.dt The School Four, by Albertus T. Dudley--A Project Gutenberg eBook
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THE SCHOOL FOUR
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BOOKS BY ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY
Phillips Exeter Series
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.
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FOLLOWING THE BALL.
MAKING THE NINE.
IN THE LINE.
WITH MASK AND MITT.
THE GREAT YEAR.
THE YALE CUP.
A FULL-BACK AFLOAT.
THE PECKS IN CAMP.
THE HALF-MILER.
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Stories of the Triangular League
Illustrated by Charles Copeland. 12mo. Cloth.
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THE SCHOOL FOUR.
AT THE HOME-PLATE.
THE UNOFFICIAL PREFECT.
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THE KING’S POWDER.
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LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON.
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The Westcott man clutched the ball over his rival’s head.
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[Illustration:The Westcott man clutched the ball over his rival’s head.]
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STORIES OF THE TRIANGULAR LEAGUE
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THE SCHOOL FOUR
BY
ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY
AUTHOR OF “PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES”
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND
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[Illustration:Publisher’s Logo]
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BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
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Copyright, 1909, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
Published, August, 1909.
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All Rights Reserved.
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The School Four.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
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PREFACE
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“The School Four” is a story of football
and rowing, its scene laid in a private school in
an Eastern city. As in the Phillips Exeter books,
the aim has been to keep the athletics practical
and technically correct, and at the same time to
present such conceptions of life and conduct as
may encourage the boy reader to face his own
school problems with the right spirit. Later volumes
will treat successively of the city high
school and the country boarding-school.
To Mr. John Richardson, Jr., captain of the
undefeated Harvard crew of 1908, the author
owes a special debt for expert counsel, for the
freedom of the Harvard coaching launch, and,
above all else, for personal inspiration.
.in 20
A. T. DUDLEY.
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CONTENTS
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#CHAPTER I:ch01#
John Smith, President
#CHAPTER II:ch02#
The Cup
#CHAPTER III:ch03#
Archibald Dunn
#CHAPTER IV:ch04#
Recruits for the Football Squad
#CHAPTER V:ch05#
At Adams’s
#CHAPTER VI:ch06#
The Story of Jason
#CHAPTER VII:ch07#
Sumner chooses a Successor
#CHAPTER VIII:ch08#
A Slighted Offer
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#CHAPTER IX:ch09#
The Newbury Game
#CHAPTER X:ch10#
The Scouts bring News
#CHAPTER XI:ch11#
A Fruitless Interview
#CHAPTER XII:ch12#
President John’s Ideals
#CHAPTER XIII:ch13#
The Committee Decides
#CHAPTER XIV:ch14#
The Trowbridge Game
#CHAPTER XV:ch15#
Dunn’s Disappointments
#CHAPTER XVI:ch16#
Mike Advises
#CHAPTER XVII:ch17#
A Kindled Ambition
#CHAPTER XVIII:ch18#
The Shooting Match
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#CHAPTER XIX:ch19#
A Loss to the Nine
#CHAPTER XX:ch20#
In the Pair-oar
#CHAPTER XXI:ch21#
The Second Crew
#CHAPTER XXII:ch22#
A Shift in the Boat
#CHAPTER XXIII:ch23#
The Weakened Heart
#CHAPTER XXIV:ch24#
The Trials
#CHAPTER XXV:ch25#
The Final Struggle
#CHAPTER XXVI:ch26#
Conclusion
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ILLUSTRATIONS
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#The Westcott man clutched the ball over his rival’s head:i004#
#“They ought to tie a string to it and give Fatty the end”:i047#
#His feet going like the arms of a hay tedder:i077#
#Swung him directly into Hardie’s arms:i173#
#And watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by:i253#
#“Go it, Bainbridge! Kill ’em, Bainbridge!”:i325#
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THE SCHOOL FOUR
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CHAPTER I || JOHN SMITH, PRESIDENT
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The first suggestion of the Triangular League
came from a certain aspiring and nimble-witted
graduate of the Newbury Latin named John
Smith, whose surname, occurring on every page
of every daily paper, should safely conceal his
identity from any over-curious reader of this story.
Moreover, it may be asserted with truth that the
particular John Smith who called the first meeting
of representatives of the three schools is not to be
found on any of the eighteen pages of Smiths in the
last Boston directory. It is enough for our purpose
to know that he looked over the material in the
upper half of the Newbury Latin and found it to
his liking--good for the present and promising
for the future. He considered within himself,
with what he imagined to be uncommon shrewdness,
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that it is better for a school to be at the head
of a small league than to swell the troop at the
conqueror’s heels in a larger one. His reason for
selecting Westcott’s and the Trowbridge School
as complements to the Newbury Latin in this
laudably patriotic scheme was that while they
contained decent fellows and were nominally fair
rivals, they were probably beatable without
killing exertion. This last item was not included
in the argument for the organization which he
presented to the first meeting. His speech here
took loftier grounds, such as the charms of an
alliance between naturally friendly schools, and
the splendid athletic ideals for which the new
league would stand.
Either John Smith’s idea or John Smith’s
argument carried weight, for the league was
formed, and the three schools pledged themselves
to maintain it and abide by its rules. In recognition
of his unselfish services in behalf of the
cause, and at the suggestion of Mr. Snyder, an
instructor at Trowbridge, who insisted that the
direction of affairs should be in the hands of some
mature person, Mr. John Smith was elected president.
It was voted that a managing committee
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consisting of two representatives from each school,
together with the president, ex officio, should be
empowered to draw up rules, arrange schedules,
select officials, and act as general board of control.
The first meeting of this permanent committee
was held at Westcott’s, in Boston, just before the
end of the school year. After the visitors had
departed, Sumner and Talbot remained behind to
discuss events from the Westcott point of view.
“It’s going to be great!” opined Sumner, with
his usual outburst of enthusiasm for what he
approved. “Everything was pleasant and
straight, and nobody tried to get the advantage
of anybody else.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” answered Joe Talbot,
commonly called “Pete.” The origin of this
nickname is involved in obscurity. Some boys
derived it from a character in a play; some asserted
that Joe’s family had given him the name
in jest when he was a toddler. Steve Wilmot,
the wag of the class, maintained that it was descriptive,--he
was called Pete because he looked
Pete,--and this explanation was on the whole
popular, especially as Talbot stoutly protested
against it.
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“Why not?” demanded Sumner.
“I’ve no confidence in that Smith. He’s too
oily and smug. He’s got some scheme he means
to work.”
“Shucks!” retorted Jack. “Your brother Bob
has prejudiced you against him with his talk
about that old football squabble. If I were a
junior in college, like Bob, I’d try to forget about
school rows.”
“Those are the things you remember longest,”
Pete answered wisely. “You can’t change the
facts, can you? You can’t make a low trick any
better by forgetting it. If it happened, it’s history,
as much as Bunker Hill. It shows the kind
of man Smith is.”
“Was!” corrected Jack. “That was a long
time ago, and he’s probably changed as much as
we have since we came into the sixth together.
Just think what little fools we were then, how we
thought the verb amo was too hard to learn, and
cried when Mr. Lawton lectured us, and Mussy
used to send us out of French every day for
whispering in class.”
“We weren’t anything but kids then. Neither
of us was over twelve.” Talbot spoke as if seventeen,
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which was their present age, represented
the climax of maturity.
“I was just trying to make you see that people
change. Smith has changed too.”
“Perhaps he has,” growled Talbot, “but I don’t
believe it’s for the better. He’s got us into the
league just because he thinks Newbury can beat
us. You don’t suppose he’s doing it out of love
for us, do you?”
“No doubt he thinks we are a good crowd for
his school to tie up with,” answered Sumner, with
ready complacency. “I really believe those
fellows would rather beat us than any other
school, but that’s because they are jealous of us.
We are only a private school, more than half of
us little kids in knickerbockers, but we have
the inside track in Harvard, and we’re on the top
socially. They don’t like that.”
“It’s the little kids and getting into college so
early that spoils our athletics,” remarked Talbot.
“Newbury is a public endowed school with lots
of big fellows who don’t go to college, and
Trowbridge is a boarding-school in the country
where the fellows have nothing to do but play
games all day. We aren’t anything but a school
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building in town and a playground in Brookline.”
“And Adams’s,” put in Sumner.
Adams’s was the house of the instructor who
lived at the athletic field. It contained a schoolroom
for such boys as were condemned to prepare
the next day’s lessons before they left the field in
the afternoon, and quarters for a limited number
of boarding pupils.
“Adams’s!” exclaimed Pete. “What good is
that? A half-dozen little kids who play on the
fourth or third, and a few older fellows whose
parents are abroad or can’t stand them at home.
There wasn’t a fellow there last year who did
anything for the school.”
“There was Pitkin,” Sumner remarked. “He’d
have made the second crew if he hadn’t caught
the measles.”
“He might,” responded Talbot, in a tone which
implied that he probably wouldn’t. “But what’s
Pitkin, anyway?”
“Ben Tracy is going there next year,” went
on Sumner, “and that cousin Louis of his who
lives in Worcester, and some one from New Jersey.
There may be some other new fellows.”
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“The usual orphan asylum!” commented Talbot,
savagely. “It’s four to one that none of
’em will be good for anything. You always see
things about one hundred per cent better than
they really are.”
“That’s not half so bad as seeing them one hundred
per cent worse than they are, as you do,
you old growler!” retorted his friend, with a
laugh.
“They can’t be a hundred per cent worse,”
maintained Talbot. “That’s a logical impossibility.
It would bring ’em below the zero point.”
And then, being boys, in spite of their advanced
age and the seriousness of their interest and the
fact that both, avowedly at least, were putting
every available minute into their preparation for
the next week’s battle with the Harvard preliminaries,
they wrangled for a good quarter of
an hour over the possibility--logical, actual,
or theoretical--of things being a hundred per
cent worse than they were without reaching the
vanishing point. The reader will be spared this
argument. If he is a boy, he can manufacture
it for himself; if a grown-up, he has only to listen
quietly to a knot of boys waiting in idleness for
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a bell to ring or a train to appear, and he will
understand how it is done.
When the discussion had run its length, they
recurred naturally to the first theme of conversation.
It was Pete who reintroduced the topic
of the new league.
“Whether Smith is straight or crooked,” he
said, “he certainly expects his school to come out
ahead. I’d give something to beat him at his
little game.”
“Wouldn’t it be great!” Sumner’s exclamation
was like an anticipatory smack of the lips; his
eyes were fixed in a fervent but unseeing stare on
the blank wall, his face beamed with delight at
the mental foretaste of the joys of triumph. “We
may do it, too!”
“And we may not!” answered Talbot, rising.
“Let’s get after those French sentences.”
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CHAPTER II || THE CUP
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Whatever his faults, the president of the new
league possessed unquestionably the virtue of
activity. While the Westcott boys, scattered
up and down the coast from Long Island Sound
to Bar Harbor, were amusing themselves in their
own idle but wholesome fashion,--camping,
cruising, racing boats, playing tennis matches,
and exchanging visits,--Mr. John Smith was
devoting his surplus energy to the cause. One
tangible result of his labors formed the basis
of much curious questioning when Westcott’s
gathered at the end of September for the year’s
work. A prize was to be offered to stimulate
interest in the contests of the league. Though
many of the Westcott graduates had been laid
under contribution and might be supposed to know
definitely the purpose for which their money
had been expended, it was soon discovered that
no one possessed information extending beyond
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the statements in the newspapers. These began
with encomiums on Mr. John Smith for his enthusiastic
and efficient services and the success with
which he had “rallied about him his hosts of
friends”; they ended with congratulations to the
new league on having a man of Mr. Smith’s
caliber and influence at its head. In between
was sandwiched the meagre news that a cup was
to be competed for by the schools on terms to be
announced later.
But Westcott’s had no notion of waiting until
later. The boys stirred up the contributing
graduates, and the graduates addressed to Mr.
Smith certain pointed inquiries which suggested
to the astute leader that it would be wise to announce
the conditions immediately, even at the
risk of losing some advantage for his own school.
