent you
up to see what was going on, eh? Well, that’s all right, only it wasn’t
necessary, you know. I’m quite O. K. Glad to see you, though. You might
sit down and stop fidgeting. When did you get here?”

“About a quarter to three, sir. There was――h’m――a misunderstanding
about trains, sir, and I was obliged to engage a fly at the Junction.”

Hugh chuckled. “You’d get the trains balled up if it was anyway
possible, wouldn’t you, Bowles? Well, never mind that now you’re here.
You’re going to stick around until tomorrow, I take it. I say, Bert,
can he get any supper here?”

“Surest thing you know! We’ll tell Jimmy and he’ll fix Bowles up
downstairs. And he can sleep on the window-seat, if you like.”

“Oh, no, sir, thanking you, sir! I wouldn’t think of it, sir. I’m
informed there’s a very comfortable inn in the village, sir.”

“Yes, that’s better,” agreed Hugh. “You can have your supper here and
then stick around while the fun lasts. You see, Bowles, we’re due for
a bit of a jolly rumpus tonight. This is the day we celebrate, if you
know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir, quite so. I――I witnessed the football contest, sir.”

“Oh, you did? And you saw Mr. Winslow make his touchdown? Well, say,
Bowles, wasn’t that a little bit of all right?”

“Quite remarkable, sir! Yes, indeed, sir. A most clever bit of work,
Mr. Winslow, if you’ll pardon my saying it.”

“Thanks, Bowles. I’m going to get into some clean togs, Hugh. It must
be――Hello! Come in!”

Nick and Pop and Ted Trafford crowded through the door and for a minute
confusion ruled. Then, while Pop and Ted held Bert captive in the
Morris chair and playfully pummeled him, Nick’s voice arose above the
tumult.

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend Bowler!” shouted Nick. “Bowler, old
top, how’s everything at dear old Glyndestoke?” Nick was ringing
Bowles’ hand enthusiastically and Bowles’ face was a study. “When did
you leave the Manor, Bowler? Fellows, meet Mr. Bowler!”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” stammered the man, “Bowles, if you please,
sir!”

“Bowles, of course! Stupid of me, eh, what? Fellows――――”

“Cut it out, Nick,” begged Hugh. “Bowles ran up to see how things were
getting on, don’t you know. Got here for the game and had the time of
his life, didn’t you, Bowles?”

“Good for Bowles!” cried the incorrigible Nick. “He’s a true sport!
You’ve only to look at him to know that!” Nick threw himself on the
window-seat, only to arise as quickly and lift from the cushion the
battered remains of what had once been a most respectable derby hat.
Nick viewed it with surprise and awe, and――I fear――delight! “Bowles, is
this yours?” he asked tremulously.

A silence fell over the room. Then someone chuckled and a burst of
laughter arose as Bowles meekly assented.

“I’m awfully sorry,” declared Nick, looking quite otherwise. “I’ll buy
you another, Bowles.”

“It’s of no consequence, sir,” said Bowles. “In fact, sir, it was
already――er――a bit damaged. A young gentleman at the football game,
sir, used it――er――quite roughly, sir!”

The laughter redoubled and into it, having knocked without receiving
any answer, came a half-dozen fellows; Keyes and Roy Dresser and Tom
Hanrihan, of the first, and Brewster Longley and Neil Ayer, of the
second, and Wallace Cathcart, non-combatant.

“Proctor!” shouted Ted. “Less noise, gentlemen!”

“Hello, Wal!” greeted the irrepressible Nick. “Just in time, old top!”
He flourished the squashed and mutilated hat. “We’re celebrating the
finish of the Derby!”

“Too much row, Wal?” asked Bert.

Cathcart shook his head. “I guess a little noise is to be expected
today, Bert,” he answered. “I saw the crowd and just came over to
congratulate you.”

“Good old Wal!” shouted Nick. “Speech! Speech! Shut up, fellows,
Cathcart’s going to speech!”

But Cathcart shook his head and smiled. “I’ve said it,” he replied.

“Short and to the point,” applauded Roy Dresser. “Brevity, young
gentlemen, is the soul of wit. Say, Hobo, what happened to you, anyway?
I’ve heard forty-eleven yarns. Why didn’t you play?”

“Yes, what’s the real answer?” demanded Hanrihan.

“Bowles’ll know,” declared Nick. “Speak up, Bowles, old top! Gentlemen,
we have with us this evening ’is ’Ighness’s tried and trusted retainer,
Mr. Bowles. A short cheer for Bowles, fellows!”

“Rah, rah, rah! Bowles!” was the instant and enthusiastic response.
Bowles looked distinctly uncomfortable, although he tried hard to smile
a respectful smile.

“Now, then, Bowles, out with it!” demanded Nick. “What was this vile
conspiracy to――――”

“Really, sir, I’m not at liberty――――”

“Bowles, shut up!” warned Hugh sharply.