He appeared, therefore, at Westcott’s, one day
during the second week of the term, bearing a big
box of tinted cardboard, and made a speech to
the assembled school in which he set forth the
conditions of the gift and the high hopes of the
givers. Then, with great impressiveness and in
the midst of quivering expectancy, he removed
the cover of the box, undid a bag of canton
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flannel and held forth the glittering thing to the
general admiration.
“To remain from year to year in the possession
of the school which shall last have won it, and to
be held permanently when three times won.”
To this announcement the school gave bountiful
applause. The older boys, though harassed by
grave doubts of their ability to fulfil the conditions,
understood the privilege offered them and were
grateful; while the knee-trousered, flattering
themselves with the assurance that the splendid,
two-handled vase, like a reward for good behavior,
must ultimately be theirs, smote their hands
together long and violently. Whereupon Mr.
John Smith, who showed himself to be a sharp-featured,
somewhat over-dressed young man,
with no semblance of that personal diffidence
with which great men are often handicapped,
smiled blandly, restored the treasure to its double
envelope, shook hands with Mr. Westcott, gave
the school another benevolent and congratulatory
smirk, and departed--bearing his cup with him.
At the recess period for the first and second, four
fellows took places round the small table in the
corner of the lunch room; a fifth seized a chair
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and pushed in among them as if he belonged there.
Others bought themselves handfuls of munchable
food at the other end of the room and hurried to
get a position at the railing which separated the
hot-lunchers from those who patronized the counter.
The confusion of half a dozen talking at
once obscured the opening of the discussion.
“The crew’s in it. That’s good for us,” declared
Rolfe, getting the first hearing in the babel.
“We’ll trust you to win that for us, Pete.”
Talbot, the captain of the crew, would probably
have disputed this loud assumption if he had
been given an opportunity to speak; but others
were readier of tongue.
“And the track’s out!” cried Seamans. He
held a sandwich untasted within three inches of
his lips and stared over the railing into Rolfe’s
face with an expression of disgust.
“Bad for you, Sim,” called out Jack Sumner.
“You’ll have to go in for baseball.--Some soup,
please.”
“Newbury lost all her track men last year,
that’s why the track’s out.” Talbot had found
his tongue.
“That’s not the reason,” proclaimed Sumner.
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“Mr. Westcott doesn’t believe in track work for
schoolboys. He thinks it’s too much of a strain
for young fellows like us. Your brother Bob has
the same idea. He told me just the other day
that it usually spoiled fellows for college running.”
“Smithy would have put it in all the same, if
Newbury had any show for it.”
“I don’t quite understand about those conditions,”
came from the lips of a boy at the railing,
who was poising a buttered bread stick before a
broad, big-featured face crowned with shaggy hair.
“You never understand anything, Fluffy,”
cut in Wilmot. “A fellow who asks ‘why’ about
the laws of falling bodies--”
He hesitated, giving Fluffy a chance to ejaculate,
“You don’t know yourself--”
“And don’t care!” retorted Wilmot. “I know
they fall, and there’s a rule about it.”
“I don’t mean falling bodies, I mean about the
cup!” Fluffy got this out in the face of a storm
that threatened to sweep him the whole length
of the railing. No one wanted to hear a debate
between Fluffy Dobbs and Wilmot on the laws of
falling bodies.
“It’s clear enough,” said Sumner. “There are
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three sports that count, football, baseball, and
crew. Whoever wins two of them gets the cup
for a year. The school that gets it three times
has it to keep.”
“Do you understand that, Fluffy?” called
Wilmot. “Because if you don’t, we’ll get you a
map and a guide-book.”
“But supposing each of the three schools wins at
one sport?” proposed Fluffy, undisturbed by Wilmot’s
jeers, to which he was evidently well accustomed.
“No score!” returned Sumner, quickly.
“Are they going to have special crew races
with Newbury and Trowbridge?” asked Tracy.
“No, we all row in the Interscholastic.”
“Then the first thing for us to do is to win at
football,” said Trask. “It’s up to you fellows
to start the thing right.”
“Easy enough for you to say when you don’t
play,” said a tall, wiry, light-haired boy who up
to this time had been listening in silence. “Give
us the material, and we’ll do it. We can’t make
bricks without straw.” Harrison was captain
of the eleven.
“Oh, yes, you can, only it’s harder. A really
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good captain could make a team out of ’most
anything. Any fool captain can win with a
bunch of stars.” Wilmot’s significant grin disarmed
this seemingly insulting remark of all its
sting. Everybody respected Eliot Harrison, and
Wilmot enjoyed a liberty of his own.
“The lot we had out yesterday was more like
a flock of goats than a bunch of stars,” growled
Pete.
“A goat ought to be mighty good in the centre
of the line,” said Wilmot, reflectively. “He
could butt a hole right through the other side,
and that’s about all guard and centre have to do.
Now if you could only get a few good butting
goats into the line--”
“Or teach your own goats to butt,” suggested
Tracy.
Wilmot slammed the table. “That’s the
best idea yet! Get a goat as assistant coach,
a good old side-hill, can-eating, whiskered billy
that’s practiced butting from his youth up. He’d
show the line how to open holes!”
The audience warmed noisily to Wilmot’s
proposition.
“He’d look fine on the side-lines, wouldn’t he?”
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This sarcastic comment came from sober-faced
little Stanley Hale of the sixth, whose class, by
the necessities of the school schedule, shared the
recess hour of the older boys. The influence of
the kindergarten and the fairy tale was still effective
in Stanley’s mind. Ideas still translated
themselves for his intelligence into pictures, and
the picture of the goat stood out vividly before
him.
“He could be a mascot, Stan,” said Sumner,
turning to smile at Stanley.
“He’d be a great help in the cheering,” went on
Wilmot. “The sixth could give him lessons.
He’d cheer bass to their soprano.”
By this time there was a general and hilarious
interest in the development of Wilmot’s suggestion
which rendered impossible all serious discussion
of the morning’s announcement. Foolish
jesting became epidemic, and wit soon ran into
silliness. Two boys showed no disposition to share
in the levity. Harrison smiled but rarely, and
then feebly and against his will; Talbot’s scowl
grew deeper and blacker as Wilmot’s fancy spread
from the centre, where it had originated, out into
the ranks of the clumsy-wits who seized upon it
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with rough hands, tossed it to and fro, squeezed
it dry of whatever freshness and cleverness it
might have contained, and dropped it in ennui
for some new catchword ten minutes later.
The bystanders drifted forth for a walk, the
sixth ran into the yard and played goat tag, the
pursuer being the goat.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that kind of thing,
Steve,” began Harrison, when the coast was clear.
“It hurts the team to make sport of it or any one
on it.”
Wilmot opened his eyes. “I didn’t make sport
of it. I just offered a suggestion. You don’t
have to take it, if you don’t want to.”
“We’ve got to have the respect and support of
the school if we are going to do anything,” went
on Harrison, trying to be sensible and keep his
temper. “All that talk about goats makes the
team ridiculous.”
“It puts everything to the bad right at the
beginning of the season,” broke in Talbot, roughly.
“If you want to spoil all our chances, just keep
it up. You don’t care, of course, as long as you
get your fun out of it, but the rest of us have a
little school spirit left and a little self-respect!”
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“Who introduced the subject, anyway?” demanded
Wilmot, triumphantly. “It was you
that did it, and it was you that called the team
goats. I just built on your suggestion.”
“I won’t argue it,” answered Pete, savagely.
“You’d twist my words against me. But just
try the goat business with the crew, and see what
you’ll get. Harry may put up with it if he wants
to. I wouldn’t!”
“Now you’re getting peevish.” Wilmot rose
from the table, still keeping his smile of indifference,
but by no means content at heart. “I
don’t like you when you’re peevish!”
The bell rang; the boys came flocking in and
crowded up the stairway. Harrison took Tracy’s
arm as they leisurely followed the stream.
“Isn’t that new fellow at Adams’s coming out?”
“Who? Hardie?”
“Yes. He sat opposite us at luncheon to-day
with the kids and didn’t peep.”
“He hasn’t said much to any one yet. He’ll
be out to-day if he gets his clothes.”
“Do you think he’ll be good for anything?”
pursued the captain, anxiously. “We need about
six more good men.”
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Tracy gave his chin a side tip that might have
expressed doubt, or merely reserve of judgment.
“I don’t know. He isn’t very heavy, but if you’d
seen him chucking trunks around this morning,
you’d think him fairly strong.”
“Trunks?”
“Yes, we piled a few in front of his door last
night.”
“It’s a good thing to be strong, but a lot depends
on spirit,” began Harrison. What further he
may have intended to say, we shall never know,
for the sight of Mr. Spaulding standing at the
head of the stairs put a sudden gag upon his lips.
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CHAPTER III || ARCHIBALD DUNN
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Roger Hardie knew absolutely no one at
Westcott’s when he moved into his room at
Adams’s that fall. His father was engaged in
the Argentine trade; and the day after Roger
was safely established in school the whole family
sailed for Buenos Aires to spend the winter there.
He took his fate stoically, trying hard to persuade
himself that he should soon feel at home,
but he could not avoid the sense of isolation and
exclusion which comes naturally to one of a very
few new boys among a great many very intimate
old ones; and he lacked entirely the aptitude for
quick friendships. Boys are seldom temperate
in their opinions of their own merits. Eliminate
the over-confident who run to freshness and the
under-confident who lack courage to assert themselves,
and there remain but a small percentage
who wisely follow the middle course. The over-modest
in the end is likely to outstrip the over-bold,
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whose rash spirit is easily broken by unexpected
and humiliating defeats. The average
boy, however, takes very little thought for ultimate
results. He lives vividly in the present, is
captivated by boldness and dash and ready wit,
ranks caution with timidity, and suspects steadiness
to be mere feebleness in disguise.
Roger was naturally reticent; he was likewise
inclined to regard himself as neither attractive nor
clever. The first impression which he produced
on his mates at Adams’s was that of mediocrity.
They took him at his own valuation and disregarded
him. The consciousness that he wasn’t
considered worth while increased his reticence,
and at the same time stirred his obstinacy. He
certainly didn’t care for the boys if they didn’t care
for him. He would go one way, and let them go
another.
Hardie’s pique was enhanced by the apparently
different reception accorded to another new
Adamsite, Archibald Dunn. As a matter of fact,
the principle followed by the boys in the treatment
of the two cases was identical: each was
accepted at the outset at his face value. While
Hardie made no claim to ability, importance,
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
or friends among the great, Dunn’s method was
to assume everything, to throw himself frankly
on the credulity and friendliness of his new companions.
Of course he played football; he had
been end on the Westport High School at the
beginning of last season, but a shoulder bruise got
in the practice had thrown him out of the regular
games. He liked baseball better; he and a
friend of his, who made the Yale Freshmen, used
to be the battery of a corking little nine they
got up at their summer place. His favorite sport
was automobiling; in his first half-hour in Tracy’s
room he told five astonishing stories of marvellous
escapes from death or the police. He sailed, too,--used
to take charge of his uncle’s forty-footer
in cruises. Dunn’s manners were undeniably easy.
In twenty-four hours he knew all the small boys
at Adams’s by their nicknames, and treated the
older ones as if they were intimates of years’
standing.
The Tracys, Ben and Louis, might smile a
little incredulously at the broadest of Dunn’s
claims, but he amused them, and, provisionally
at least, they accepted him. “He’s good sport,
anyway,” said Ben, on the second day of school,
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
while describing the Adams household to Sumner.
“He can talk more than any person I ever saw,
and he likes himself to beat the band, but he
seems to be a good fellow to have round.”
“What about Hardie?”
“Oh, he’s a zero, a good little boy that never
speaks unless he’s spoken to. He sat up in his
room all last evening, grinding at algebra and
Latin. Just think of being so fierce about the
first day’s lessons!”
“All the new ones do that,” opined Sumner;
“they’re scared.”
“Dunn didn’t. He loafed round Louis’s room,
telling stories, the first two hours, and spent the
rest of the evening looking for a trot to Xenophon.
He says it’s a waste of time trying to get along
without one.”
“Flunked to-day, didn’t he?”
“Don’t know. He’s not in any of my classes.”
By favor of chance, Dunn did not flunk. He
was called up in Latin on grammar questions
which he happened to know. Hardie did not
escape so easily. His lot fell upon a difficult
passage which in his preparation he had not fully
understood. Confused by the new surroundings
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
and agitated by a nervous eagerness to do well,
he floundered along like a pig in the mud, getting
nowhere and accomplishing nothing but the
amusement of a cruelly grinning class.
To escape unscathed without having prepared
a lesson was, of course, a piece of good fortune
which a boy could not expect to experience often.
Before the week was out, Dunn had been pretty
well gauged by his teachers, and one of the most
conscientious had already begun in the simple
old-fashioned way--which Dunn reviled as antiquated--to
detain him after school to make up
neglected work. But what he lost in prestige
by classroom deficiencies--boys never charge such
failures up against a good comrade--he made
ample amends for by marked success on the football
field, where he was generally regarded as
the most promising addition to the available
material which the new season had brought.
Here Dunn’s own lively tongue had prepared
for him a favorable reception. While he did not
actually declare himself a great player, his ready
vocabulary of football terms, his anecdotes of
games which he had seen or taken part in, the
air of familiarity with styles of play which he
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
showed--all marked him as a veteran. Besides
this, he was an end, and the eleven lacked
an end. With Harrison, the captain, at one
extremity of the line and Dunn at the other, the
two important wings of the fighting force would
be well equipped. The idea pleased the school
fancy and produced a strong prejudice in Dunn’s
favor. The boys believed in him because they
needed him, and it was more agreeable to believe
than to doubt.
The first week’s work on the football field, as
every one knows, is largely concerned with the
individual elements of the game,--tackling,
dropping on the ball, running down under punts,
charging. Through these Dunn’s self-confidence
and previous experience carried him with flying
colors. He threw himself on the ball with admirable
spirit; and the way in which he scampered
down the field after punts, getting the direction
of the kick by a single, quick, accurate glance
over his shoulder, and fairly hugging the waiting
receiver, was a joy to the beholder. In open
work he was not quite so successful. He missed
a few hard tackles, but he made some good ones,
and the balance remained in his favor. Talbot
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
was so malevolent as to remark that Dunn got
the smaller fellows and let the big ones by, but
Talbot was from aye a surly growler. The opinion
which Dunn himself delivered in the dressing
rooms after the first tackling practice found by
far the wider acceptance.
“Nobody can tackle in the open in cold blood,”
he averred. “A fellow might get his man every
time in a game when he feels the excitement and
forgets everything but the play, and yet miss
every tackle when you put him out to show what
he can do. There was a half-back we had in school
who afterwards made the Dartmouth eleven;
he couldn’t make one out of a dozen of those
practice tackles. They’re dangerous, too. If I
was a coach, I’d cut ’em out altogether.”
After the middle of the week there were short
line-ups in which Dunn played left end. Behind
him was all the superior weight and prestige of
the first backs, and before him as opposing tackle
only “Skinny” Fairbanks, who had barely made
the third the year before. Dunn’s work here was
of the lively, striking kind that sets partial spectators
agog with delight. He shoved Fairbanks
back for holes as if Fairbanks were a dummy.
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
When the ball by way of variety was given to
the second, he lay outside like a keen-eyed bird
of prey and fell upon the fearful seconders with
a sudden, calamitous swoop. Hardie stood on
the side-lines the day before the first real game,
and reproached himself for a feeling of envy.
Apparently he and Dunn had started fair in school
but a few days before, and now Dunn was leagues
beyond him. He felt inclined to send word to
the dilatory outfitter that he shouldn’t want any
football clothes at all.
Then on the first Saturday came the game with
the Suffolk school, which Newbury had just
soundly beaten. It was a discouraging contest
that took the fire out of the hearts of the players
and set the school to jesting about the team.
Westcott’s won in the last five minutes through
a long run by Harrison, who got the ball on a
fumble and carried it half the length of the field;
but the record of six to nothing looked very small
alongside of Newbury’s twenty-six to eight.
The plan of the coach had been to push the attack
generally through the left side of the line behind
Eaton and Dunn; and when Suffolk had the
ball to concentrate the secondary defence behind
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
centre and right, leaving the strong wing to make
its own resistance. The scheme did not work,
and after much waste of time was abandoned.
Holes did not develop where they were expected,
and Suffolk pounded the left with great success.
The fault was not easy to place. Dunn seemed
so devoted to playing a safe outside that he rarely
got into the path of the Suffolk runner; and the
Suffolk right, it was generally conceded, had been
greatly strengthened since the Newbury game.
Two bad fumbles that lost Westcott the ball at
critical moments were charged against Horr, the
half-back.
“You could have saved us the ball both times
if you’d only dropped quick enough!” Talbot
remarked with undisguised frankness to Dunn,
as the team walked moodily into the dressing
rooms after the game.
“I couldn’t, really!” protested Dunn. “Once
some one piled into me just as I was going
to drop, and the other time I tried to pick
it up because I had a clear field, and my
foot slipped. It was the correct thing to do,
wasn’t it, Harry?”
“I didn’t see,” answered the captain. “I
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
thought you might have got Jefferson, though,
on that crisscross.”
“The end blocked me off just as I was going
to tackle. Eaton really ought to have taken
him.”
“It’s your business not to be blocked off!”
snapped Talbot.
“Shut up, Pete!” called the captain. “What’s
the good of kicking now? None of us played
well.”
“My playing was rotten, I know,” rejoined the
pessimist, “but I don’t shirk the responsibility
for it.”
“It takes time for a team to get shaken
together,” said Dunn. “We’ll all do better when
we’ve had more practice.”
Dunn’s remark showed a forgiving and conciliatory
spirit that by all the rules of story-book
morality should have extracted from a contrite
Talbot an apology; but the surly half-back went
his way unappeased.
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV || RECRUITS FOR THE FOOTBALL SQUAD
.sp 2
On the following Tuesday--the day of the
imposing appearance before the school of President
John Smith--Hardie, having at last secured
his playing clothes, presented himself on
the field. His arrival aroused no very flattering
comment, partly because nothing in particular
was expected from him, partly because of the
company in which he came. Saturday’s disappointment
had caused a flurry of energy on
the part of the football leaders, and the school
had been sifted anew for material. As a result
Fat Bumpus was strained out, and little
McDowell, who, though lithe and sinewy as an
alley tomcat, and eager as a hound tugging at the
leash, was manifestly below the standard of
weight. He came via the third team, on which
he had distinguished himself in the game with
Wood’s third, played on the Saturday on which
the first had failed so conspicuously at Suffolk.
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
These three, Bumpus the fat, McDowell the small,
and Hardie the unpretending, formed the last
group of recruits available to reënforce the battle
line of Westcott’s.
The side-line comments would have been sufficient
to put all three to speedy flight, if the contemptuous
words had reached their ears. Stover,
the ball player, stood with Hargraves who didn’t
like football and Reeves whose forte was dancing
and “fussing,” and made very merry over the
faults of their schoolmates, dwelling with unwearied
if not brilliant wit on the appearance of
the newcomers, and enjoying the audience of
gaping small boys who surrounded them.
“They ought to tie a string to it and give Fatty
the end,” said Stover, as Bumpus groped sprawling
after the ball which Harrison had rolled toward
him. “It’s cruelty to animals to make him
root around like that.”
“The best way would be to put him sideways
in the line on his hands and knees. No one could
get past him then,” remarked Reeves.
“They’d have to call time to get him up again.”
“Did you see that?” broke in Hargraves.
“Hardie got the ball at the first try!”
.bn 046.png
.pn +1
“It must have been an accident; he hasn’t
sand enough in him to do it purposely.” This
was Stover’s opinion.
A furious but futile charge on the part of
Marshall, a clumsy but energetic hanger-on of
the second, drew the fire of the trio. “That’s
the spirit!” chuckled Hargraves. “Dig up the
dirt with your face, my boy! Football is the
game!”
“There goes Mac!” cried a shrill voice close
at hand.
“McDowell the infant wonder,” commented
Stover, as the boy dropped sharply and cleanly
on the ball, falling along knee, thigh, and hip,
in one continuous and perfectly easy motion.
“What’s the sense in wasting time on a kid like
him?” muttered Reeves. “Firman of Newbury
would carry half a dozen of him on his back.”
The coach evidently had his own views as to the
usefulness of McDowell, for he made the boy repeat
his performance several times to show the less
skilful how the trick should be done. Meantime
Talbot, who was catching punts, drew over near
the criticising group, and the comments became less
audible. As regards side-line ridicule, Talbot
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
held forcible opinions which he had no hesitation
in expressing nor reluctance to defend. The trio
moved farther down the line, and their wit flowed
anew.
.if h
.il fn=i047.jpg w=333px id=i047
.ca
“They ought to tie a string to it and give Fatty the end.”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration:“They ought to tie a string to it and give Fatty the end.”]
.if-
All three of the newcomers got into the line-up
of the second that afternoon. Bumpus thrashed
about with more uproar than success at guard,
while McDowell and Hardie were placed at right
end and right tackle respectively. Harrison gave
them a general exhortation to “play sharp now,”
and Talbot urged Hardie in specific terms to
“get right into Dunn.”
“You can manage him all right, if you stand
right up to him,” he said. “Forget everything
but the play!”
Hardie nodded gratefully. He felt no fear,
nor was he by any means new to football, but he
was conscious that the school did not expect
much of him, and the personal interest of an important
fellow like Talbot was, therefore, especially
gratifying. In the big athletic school from which
he had come to Boston, he had learned to think
modestly of his prowess. While he had made
his class eleven there, the school team lay beyond
all reasonable hope. It was not easy for him to
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
think of himself as ‘varsity material, even at
Westcott’s!
Talbot kicked off, the ball sailing over Roger’s
head down into McDowell’s territory. Lingering
long enough to see the boy gather in the ball
and tuck it safely under his arm, Hardie ran
forward at three-fourths speed to take the first
onset of the school linesmen and permit Mac to
slip by. The first comer was Dunn, who caromed
off Roger’s shoulder without so much as touching
the runner. Eaton, the left tackle of the first,
McDowell dodged by an abrupt stop and a dart
outside; and beyond Eaton again, Hardie was
at his side to take Channing, the right guard.
The two disentangled themselves and followed
after as McDowell zigzagged on, emerging from
between Lowe’s hands and leaving Talbot on the
ground behind him. Sumner, the quarter-back,
at last drove him outside at the forty-yard
line.
The coach carried the ball in and put it down
for the scrimmage, first giving the little end a
deserved compliment, and then scoring the first
severely for careless tackling. The glory of the
second faded quickly. The quarter fumbled
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
and lost a yard. Bumpus let Eaton through
on the waiting half; the third down was followed
by a feeble punt which Sumner ran back twenty
yards. Then came a quick reversal. The first
had the men and the signals. The ball was pushed
rapidly through the centre, through the right
side, again through the centre and again through
right. At a new signal Hardie caught a change of
expression in Dunn’s face, and knew that his own
turn had come.
“Look out, Mac!” he shouted, and leaped for
his opening with the first movement of the ball.
Dunn held him but an instant; with a side buffet
of the open hand the new tackle slipped by,
ruined the interference, and drove the convoy
straight into Mac’s sure grip.
“This feels like it again,” Roger said to himself
as he took his place once more. “They’re
not up to a Hillbury class team after all.”
“Whose fault was that?” demanded the coach.
“Mine!” said Talbot, shortly.
Hardie looked in wonder over at the friendly
half-back. It wasn’t Talbot’s fault, or at least
not primarily. Dunn had failed to block his
man, Talbot only to make his protection wholly
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
effective--a difficult task at best. The essential
weakness lay with Dunn.
“Tackle and end must take care of the opposing
tackle,” said the coach. “Get down in front
of him, Dunn, spread your elbows, dive into him
with your shoulder, but hold him--you hear?”