“Hobo, don’t interfere,” cried Roy Dresser. “Someone muzzle him.”

He wasn’t muzzled, but several fellows so engaged his attention for a
minute that speech was impossible.

“Now, Bowles, once more. You were saying?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I’m not at liberty to speak, sir. His
Lordship――――”

There was a smothered groan from the struggling Hugh.

“Who?” asked Nick.

“That is, sir, Master Hugh――――”

“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Bert, pushing forward. “You said something
about ‘his Lordship,’ Bowles. Who did you mean?”

Bowles cast an anguished look across the table toward Hugh, but no help
came to him for the reason that Hugh was very, very busy.

“No one, sir. A――a figure of speech, if you please, sir.”

“Well, all right, Bowles. Proceed. Tell us your sweet, sad story,”
prompted Nick.

“Hold on,” interrupted Bert. “Let’s get this straight. There’s
something queer here.”

“Several,” murmured Nick.

“Who’s his Lordship, Bowles? Do you mean Hugh?”

“Really, Mr. Winslow――――” began the perturbed Bowles.

At that instant Hugh threw off the enemy and bounded to his feet.
“Bowles!” he cried. “Shut up! Get out of here!”

“Yes, sir,” said Bowles with vast relief. But Bert interposed.

“Don’t you do it, Bowles,” he commanded. “Let’s get this straight.”

“Bowles!” cautioned Hugh sternly.

“Let him talk. Free speech!” said Longley.

“Fellows,” interrupted Wallace Cathcart mildly, “we’re making it very
difficult for Mr. Bowles. Besides, he’s not going to tell you anything,
and I will, if you’ll be quiet a minute.”

“Shoot!” said Nick. “Shut up, everyone! Go ahead, Wal.”

“Well, I suppose Hugh will want my life blood,” went on Cathcart,
smiling at Hugh’s frowning and anxious countenance, “but I’ll trust to
you fellows to save me.”

“He shan’t touch a bone of your head,” Pop assured him.

“I know he doesn’t want it known, fellows, but I don’t see why it
shouldn’t be. Besides, it’s bound to get out some time, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” agreed Nick. “What are you talking about?”

“It was something Hugh let drop in my room one day that made me――well,
suspicious. There’s a book in the library that tells all about the
English nobility and titled families and all that, you know, and so
I had a look at it. Hugh had told me that he lived at a place called
Glyndestoke, and so the rest was easy.”

Everyone was silent and curious, everyone save Hugh. Hugh was palpably
unhappy.

“I say, Wal, if you know anything, shut up, won’t you?” he begged.

“Don’t intimidate the witness,” said Pop. “Go ahead, Cathcart. What did
you discover?”

“I discovered,” continued Cathcart after an apologetic glance at Hugh,
“that the owner of Lockely Manor in Glyndestoke, Hampshire――or Hants,
as Hugh calls it――England, is the Marquis of Lockely, who is some sort
of a secretary in the Ministry; I’ve forgotten what.”

“Political Secretary, Colonial Office, sir, begging your pardon,” said
Bowles proudly.

“Also,” continued Cathcart, with a twinkle in his eye, “I discovered
that the aforementioned Marquis of Lockely has one son, Hugh Oswald
Brodwick, Earl of Ordway!”

Number 29 was so still for an instant that you could have heard a pin
drop! Then someone said, “_Gee!_” very fervently, and a dozen fellows
all began to talk at once. But it was Bert’s voice which dominated the
others.

“Is that so, Hugh?” he demanded.

“Oh, dry up,” answered Hugh. “I――I’d like to punch your head, Cathcart!”

“I was afraid you would,” replied Cathcart sadly.

“The Earl of Ordway!” gasped Nick. “_What――do――you――know――about――that?_”

“I’m not an earl,” declared Hugh uncomfortably. “It――it’s only a
courtesy-title. And, anyhow, I don’t see what difference it makes!”

“It doesn’t, Hobo! Not a bit!” said Pop soothingly. “We’ll all try to
forget it and let you live it down. After all, it isn’t your fault, is
it, fellows?”

“Of course not!” laughed Hanrihan. “_He_ couldn’t help it! Buck up,
Hobo! No one’s going to hold it against you!”

Bowles gasped. “Against his Lordship, sir! _Against_ him?”

“Bowles, shut up! I’m not your Lordship. I’m――――” Hugh’s puckered brow
smoothed and he laughed――“I’m just Hobo Ordway. Now forget it, fellows,
won’t you? It’s all piffling poppycock, anyway! That’s just what it is,
by Jove, piffling poppycock, if you know what I mean!”


                   *       *       *       *       *


 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to
   follow the text that they illustrate.

 ――Printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
   corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

 ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.