“He started before the ball was snapped,”
pleaded Dunn.
“Shut up! Play the game!” commanded Talbot.
“I said it was my fault.”
They bucked the centre once more, by way of
variety, and then made another trial of the left
side. Horr went ahead to push out the end,
and Talbot carried the ball. This time Dunn
made frantic efforts to hold his man by use of
body and arms without much regard for the rules
of the game; but Hardie, keeping him at arm’s
length, made a dash at the runner that staggered
him, and the line half-back laid him low. At
the third attempt Dunn and Eaton together contrived
to box the second tackle, and the play went
through, over the line half-back.
Mr. Adams, who feared overdoing at the beginning
of the season, cut into the coach’s programme
after the first had made two touch-downs, and
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
put an end to the practice. Bumpus limped in
like an exhausted dray-horse, sweating at every
pore. Stover and Hargraves hailed him as he
crossed the road to the dressing rooms.
“How’d you like it, Bump?” asked Stover.
“You look warm.”
“You played a bully game,” said Hargraves.
“Did I?” Bumpus gave them a glance of
suspicion. “It didn’t seem so.”
“It was great playing,” continued Stover.
“Going to keep it up?”
“Of course he is!” interrupted Harrison, as
he came up from behind. “Bump won’t go back
on the school as long as it needs him.”
“That’s right!” said Bumpus, beaming with
his whole red, swollen face. “I’m not stuck on
the game, but if you really think I’m any help,
I’ll come out till the end of things!”
“That’s the talk,” answered Harrison. “I
wish you fellows showed as good a spirit.”
“We’ve been trying to encourage him,” claimed
Hargraves. “What more do you want?” They
went off, snickering, to Stover’s automobile.
Inside the dressing rooms, boys shouted and
jested and laughed over their bathing and dressing.
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
Talbot leaned a smooched arm and a grimy paw
on the top of a locker, and smiled across at
Hardie.
“You’ve played football before.”
“Only on a class team at Hillbury.”
“That’s more than most of us have done. You
ought to make our team easily.”
“I’d like to,” said Hardie, wistfully.
“Ever play end?”
“That’s where I’ve always played.”
“See here!” Talbot raised his eyes level with
his companion’s and gave him a square, direct
look. “We need just the kind of fellow you are,
but Harry doesn’t know it yet. You keep your
mouth shut, play for all that’s in you, try to do
what the coach tells you, and you’ll make the
team before the first league game. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Talbot turned toward the door.
“Where’s that ’Lijah with the towels? He
hasn’t given me a clean one for two days.”
A sober-faced negro with close-cut side whiskers
appeared round the corner.
“Aren’t you going to give me a clean towel,
Lije?”
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
“Not ontil you pay me,” returned Elijah. “I
ain’t trustin’ nobody this year.”
“You old Shylock!” grumbled Talbot. “I’ve
only got five cents, and I want that for car-fare.”
“I’ll lend you a quarter,” proposed Hardie,
eagerly.
“Thanks. He’s more generous than you are,
’Lijah. He’ll lend me a quarter, and you won’t
trust me for a towel.”
“He’s new here,” answered Elijah, solemnly,
as he handed over the clean towel and pocketed
the quarter. “If he’d lost as much by you fellows
as I have, he wouldn’t lend you a cent.”
“That pays for a week, now, Lije,” urged
Talbot. “Don’t forget!”
“I never forgets. It’s you that forgets;”
and the janitor went forth to seek other business
opportunities.
“A good fellow Lije is, but he’s too avaricious,”
commented Talbot, hurrying for the shower.
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V || AT ADAMS’S
.sp 2
Half an hour later, Roger Hardie was giving
the last tug to his necktie before a square of looking-glass
that still adhered to the end of the locker
tier near the window, and Talbot, swinging a
couple of books by a strap, lounged near. Eaton
was getting into his clothes a few feet distant,
bravely chanting away on a ragtime song in the
face of derisive comments from Wilmot, the
manager, who sat on the bench nursing a couple
of footballs. Farther down, Dunn’s tongue was
running wild before an audience of worthies of
uncertain intent, whose grins might denote either
innocent amusement or guile. Harrison was
minding his own business in his usual quiet
fashion.
“That’s the second time my socks have disappeared!”
sputtered Dunn. “This is the worst
gang of thieves I ever got into. You couldn’t
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
keep a thing here if you had a steel vault and a
watchman.”
“You’ve probably got ’em on,” suggested
Wilmot.
As Dunn had very little on, and was notably
bare as to feet, this suggestion could not have
been serious. He glanced down, none the less,
and earned thereby a unanimous jeer.
“I don’t see how you could lose them,” observed
Sumner. “They’re the most conspicuous things
in school. I recognized you by ’em this morning
a block away, before I could see your face.”
“Oh, you did!” was the best Dunn could do
in rejoinder.
“I never saw anything like them but once,”
Wilmot observed thoughtfully. “A clown had
’em on in the circus. They seemed all right
there.”
“They cost two dollars, anyway!” ejaculated
Dunn, who was turning over football trousers
on the floor and kicking shoes into corners.
“Tyrian purple always did come high,” Wilmot
said softly. “Aren’t you ready yet, Jim? This
excitement is getting on my nerves. I feel as if
there was an officer here with a search warrant.
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
Perhaps Lije took ’em, Dunn. He might use
’em for a necktie.”
“If I could find the fellow who swiped ’em,
I’d use him for a necktie!” exploded Dunn. “It’s
a low-down trick to hide a man’s clothes. No one
but a kid would do it. You fellows belong with
the rubes who tie knots in shirts at the village
swimming-hole!”
This violent arraignment awoke new chuckles
of merriment. Dunn was becoming interesting.
“That’s a good suggestion,” said Wilmot.
“Harrison might try that next time.”
“Shut up, Baldie, and get dressed!” admonished
Ben Tracy, in a low tone. “You’re playing
right into their hands. You don’t need the socks
to get to your room.”
At this advice, the wisdom of which he recognized,
Dunn smothered his indignation and
went on with his dressing in silence. The crowd,
perceiving that the fun was over, began to scatter.
Eaton put on his coat and turned to Wilmot. “All
ready, Steve! Come on, Pete!”
“I’m going up to Hardie’s room for a while,”
said Talbot, who had been talking in the corner
with Roger.
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
Wilmot slid over toward the door. “There are
your socks on the bench, Dunn!” called Eaton.
“I must have been sitting on them all the
time,” Wilmot explained contritely from the doorway.
“I felt something hot under me. Hope
I didn’t hurt them.”
“They seem all right, just as bright and sporty
as ever. Want ’em, Dunn?” Eaton held out
the lost socks toward their owner; but Dunn,
having definitely adopted a policy of indifference,
turned his back on his tormentors and continued
the conversation with Tracy as if he had lost all
interest in the object of dispute--in the end
taking possession of his property without let or
hindrance.
Talbot, having explained the point in physics
which was the nominal object of his call on Hardie,
sat by the window and talked about school affairs.
“The trouble with our athletics is that we are
in a big city,” he said, “with lots of interesting
things to take up our time outside of school.
Then we’re mostly too young to be very serious
about anything. In the big schools like Hillbury
the fellows are older; and in the boarding-schools
they haven’t any outside attractions nor any
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
liberty, and there’s really nothing else to do but
play something.”
“You always have men on the college teams,”
remarked Roger.
“Oh, they do well in college, but they’re more
mature then. Here there’s always a whole lot
of fooling going on such as you saw this afternoon.
You can’t change a fellow like Wilmot.
He’s an awfully nice chap, but he’s never serious,
and he spoils the atmosphere for the hard,
determined kind of work that makes good
teams.”
“Harrison seems serious enough,” said Hardie.
“I should think he’d make a mighty good captain.”
“That’s right! He’s about the best fellow
we’ve got. That’s the reason I had hopes of the
football, but it looks now as if it was going in
the same old way. If we could only win in football,
we could go to work with more courage on
the crew.”
“The crew is always good, isn’t it?”
“We seem to do better with rowing than anything
else. There’s no fooling there, I can tell
you. From the time you lift out the boat until
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
you put her away on the supports there isn’t a
minute wasted.”
“I should think it would be monotonous, just
pulling an oar with the same motion all the time.
Of course the race is exciting, but the training
must be terribly tiresome.”
“That shows you’ve never tried it,” answered
Talbot, laughing. “The race is hard and disagreeable
because you try to pull yourself completely
out, but the practice is fun all the time. We have
good coaching, and every day we try to get into
the swing a little better, and overcome some one
of our faults. Then the movement of the boat is
fine. You can’t imagine what a pleasure it is to
feel it going under you right--to know that there
is no check between strokes, that everybody is
getting away quick and sharp, and pulling just as
he ought to.”
“I don’t understand,” returned Roger, “but
I’d like to try it.”
“You must come out. You have the right
build for rowing.”
Talbot glanced out at the window and waved
his hand at Tracy, who was crossing the yard to
the dormitory. “We’re a long way from that
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
yet,” he went on. “We might possibly beat Newbury
and Trowbridge in rowing, but we can’t get
the cup without football.”
“There’s baseball,” suggested Roger.
“No hope there. What can you expect with
a fellow like Stover running things? We never
were a baseball school, anyway. It’s the fellows
who play on the corner lots that make the baseball
players. Our fellows do too much sailing and
rowing and playing golf in the summer to have
time for baseball practice.”
He rose to leave. “Just go in hard on the
football, and don’t give up if you don’t get all the
credit you deserve. They have a way here of
starting with a team made up on paper and
keeping to it through the season; but it’s a
bad custom which I want to see broken. I
give Dunn about three weeks to talk himself
off the field. Then if you don’t get in, it’ll be
your own fault.”
The door closed behind the first really sympathetic
visitor Roger Hardie had yet received.
He had been in school long enough to know that
the captain of the crew on the whole outranked
any other captain, and that Talbot, in spite of
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
his marked tendency to see the dark spots in the
future, and to be over-frank in his criticism, was
yet one of the steady-flowing springs of school
energy, respected perforce even by those who did
not like him. To have Talbot as a friend was to
be sure of a stout defender, if not of a persuasive
advocate.
Thrilled with gratitude for the attention shown
him, his ambition kindling into flame from the
spark of hope which Talbot had struck, Roger
resolved to show himself worthy of his patron’s
favor; he would make something of himself in
the school life for the honor of the boy who had
befriended him, if such a result lay within the
reach of hard work, or patience, or devotion.
That making something of himself in the school
life meant to him mainly achieving a success in
the school athletics, was but natural. We who
are older may rightly insist that there are other
ways of serving one’s school than by scoring
touch-downs or pulling on a winning crew; but a
boy cannot be expected to see life through the
spectacles of the aged. He must grow through
his own ideals, not those of his parents. If his
opinion as to the importance of athletics is a fallacy,
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
it is at least a far more wholesome one to
hold than many cherished by adults.
Roger held his head higher than usual as he
went downstairs to dinner, and in his plain but
not unintelligent face the look of stolidity had
given place to a brighter expression.
“I was glad to see you playing to-day,” said
Mr. Adams, pleasantly. “It seemed to me that
you were starting in very well.”
“Thank you,” returned Roger, quietly.
“Didn’t you say you hadn’t played before?”
asked Ben Tracy.
Hardie shook his head. “I didn’t mean to.
I’ve never played on a school team. At Hillbury
I played end on my class team in some of the
games.”
“That’s not bad,” said Louis, with respect.
“They have great class teams at those schools.”
“It isn’t like playing on a school team, though,”
offered Dunn. “You don’t have any great
responsibility.”
“The class feeling is pretty strong sometimes,”
replied Roger, “and the games are always
hard.”
“I liked the way you got into the play,” said
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
Mr. Adams. “The house ought to give a good
account of itself on the playground this year.”
“I couldn’t do anything at all to-day,” observed
Dunn. “I have to feel just right to do
myself credit. I didn’t sleep very well last
night.”
Redfield exchanged a glance of intelligence with
Louis Tracy. They knew what had disturbed
Dunn’s slumbers,--the memory of a late lunch
in Number Six.
“You must be careful about food and bed
hours if you want to be in good condition,” observed
Mr. Adams, apparently oblivious to the
exchange of messages. “It takes some self-control
to keep in training with a pocket full of
money.”
“I’d like to have a chance to try it once,”
sighed Redfield, to whose mind the suggestion
of a pocket full of money conveyed the idea of a
continuously replenished supply. Much of his
allowance never reached his pocket at all; it
was spent in paying back bills.
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI || THE STORY OF JASON
.sp 2
Hardie’s appearance on the football field
unquestionably raised him from the condition
of nonentity into which he had fallen, but it did
not materially help him to get into the charmed
circle of the initiate who occupied the social centre
of the school on a kind of ancestral tenure. He
felt himself an outsider, even more after Talbot
had shown him favor than before, for friendliness
on the part of one served only to emphasize the
lack of interest of others. It was not that he was
objectionable or disliked; his schoolmates were
merely content without him, seeing nothing in
the newcomer that commended him especially
to their notice. His mother’s name was not on
their mothers’ calling lists; he possessed no cousins
or near friends who knew their cousins or
friends; he lacked the ready tongue which creates
on short acquaintance a reputation for wit. He
had no special resources to enhance his attractiveness--no
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
fast auto waiting for him at the corner,
no shooting lodge in the marsh to which his
friends might be invited. He was just plain,
undistinguished, unvalued Hardie, a new boy
who lived at Adams’s and played tackle on the
second.
Dunn still floated with the tide. Judgment
regarding him was still in a measure suspended,
but aside from Talbot, who was silent about him,
and Wilmot, who jollied him, the trend of opinion
was in his favor. As a prospective member of
the first eleven, he possessed prestige, and as a
good-natured loafer whose excuses and garrulity
were entertaining, he appealed to the indiscriminate
humor of the mob. But with one of the
smaller, though not altogether impotent, members
of the school, he early fell into conflict.
“Mike” McKay was a red-headed, freckle-faced,
wing-eared urchin, filled to the brim with
activity and energy, who dominated the fifth
class. He lived at Adams’s, and held the proud
position of captain and half-back on the fourth
eleven. Mike was no lover of lessons, but they
constituted a part of his day, and with his natural
habit of putting into everything that he undertook
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
all the vim he possessed, he labored on them
devotedly until they were accomplished. Behind
Mike in the schoolroom sat Archibald Dunn. Dunn
lacked the zeal of his little neighbor; he could
endure about ten minutes of mental effort at a
stretch, after which his brain demanded rest. In
these intervals of rest he often refreshed himself
by slouching down in his seat and bracing his toes
against the chair in front of him, achieving, in
the meantime, some distraction by a languid survey
of the room. Mike, intent on the French sentences
which he was laboriously manufacturing, word
upon word, like a conscientious bricklayer, would
feel the tip of Dunn’s toe thrust into his exposed
haunch, and violently reacting, would make a
scrawl or drop a blot to disfigure the work of his
hands.
Expostulations served only to convert what
had at first been accidental into a deliberate and
repeated annoyance. Dunn had discovered a
diversion for the idle moments of brain recuperation.
Stung one day by this persecution, Mike turned
fiercely and attacked the exposed ankle of the
offender with his pen. A teacher, sharp-eyed
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
but not far-sighted, caught the boy in the act and
gave him long minutes after school. This result
appeared to Dunn exquisitely amusing; he
could hardly wait for the lunch hour to bring him
the opportunity of telling the story.
“You’d better let Mike alone,” said Ben Tracy.
“He’s a miniature fire-eater when he’s mad.”
Dunn sniffed contemptuously. “What do I
care for him? I could lick a couple of such little
fresh kids with one hand.”
“He seems to me a rather nice little chap,”
Redfield remarked.
“That shows he isn’t,” answered Dunn. “You
never get things right.”
Silenced by this blunt personality, which Dunn
would classify under the head of wit, Redfield
abandoned the conversation and devoted himself
to his luncheon. Bumpus came rolling in just
in season to hear Redfield’s remark and Dunn’s
rejoinder.
“Who’s the nice little chap?” he asked, as he
removed one chair and took possession of the
territory belonging to two.
“You!” sang out Wilmot, giving Bumpus a
slap as he tripped past to another table.
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
Bumpus beamed with joy, not at the jest,
which indeed was worn as smooth as a pebble in
a pot-hole, but at Wilmot’s cordial manner, and
at the intimacy suggested by the playful tap
on the shoulder. Word had gone out from Captain
Harrison that Bumpus was to be encouraged.
“Captain Mike McKay,” explained Tracy.
“Dunn’s got him stung!”
“You don’t suppose I’m going to have him
jabbing pens into my legs, do you?” protested
Dunn, disappointed to be thrown upon his defence
when he had expected to be amusing.
Of course no one did suppose any such thing,
and the conversation zigzagged gayly off to distant
fields. Meantime Mike was temporarily allaying
his indignation by a brisk and noisy game of
indoor baseball in the playroom. Later on he
paid his penance with stoicism, working out half
his home arithmetic problems during the period
of his detention.
On the next day Mike endured two or three
toe thrusts with Christian forbearance. By
squeezing himself against his desk he could put
a neutral zone between his own person and the
convenient range of the prods. By this pretence
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
of retreat he tempted the enemy into an incautious
advance. To reach his prey in spite of bars, Dunn
slid farther down in his own seat, and bent his
foot around the chair back, so as to come within
striking distance.
Instantly the boy recognized his opportunity.
Seizing the foot with both his nimble hands, he
twisted off the shoe and passed it across the aisle to
a faithful clansman, who handed on the emblem of
victory to another, who as speedily got rid of it in
his turn. By the time Dunn recovered himself sufficiently
to demand its restoration, the whereabouts
of the shoe was actually unknown to the first plunderer.
It ultimately found its way, wrapped in a
page of a returned exercise, to the waste-basket.
The call to recitation broke in upon Dunn’s
efforts, greatly handicapped by the presence of a
teacher at the other end of the room, to make
clear to Pirate Mike the fate in store for him if the
shoe were not immediately returned to its owner.
The fifth Latin rose with cheerful readiness and
crowded to the door. Dunn fell in behind them,
though he had no recitation at that time, hoping
in the confusion to get his hand on his enemy.
Once out of sight of the room teacher, he pressed
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
on hotly, scattering the fifth like a flock of sheep,
and with an imprecation on his lips reached for
his quarry,--only to be met by the stern face of
Mr. Westcott as he emerged from his room at the
foot of the stairs.
Dunn was questioned in the office in a most
unpleasant secret session, while the fifth in their
Latin room were forced to trace the route between
Mike’s desk and the waste-basket. When the
different stations on this underground railroad
were located, and the shoe was produced by the
boy who had consigned it to its last resting-place,
the guilty received the regular penalty for small
misdemeanors, and the Latin lesson took its usual
course.
Dunn’s session was longer. He emerged with
a very red face, and sat with a book open before
him, staring angrily and unprofitably at its pages
for many minutes. He was very late for football
practice for several days after, on an excuse that
was evidently valid. This, however, might have
been but a passing experience, forgotten in a
fortnight, had not a heartless sally from Wilmot
perpetuated the memory of the unpleasantness and
given Mike a telling advantage over his bigger foe.
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
As was to be expected, Dunn had no history
lesson that morning. He never did compass more
than half a lesson, but to-day he was as ignorant
on the subject of Greek Oracles and Greek Colonization
as the Esquimau in his hut of ice on
the edge of No Man’s Land.
More than this, he showed himself distrait, and
totally impervious to the cleverly pointed shafts
with which Mr. Downs sought to pierce a way to
thick-crusted brains. The patient instructor, ignorant,
of course, of the disturbance of the morning,
and faithful to duty even under discouraging
circumstances, detained Dunn after the class was
dismissed for recess to admonish him of the evil
consequences of idleness and inattention. As a
result, Dunn arrived at the lunch room late, facing
with an uneasy and unnatural grin a full collection
of unsympathetic teases.
“Jason!” cried Wilmot, loudly. “Beware of
the man with one shoe!”
About one first class boy in five understood
the reference, and this one was immediately besought
by his four ignorant companions to explain
the joke, for joke they were sure it must be.
Johnny Cable, the book-learned but otherwise
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
incapable, was in excessive demand for the next
few minutes to clear up the mystery. These few
minutes Dunn employed in strengthening his
defence of indifference and preparing himself for
the coming questions as to what Mr. Westcott had
said to him, and what he was going to do to Mike.
He answered the questions in very ambiguous
terms, but his threats against the chief agent in
his misfortunes were no less awful because of their
vagueness, while the grins of a dozen fifth class
boys at the long table opposite kept his wrath
at the boiling-point. Ben Tracy at last succeeded
in diverting the general interest to Redfield, who
had made a new record that morning in the smashing
of glass tubes in the laboratory.
But the fifth were not to be diverted. They
had no need of Cable’s learning to explain Wilmot’s
comparison. Having fought their way, line by
line, through sundry tales of Greek heroes presented
in simple Latin, they knew the stories from end to
end. “Jason Dunn!” they whispered ecstatically
to one another along the table. The names fitted
as if made to go together. No combination
could be better!
“We’ll call him Jason after this,” proposed
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
Dickie Sumner, Jack’s younger brother. “Nobody
can help saying it after he’s heard it
once.”
This suggestion was put into practice as soon
as the youngsters left the table. They gathered
at the door and sang out in chorus three times
before they scattered: “Jason Dunn! Jason
Dunn! What has Jason done?”
“Fresh little mutts!” exclaimed Tracy, in disgust.
“That’s the result of being tied up with
a kindergarten. Let’s go out and wring their
necks!”
“Don’t notice ’em,” said Wilmot. “They’ll
forget it to-morrow if you let ’em alone.”
But the title stuck. Before a week was out, the
name, Archie Dunn, or Baldie Dunn, ceased to be
heard on a boy’s lips. It had become Jason
Dunn.
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII || SUMNER CHOOSES A SUCCESSOR
.sp 2
The first skirmish in the feud that was bound
to arise came on the following day at Adams’s,
when a group of fifth and sixth lads, thinking
themselves safe in the shadow of the dormitory,
sang out the new nickname derisively across
the field to Dunn. Dunn, who was still in a
state of irritation, and by no means ready, as
yet, to accept the inevitable nickname, made a
dash for the group, which broke into screaming
flight round the corner of the locker house. The
first lad whom Jason met as he rounded the
corner in full pursuit, was Mike, engaged in tossing
a football against the side of the building.
Without stopping to raise the question whether
Mike had been one of the offenders, Dunn proceeded
to the agreeable task of teaching the urchin
a lesson. The boy resisted with hands, feet,
voice, and teeth. The older fellows, hurrying
forth at the shrill cries for help, found Mike lying
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
on his back, 0 like the arms of a hay
tedder, squirming to keep his antagonist at bay
and squawking like a hen in distress.
.if h
.il fn=i077.jpg w=331px id=i077
.ca
His feet going like the arms of a hay tedder.
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration:His feet going like the arms of a hay tedder.]
.if-
.bn 078.png
The majority of the newcomers lined up in
good positions, to enjoy the amusement which
chance had thrown in their way; but Talbot,
who had seen the beginning of the incident from a
distance, pushed through the line, jerked the boy
to his feet, and commanded him to stop his
noise.
“He knocked me down when I wasn’t doing a
thing!” screamed Mike, weeping more from rage
than because of any hurt which he had received.
“Let me get a stone, and I’ll kill him!”
“You won’t do anything of the sort,” said
Talbot, firmly. He turned to Dunn. “What’s
the row, anyway? What’s the use of pitching
into a little fellow like him?”
“I’m not going to have him calling me names,”
said Dunn, defiantly. “He thinks because he’s
small he can be as fresh as he wants to, without
getting hurt.”
“I didn’t call him names,” sobbed Mike. “I
wasn’t doing a thing.”
“It wasn’t him,” offered Dickie Sumner, who
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
had been tempted back by all-compelling curiosity.
“He wasn’t with us at all.”
Talbot turned and seized the rash youngster
by the arm. “So it was you, was it? Now,
look here! We aren’t going to have any calling
names or any other freshness from you young
kids round this place. If we catch you at it,
we’ll duck you under the cold-water faucet and
forbid you the grounds. Understand?”
Dickie understood. “All right,” he answered
faintly, and tried to pull away; but Talbot still
held him in a tight grip.
“What do you say, Jack?” he added, turning
to Dick’s older brother, who shared with him the
responsibility for order on the grounds.
“That’s right!” replied Jack Sumner, sacrificing
his fraternal obligation in the cause of justice
with surprising equanimity. “He’s a good one to
begin on.”
Talbot released the youngster, who speedily
escaped from the circle of danger to join his confederates
over by the tennis courts, where they
discussed for a time in subdued voices the probability
that Pete meant business. They were soon
diverted by tag.
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
“All the same, Dunn is a fool to notice them,”
murmured Talbot in Hardie’s ear as they returned
to the locker room to finish their dressing.
“I don’t believe he can shake off the nickname,
now,” said Roger.
“No, it’s branded in. He isn’t showing much
of the good-nature they talk about, is he?”
In fact, Dunn’s good-nature didn’t extend far
below the skin. It was a mannerism assumed to
win him the popularity which he craved. He was
vain, lazy, and characterless. In the football
field his fine physique, together with the professional
air with which he bore himself, for some
time blinded the eyes of critics to his shortcomings.
Yards, the coach, felt sure that something
could be made of a man of Dunn’s vigor and
apparent knowledge of the game. Yet a strong
player opposite him, or the grinding strain of an
uphill contest, invariably produced slackened
effort and excuses.
“It’s come to be the weakest place in the team,”
said the coach, a few days before the Groton
game. “If we could brace up the left end and
quarter-back, we should have some hope of giving
Newbury a tussle.”
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
“Is Sumner so bad as all that?” asked Harrison,
disturbed. “I thought he was running the
play very well.”
“He runs the play well enough, but look at
the errors! He fumbles, muffs punts, misses
tackles. A quarter-back has no right to do
anything of the kind.”
“No one plays perfectly,” Harrison hastened
to offer in defence of his friend. “Besides, he’s
the only man we’ve got for the place.”
“Hardie is coming on well,” observed the
coach. “He’s going to push Ben Tracy pretty
hard for tackle. We might give him a trial at
quarter.”
“I don’t think he’d do at all,” answered Harrison,
quickly. “He’d be entirely new to the
position, and we shall need him as a substitute
tackle before the season is over.”
The coach considered for a time in silence.
Yards was a loyal Westcott graduate, whose devotion
to his school was strong enough to make
him sacrifice his afternoons at the Law School
for the sake of helping the Westcott team. He
knew the game well and could teach it, but he
lacked confidence in his own judgment of the
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
comparative merits of individuals, and he was
morbidly anxious to avoid the foolish jealousies
which he remembered as a source of weakness
to the school in his own day. It was clear that
Harrison’s heart was set on keeping Sumner in
his place. To insist on a change which would be
at best an experiment with an unknown quantity,
and which might give rise to factions, seemed at
present unwise.
“We’ll give McDowell a chance on the end,
anyway,” he said, “and let Dunn rest.”
To this proposition Harrison assented eagerly,
and went hot foot to warn Sumner that he must
bestir himself if he wanted to keep his post.
“Am I as bad as that?” asked Sumner, in consternation.
“You’re not bad, but you’ve got to be better.”
In place of replying, Sumner swung his sweater
to the other shoulder and gazed, a sober, startled
expression in his eyes, across the field. Harrison
stole a side glance at his friend’s face and
took his arm affectionately. “It’s all right,
Jack; don’t worry,” he said. “Just play your
best game, and I’ll stand back of you.”
“You’re wrong there, Harry,” Jack said quietly.
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
“You’ve no right to stand back of me. My
playing has been rotten lately, and I know it.
I’m fumbling punts and missing tackles all the
time. If you’ve got some one else who can
do better, I won’t have you keep me on just
out of friendship.”
“You’re talking rot,” returned Harrison, impatiently.
“Stubby Weldon is no use, as you
know perfectly well. There’s no one else.”
Sumner breathed easier. “I’ll do better if I
can,” he said.
So McDowell went to Groton to play left end,
and Dunn was told to stay at home and rest.
He neither stayed at home nor rested. Stover
took him to the game with Hargraves and Reeves
in his flyer. He amused himself watching the
play incognito, and got back before the return
train delivered the weary, disheartened team at
the station in Boston.
Westcott’s fared ill at Groton. Sumner’s game
was worse than ever. McDowell strove like a
hero against men a whole head taller and many
pounds heavier, tackling fiercely and surely whenever
he got within striking distance of the ball;
but his opponents brushed his interference aside,
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
charged through him in the line and blocked him
off from the play almost at will. The score was
eighteen to nothing at the end of the first half.
“I can’t do it!” groaned McDowell, as the
players tried to hearten each other during the
intermission. “I’m not big enough. Put Hardie
in.”
As Dunn was out, there was nothing else to do.
Hardie went in at left end, and fat Bumpus,
who had lost in weight but gained in muscle and
wind by his patriotic exertions on the field, relieved
Kimball at guard. The team sallied forth
once more, crestfallen but determined.
Groton got the ball on Talbot’s kick-off, and
tried the old trick of circling Westcott’s left end,
but Hardie could not be disposed of, and the play
came to grief. They bucked the centre, only to
find big Bumpus sprawling effectually in the path.
A forward pass found its way into Horr’s hands.
Then Sumner gave the ball to Talbot, who discovered
a hole where McDowell had failed to
make one. Encouraged, he repeated the play
and made the first down. A lucky forward pass
which, to his great delight, fell into Hardie’s hands,
saved Westcott’s at the next third down, and
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
carried the ball to the centre of the field. Twenty
yards farther they pressed, and then Talbot
was forced to kick. Groton started on a return
journey, which proved to be slow and frequently
interrupted. A fumble by Westcott’s before the
goal posts gave the home eleven the only score
which they made during the second half.
Roger Hardie felt very happy as he took his
seat in the barge with his mates to drive to the
station, for he knew, without regard to the compliments
paid him by his polite opponents, that
his chance had come and he had not missed it.
The leaders, however, were in no exultant mood.
Twenty-three to nothing is a big score for a coach
and captain to swallow, especially when it is clear
that two-thirds of it is due to avoidable errors.
On the train Mr. Adams, who had accompanied
the team, sat with Yards, Harrison, and Talbot
in a double seat, and tried to point out signs of
hope for the future in the day’s disaster.
“I should like to suggest two changes,” he
said at length, “which may help the team. One
I think you will accept. The other I have my
doubts about.”
The trio looked at him expectantly. “Hardie
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
should play regularly at left end,” went on the
teacher. “His work to-day was almost equal to
Harrison’s.”
“Better, sir!” said Harrison, quickly. “We
accept that suggestion on the spot, don’t we,
Yards?”
Yards nodded. “We ought to have had him
there before. What’s the other suggestion,--Bumpus?”
“No. Bumpus can take care of himself. I
want to propose that you try McDowell at quarter.
He’s out of place in the line, but he’s a good tackler,
catches punts well, and has a good head.”
Talbot looked at Yards, and Yards looked at
Harrison, who pressed his lips together and looked
at no one. There was an interval of silence.
“I don’t see why he should be any better than
Sumner!” said the captain, defiantly.
“I don’t see how he could be any worse!”
ejaculated Talbot.
“I don’t urge it,” said Mr. Adams, kindly.
“I merely suggest it for consideration.”
“He couldn’t run the game as Jack does,”
said Harrison.
“He could save touch-downs as Jack doesn’t,”
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
asserted Talbot. “I think as much of Jack as
you do, but my thinking a lot of him can’t make
him play well.”
“He has been on the team all the season. It
is hard to put him off now.”
“No one stays on the crew because he’s been on
all the season--I’ll tell you that in advance!”
blurted Pete, savagely. “I’ll fire myself if there
are four better men.”
Harrison smiled faintly. “It’s easy to say that
now. Wait till spring.”
“Sh! Here he comes,” exclaimed Yards, speaking
for the first time. “We’ll think it over during
the night.”
Sumner came oscillating down the aisle from
the seat which he had occupied, dismally brooding
alone, during half the journey. He stopped
at the end of the double seat and addressed Harrison,
but his gaze, as he spoke, wandered uneasily
away over the captain’s head; while his flushed
cheek and hurried tones betrayed the strain under
which he had been laboring.
“I’ve been thinking the thing all over,” he
began, “and I see perfectly plainly what’s the
right thing to do. I’ve gone to the bad in my
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
play. I know it as well as anybody. I want you
to put little Mac into my place at quarter and give
him a good, fair show to prove what he can do.
He’s no good in the line because he’s so light,
but he tackles like a little fiend in the open, and
he can catch anything that can be kicked. I
could tell him all he doesn’t know about signals
and plays in twenty minutes. I believe the
change would give the team a new start.”
“By Jove, you’re the stuff, Jack!” cried Talbot,
as he clutched his friend’s hand and gave it a wring.
“If we win anything this year, that’s the spirit that’ll
bring it. There’s something in a name, after all.”
“Give McDowell the place and wrest it back
from him,” suggested Mr. Adams, who felt the
tension of the scene.
“I shan’t wrest it back, if he has a fair show,
sir,” answered Sumner, with a melancholy laugh.
“We’ll try him, then,” concluded Harrison;
“shan’t we, Yards?”
Yards acquiesced with a vast sense of relief.
He had already determined on this very change,
though how he was to bring it about had greatly
perplexed him. Sumner’s magnanimity relieved
him of all anxiety.
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII || A SLIGHTED OFFER
.sp 2
Only a week remained before the first league
game--that with Newbury. Having already
had experience in the position, and being a lad
who used his eyes and ears more than his lips,
Hardie needed very little coaching to fit well into
the game at left end. Though he lacked Harrison’s
sureness in play, as well as the instinctive
readiness in translating signals into action which
is to be expected of one who has practiced long
in a single position, he was better than Harrison
in making holes and quite as fast in getting down
the field. Each showed a fine keenness of scent
after the ball in the enemy’s hands; each was
master of the art which belongs especially to a
good end, of appearing where he is most useful,
and not somewhere else. Deprived of the support
of the first team and handicapped by the
weakness of the second, Dunn made an inconspicuous
figure in the practice. When on the first,
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
he had at times, under favorable conditions,
shown effective dash and vigor; degraded to the
second, he became sulky and listless. Little
remained of the aggressiveness of the early days
but a chronic ugliness which manifested itself
in fault-finding and in the practice of certain
mean tricks which he had learned at a former
school.
Sumner’s conduct stood out in strong contrast.
Having undertaken to furnish the school a quarter-back
better than himself, he pushed his sacrifice
to its full limit. He drilled Mac in signals,
schooled him in receiving and passing--a part
of the play in which Sumner himself excelled--and
put him in possession, as far as was possible,
of such facts respecting likely plays and dangers
to be avoided as his own experience had furnished.
Harrison immediately made him captain
of the second eleven, and in this capacity
he went energetically to work to build up a team
which should give the first the best possible
practice. By this course, it is safe to say, he
gained more respect among the boys whose
opinion was worth having than if he had kept his
place and won a game. When kid-brother Dick,
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
who, imp-like, found amusement in his elder’s
misfortune, referred slightingly to Jack as having
been “fired,” Mike McKay threatened to lick
him on the spot.
“You’re a big fool, Dick Sumner, or you’d
know that it’s a lot harder thing to get off a team
of your own accord when you’re on it, than to get
put on when you’re off. I’d be proud of him
if he was my brother. Besides, he’ll get back.”
“The team’s playing a lot better since he’s
off; everybody says so,” answered Dick, bound to
maintain his position, yet secretly pleased at this
authoritative recognition of his brother’s merits.
“It isn’t because he’s off, it’s because Jason
Dunn’s off. He never was any good. I knew it
all the time. He’s afraid of any fellow his size.”
Dick had nothing to say in favor of Jason
Dunn, so he took another tack.
“Newbury’ll beat ’em anyway, so what difference
does it make?”
“It may make a lot of difference,” answered
the oracle of the fifth. “Newbury may beat us,
and they may not. If big Bumpus doesn’t bust,
we’re going to have a solid line, and the ends are
great! It’ll be a corking game all right, whichever
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
wins. And you don’t want to go around
saying we’re going to be licked!”
“I don’t say it to anybody but you,” Dick
interposed hastily.
“You don’t want to say it to any one,” continued
Mike, with a severity quite judicial. “Just
try to make everybody think we’re going to
win. You know how Phillips had us all scared
when the fourth played Suffolk, with his talk
about how big and strong they were, and how we
couldn’t possibly down ’em, and all that, till we
lost our nerve and almost let ’em beat us?”
Dick remembered.
“It’s the same with the big team; they’ve got
to be encouraged. Harrison deserves it, too, for
firing Jason.”
This principle Mike had an opportunity to put
into practice the next morning when he passed
a knot of older boys gathered at the corner of
the school building, where they waited for the
nine o’clock bell to ring and meantime swapped
news and jokes and covertly watched the girls
who by twos and threes and fours passed on the
other side of the street on the way to Miss Wheeler’s
school. Eaton reached out and seized the boy
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
by the shoulder. “Ticket for the game?” he demanded.
“Got one,” said Mike, coolly, shaking himself
free.
“What do you say, Mike,” asked Wilmot;
“are we going to beat Newbury?”
“Sure thing, only they’ve got to get those
forward passes down better.”
“Do you hear that?” called Wilmot, as the
boy trotted away. “Mike says we’re going to
win. That settles it. No use to practice any
more. It’s all up with Newbury.”
“He’s trying to make us win; that’s more than
can be said of you,” spoke Talbot, disapprovingly.
“What’s the matter with me?” protested Wilmot.
“Don’t I spend half my time tagging round
after you fellows as manager?”
“A bum manager!” grumbled Horr. “Where
are those W sweaters?”
“Mike is doing his little best to build up a
school sentiment behind us,” continued Talbot,
“and you--well, you’re laughing at us most
of the time. Mike knows what he’s talking about,
too, when it comes to football.”
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
Wilmot assumed an indignant manner.
“That’s a base libel. I’m trying to keep you
from being over-confident.”
The bell rang and the group began to move.
“I’d like to see a few signs of over-confidence,”
said Harrison. “Everything seems to me to
be going the other way.”
For the mid-week practice Yards brought out
a team of Westcott graduates from college, who
could furnish to the reorganized school eleven
something sturdy on which to try their plays.
Mac ran his game with few errors and handled
punts like a veteran; the ends got three out of
four forward passes; Bumpus wrestled valiantly
against a big sophomore in the line, puffing and
blowing and perspiring, but fully holding his
own. The result was in the main encouraging.
Dunn stood on the side-lines, dressed for play
and ready to be called in if necessary. While
he waited and observed the game, jesting aloud
with Stover to show the bystanders how little
his spirits were affected by his retirement from
the team, Dunn noticed a stoutly built, showily
dressed man, with a square face darkened by a
heavy, close-shaven beard, who, while following
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
the play, seemed at the same time to be interested
in the conversation around him. Presently
the stranger, having apparently made inquiries
concerning Dunn from some of the smaller boys,
called him aside and talked with him a few minutes
out of earshot of the spectators. At the close of
the conversation he put a slip of paper into Dunn’s
hand and disappeared.
Some time later, as Harrison trotted from the
field across toward the locker house, he passed
Stover and Dunn going in the same direction.
“What do you think of Bumpus now?” he
called over his shoulder as he went by.
“You can make a football player out of ’most
any fat old thing,” returned Stover. “It’s different
in baseball. I say, stop a minute, Harry!”
Harrison turned round. “What is it?”
“We want to see you as soon as you get dressed
about something important, very important!
We’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
Before the allotted time was up, the captain
emerged from the locker house, pulling on his
coat as he came. Dunn followed him. Stover
drew them both into a corner. “Do you know
Jake Callahan?” he asked.
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
“The Newbury coach? I know who he is.”
“He isn’t coach any longer, they’ve fired him,”
said Stover. “He was here this afternoon for
a little while watching the game. He picked
Jason out of the crowd and made him a proposition.
Go ahead, Jason!”
“He’s terribly sore on Newbury because they
haven’t treated him right,” explained Dunn, eagerly.
“He says he can let us have the diagrams
of all their best plays and the signals for ’em.
He doesn’t mean to sell ’em, he’s just going to
give ’em to us; but all the same if they help us,
and we want to make him up a purse of a few
dollars on the quiet, he’ll take it. He left his
address with me.”
Harrison looked from one face to the other,
but said nothing.
“You see, if you had the signals,” continued
Dunn, “and knew what the play was going to
be, you could stop ’em wherever you wanted to.
Of course you wouldn’t want to do it too often,
or you’d give yourselves away. It might be better
to let only four or five good fellows in on the
thing, and then there wouldn’t be so much danger
of getting caught at it.”
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
“We could raise ten or twenty dollars for
Callahan among a few fellows who’d keep their
mouths shut,” said Stover. “I’ll attend to
that. Yards needn’t know a thing about it.”
“Do you think it’s quite--honorable?” asked
Harrison, hesitatingly. He needed no lessons
from either Stover or Dunn to appreciate the
advantages to be derived from knowing an opponent’s
signals.
Stover grinned. “Honorable? Sure! Why
not? Ain’t it their business to have signals we
can’t discover? Wouldn’t you play for the right
side if some one came and told you the Newbury
right tackle was weak? Don’t we always try to
find out what kind of a ball a batter can’t hit?”
“The cases aren’t similar,” returned Harrison.
“There’s no use in arguing about it,” said
Stover. “It’s nothing to me. We give you a
chance to get the game. You can take it or leave
it. I thought you wanted to win.”
Wanted to win! Was there anything Harrison
at that moment wanted more? He looked
up and caught sight of Talbot and Hardie sauntering
past the corner on their way to Hardie’s
room. “Here’s Pete,” said the captain;
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
“let’s see what he says.” And before the emissaries
of the disgruntled coach could interpose
an objection, he had called the pair over and
was bidding Dunn repeat Callahan’s offer.
Dunn obeyed with alacrity, happy in the conviction
that by the service which he was now
rendering, he was taking a long step forward to
the recovery of his lost popularity. As he spoke,
growing more and more eager in the unfolding
of the advantages to be gained and the best
method of using the new information, Hardie
dropped his gaze to the ground, where he kicked
away impatiently at a stubby tuft of grass,
while Talbot held his eyes fixed on the narrator’s
face, his cheeks darkening and swelling with rising
emotion. Slowly Dunn became aware that the
impression which he was making was not the one
intended. His eloquence wavered; his speech
dwindled to an abrupt and confused end.
“Well, what do you think of it, Pete?” asked
Harrison, quietly, swinging round upon his friend.
“I think it would be a dirty, mean trick!”
Talbot burst out in wrathful staccato. “A
hundred victories couldn’t wipe out the disgrace
of it!”
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
“That’s just my opinion,” declared Harrison.
“As you have the man’s address, Dunn, you’d
better write him what we think of his offer.”
Harrison turned back into the locker house;
Talbot and Hardie went off toward the dormitory.
Stover watched the retreating figures for a few
seconds in silence, then emitted a loud, mocking
laugh.
“Have it your own way, you angels, you nice
boys, and get slaughtered,” exclaimed Dunn, in
deep disgust. “I’m through with the thing.”
He crumpled the envelope on which was written
Callahan’s address and threw it on the ground.
Several minutes later, when the coast was clear,
a strange boy who had been watching from the
outer fence, strolled across the yard, picked up
the twisted scrap of paper, and thrust it into his
pocket.
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX || THE NEWBURY GAME
.sp 2
Stover, whisking home in his automobile,
turned the incident over in his mind, and decided
that he would say nothing about it,--if the others
didn’t,--at least until after the game. The fellows
in the influential set at Westcott’s were
terribly sensitive about points of honor, and it
was hardly worth while to risk position by running
counter to the general sentiment in a matter
which really didn’t concern him at all. After
they’d lost the game, they might think more
highly of his advice.
Stover himself was firmly imbued with the
notion that winning is the sole test, and reason for
existence, of an athletic team. If a team couldn’t
win, in his opinion it might as well disband;
there was no sense in keeping it up. These
views he held directly from his father, by example
and precept. Stover, Senior, prided himself
on “getting there” in business. Those
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
who didn’t get there, who got only halfway
there, or refused to sacrifice certain principles
in order to get there, were in his eyes flabby
failures. Protests represented but the inevitable
wails of the defeated, criticism the expression of
envy; the man who won could afford to laugh at
both. Stover, Junior, accepting fully the idea
that defeat was inherently disgraceful, applied it
to his own life in his own way. He was ashamed
to be on a losing team. Low marks in examinations
put him sadly out of humor, for they classed
him with the despised unsuccessful. For the
same reason, notwithstanding a bold air of indifference,
it irked him sorely that he was not
popular.
Dunn likewise came to recognize that he had
made a misstep. He said to Harrison next morning,
“I guess you fellows were right about that
Callahan matter; it wouldn’t have done much
good, anyway.” Harrison, glad to perceive that
Dunn understood the falseness of his position,
answered pleasantly, and let the incident slip
from his mind. He found enough material for
anxiety in the problem of Talbot’s strained knee,
the perfecting of Mac in the use of signals, and the
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
elaboration of a new scheme for a forward pass
from a fake kick.
Callahan’s offer cropped up again on Friday
night, as Wilmot and Harrison sat in Pete’s
bedroom, drawing out a long good night. The
pair had brought in a rubber to work on the injured
knee, distrusting Pete’s fiercely repeated
assertion, “It’s all right and doesn’t need any
rubbing.” Determined to see that their trouble
was not taken in vain, they stayed on during the
process, in the face of rudely inhospitable suggestions
from Talbot that they go home and let
him alone. They lingered still after the masseur
had departed.
“Anything new about Jason’s friend, the
coach?” asked Wilmot, making a try with his
cap at the top of a brass candlestick which stood
on the mantel. The cap fell short, and Talbot
put his foot on it. Wilmot flung himself back in
his chair.
“What coach?”
“The one that blew in at Adams’s the other
day and offered to sell state secrets. Harrigan
or Cullinan or Hooligan--I don’t remember
his name.”
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
The look of disgust on Harrison’s face showed
that he understood. “I don’t know. I hadn’t
thought of him since.”
“I wonder if Jason wrote him,” mused Wilmot.
“You ought to have given me the job, Harry. I’d
have done it in slick style.”
Harrison shook his head. “It would be taking
too much notice of him. Jason came up
next day and acknowledged that it was all
wrong. I don’t think he did anything more
about it.”
“Jason doesn’t know right from wrong, anyway,”
observed Wilmot.
“You could say that of some others I know,”
interposed Talbot, with a significant emphasis.
Wilmot, however, showed no curiosity to learn
who these others might be.
“Why can’t you get the other fellows’ signals
right in the game?” he proposed, suddenly alert.
“Four-eleven-forty-four!--right half-back outside
left tackle. Two-eleven-twenty-three-six-million-and-six!--right
half-back crawls between
centre’s legs. Deduction: right half-back is
eleven. Keep this up through the game, and
you’ll have the whole system. You win by mental
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
superiority--solve cryptograms on the run.
Sherlock Holmes applied to football!”
Talbot smiled with complacent contempt.
“That shows how much you know about football.
You’re in the class with the person who wrote
a football story that I read once in a weekly paper.
The two elevens played the game, and after it was
over and the one team had beaten the other, it
was discovered that some one on the winning team
had broken training before the game. The winners,
therefore, forfeited the game to the losers.”
“No, seriously,” insisted Wilmot, “why couldn’t
it be done?”
“Because it takes all your attention to play
your game,” said Pete. “You can’t be puzzling
out conundrums when you’re watching with all
your soul to see the ball move. I suppose you’d
have us call time to rub a leg, and sit down with
a pencil and figure the thing out.”
“No, not that, but I should think a few of the
old hands like you and Harry and Jimmy Eaton,
and quick wits like McDowell--”
“McDowell stands ’way back on the defence,
you idiot!” interrupted Pete. “He can’t even
hear the other team’s signals!”
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
“Like somebody else, then,” continued Wilmot,
unabashed by the compliment. “I should think
a few fellows might each get a hint, and then all
together would have enough to amount to something.
What do you say, Harry?”
“It’s possible, but not worth while,” answered
Harrison. “You’d lose in trying to do it more
than you could gain by anything you could find
out. The best way is to play a hard, safe game
and be ready for whatever happens along. Come
on, I want to go to bed!”
The school turned out in force for the game.
Though hidden within lay the expectation of defeat,
the older boys were assured that the team
had a chance, and gathered gladly, the gambler’s
hope in their hearts. To the younger ones the
spectacle was in itself all-attractive, to say nothing
of the joy of sharing the new responsibility of
supporting a team which belonged to them. If
some, in ignorance of their privilege, needed persuasion,
there was Mike McKay to furnish it,
through the potent influence of himself and his
crowd. Two urchins of the sixth, who had guilelessly
announced their intention of seeing the Harvard-Dartmouth
game instead, were threatened
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
by Mike with excommunication; he would cut
them off, from that time on, from all help on
lessons from their classmates, unless they performed
their duty. They were ready in their
places. Papas and mammas were there, everybody’s
sister and her girl friends; and swarms
of recent graduates from across the Charles,
vigorous aids to school cheer-leaders and stayers-up
of faint hearts. An extended line of autos
was stalled along the fence. Nor were the Newburyites
behind in the demonstration. It was
confidence (a stronger force than hope) that
swelled their numbers and gave vigor to their
voices.
But the proudest, most important, most conspicuous
figure was that of President John Smith.
Increased in height by a brown derby, swelled in
girth by a fat fur coat,--he had meant that the
day should be cool,--with an alderman and two
newspaper reporters in his train and the officials
of the game his employees, he paced to and fro
within the side-lines and enjoyed his greatness
and the greatness of the day. Only a badge was
lacking to complete happiness. In the reporters
he had two friends on whose helpful services he
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
could count. Alderman Skillen was a political
power in President John’s district, with a son on
the Newbury team. If only young Skillen would
distinguish himself; if only Westcott’s would put
up a stiff but not victorious game; if only the
reporters could give the right turn to their laudatory
phrases, and the alderman be properly impressed
with the power and the influence and the
potential value of the mainspring of it all,--the
day might well mark the beginning of a strong
upward twist in the life curve of John Smith.
The suspicion whispered into his ear that morning
by the Newbury captain that the renegade coach
might have betrayed the game to Westcott’s
had not so much as ruffled the surface of his
optimism.
The game began. Hexam, the Newbury half-back,
drove the ball on the kick-off down into
the hands of Mac,[#] who clutched it tight, and with
his jerky, darting see-saw, threaded his way up
the field behind Talbot and Hardie and Eaton
and any one else he could use as a cover, for
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
thirty good yards. He went down buried deep,
like a greased pig finally swamped by numbers.
Then when the small Westcottites were chirping
over the prospect of a quick advance to the
goal line, Talbot, without trying a single rush,
punted long and low, sending the ball out of
bounds on the twenty-yard line.
.fn #
The Westcott line-up: Hardie, Eaton, Bumpus, Ford,
Channing, B. Tracy, Harrison; quarter-back, McDowell; half-backs,
Horr and Talbot; full-back, Bradford.
.fn-
The Newburyites now had their chance, with
the length of the field before them, and hammered
away with moderate success, now on this side,
now on that, till Eaton broke through on a slow-starting
end-play and nabbed the runner yards
behind the line. Forced to kick or try a forward
pass, Newbury chose the second alternative and
lost the ball. Again Pete punted, to the disappointment
of the eager Westcott spectators, and
again Newbury started near her goal line on the
slow pound-pound down the field.
A half-dozen short gains had been made, when,
on a second down, Talbot pulled Roger aside.
“Seven in third place means outside Eaton,”
he panted. “Watch out!”
“Six, four, seven, twenty-two, forty-four!”
sang out the Newbury quarter. Hardie crept in
a double pace; Talbot, line half-back, advanced
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
a step; and Eaton nerved himself for a spring.
The ball moved; Eaton, moving with it, evaded
his opponent and smashed into the interference
behind the line. The bearer of the ball, seeing
Talbot in the gap in front and Hardie swinging
in upon him from outside, tossed the ball to a
mate behind who let it slip through his hands.
Roger threw himself at it as it fell. When the
heap was split open, there lay the Westcott end
at the bottom, curled round the ball like a rat
around an egg.
Now, within striking distance of the Newbury
goal line, Westcott’s abandoned the kicking game
and took to aggressive, fast play. Sequence B
carried them forward fifteen yards, a fortunate
try at right end gave them five yards more, Eaton
and Hardie twice opened a clean lane for Bradford
through the sputtering Skillen. Even
Bumpus succeeded in getting some kind of a lift
from underneath on big Firman, and assisted to
establish a first down. The unexpectedly fast
and furious attack confused the Newbury resistance.
Within the ten-yard line Mac gave
himself a chance, and scurrying to the right the
proper measure, squirmed over the last eight
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
yards under Harrison’s protection and dived
home past clutching hands and struggling bodies.
Westcott’s had scored a certain five!
In the intermission Harrison contributed an
outside-right-tackle signal which he had learned
from the repetitious Newbury quarter, and
Bumpus the number which usually preceded onslaughts
on centre.
“Don’t try to find out anything more!” commanded
Yards. “Put your whole soul into the
play. You’ve got the game if you can only hold
them.”
Back they trotted, with smirched faces and
tired limbs, but eager and determined. Their
schoolmates on the cheering benches howled
joyfully at them as they passed, but a certain
gentleman wearing a brown derby and fur overcoat,
and accompanied by a short, rotund man,
easily recognizable by his diamond shirt-stud,
thick mustache, and fat, red-veined face,
gave them but ungracious looks. These looks
presaged words equally ungracious to be uttered
after the game, but the players passed on, unaware
that the eye of President John Smith
rested on them in disapproval.
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
I wish I might relate all the feats of heroes
performed during the second half of this game
which seemed to Mike McKay the most wholly
satisfying contest he had ever witnessed. The
chapter, however, has already run its length,
and more football is coming. The ball made
many futile journeys to and fro. Thrice the
Newbury captain forced his quarter to alter the
signals because Westcott’s change showed that
the coming move was understood. Twice a
Newbury man got an on-side kick behind the
Westcott secondary defence, only to go down in
McDowell’s grasp. Once Mac risked a long forward
pass in the middle of the field on a first
down, and Harrison, getting it near the side-line,
made a forty-yard run to a touch-down. Once
Skillen hit Hardie a swinging blow with his fist
as the Westcott end would interfere between him
and the ball; and escaped the eye of the umpire.
Once more he tried the same pretty trick and
retired from the field in consequence. Time
slipped away, and with it Newbury’s chance and
Newbury’s courage. At the last blast of the
referee’s whistle the score stood eleven to nothing
in favor of Harrison’s team.
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X || THE SCOUTS BRING NEWS
.sp 2
The delighted Westcott lads poured after their
team to the dressing rooms in a turbulent stream.
The forward ones thronged the limited space
within, interfering with the progress of the players
toward cleanness and respectability, and wearying
them with fierce clutches of the hand and much
repetition of exclamations and idle questions.
Dunn served his companions a good turn--unintentionally,
to be sure--by standing near the
door and delivering to a densely packed circle
a disquisition on the game, which included not
merely the true explanation of the weakness of
the Newbury team and the faults of their playing,
but a candid setting forth of the errors on the
Westcott side. According to Dunn, the score
might have been doubled if Westcott’s hadn’t
thrown the ball away so much by punting, and
had gone systematically to work at the outset to
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
use up Thorne, the Newbury tackle who did half
the defensive work of his team.
“Didn’t McDowell put up a great game,--and
Hardie?” exclaimed some inconsiderate enthusiast
in the circle.
“Yes, they both did pretty well on the whole,”
answered Dunn. “It was a cinch for Hardie.
He had nothing against him.”
Mike and Dickie Sumner came edging by.
“If Jason had only been there, you’d have
seen something doing,” said Mike, in a low tone
to his companion. They both laughed aloud.
Dunn turned at the sound and caught a glimpse
of the roguish faces, and felt, though he could not
hear, the insult of their words.
“Get out of here, you kids!” he called angrily.
“You’ve no business here at all.”
“We’re going, Jason, as fast as we can,” returned
Dick, feeling safe in the crowd. “You
played a corking game, Jason!” added Mike.
The two went their way to the quarters of the
other team to see how the Newburyites were
taking it, leaving Dunn to wax violent over the
necessity of having these “little fresh mutts”
hanging round all the time, and the foolish
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
encouragement they received from older fellows
who ought to know better. Some of these fellows
who ought to know better were at the other end
of the room preparing for the shower. Jack
Sumner held Talbot’s foot in his lap--the knee
was stiffening again--and worked at the knot
in a shoe-lace, exclaiming with delight over the
playing of the team and dwelling with especial
enthusiasm on McDowell’s performance.
“It was just perfect,” he said, relaxing his
efforts on the knot to look into the faces of his
hearers. “Those tackles in the second half
when Thorne got the on-side kicks and came down
on him, just saved touch-downs. He’s the greatest
find of the year!”
“Oh, cut it!” exploded Talbot, punning without
intent. He meant that Jack should drop
that talk about McDowell. It was honest, without
doubt, and generous, but it hurt Pete none
the less, for he understood well Sumner’s disappointment.
“I haven’t any knife,” said Sumner. “Here,
Steve, give us a knife!”
And Wilmot, interrupting his discourse on how
he had saved the game by suggesting that they
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
learn the signals during play, dug down into his
trousers pocket and produced a battered thing
with a single broken blade, which he kept on
purpose to lend.
“Be sure you give it back to me,” he said.
“It’s the only lender I’ve got.”
Meantime in the Newbury quarters, outside of
which stood Mike and Dickie with wide-open eyes
and most receptive ears, were to be heard laments
and reproaches and an indignant clamor of foul
play. Westcott’s knew the Newbury signals,
there was no doubt about it.
“Why, that Hardie would move right up on
the signal for outside-tackle play, and go right
back again when it was called off. He knew
the signal all right.” Skillen’s assurance had
personal interest behind it. He wanted it
understood that he had been laboring under
a handicap.
“And on the centre plays in the second half,”
said Firman, “Ford came right up into the line,
and Talbot got in behind him. Of course I
couldn’t make a hole.”
“That miserable Callahan gave them away,”
declared Newbold, the captain. “You wouldn’t
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
suppose Westcott’s would play such a dirty trick,
would you?”
“These high flyers are always the worst grafters,”
said Skillen. “They’ll cheat fast enough
when they have to.”
“But we changed some of the signals,” remarked
Thorne, “and that outside-tackle signal that they
knew was one of the new ones.”
“That was only one,” said Newbold. “They
knew at least half a dozen. Callahan sold us,
that’s the fact. We’ve got proof. Fritz Schaefer
saw him at the Westcott grounds last Wednesday,
talking with one of their men. It’s a steal.
We’ll protest the game.”
“I don’t believe they did it,” said Thorne.
“I know one or two of their fellows, and they aren’t
that kind. Williams (the quarter-back) always
gives the same numbers, anyway. No one who
kept his ears open could help hearing some of
them.”
“That’s right, stand up for ’em!” said Hexam,
bitterly. “Go back on your own school and try
to get the Westcott fellows’ favor! They may
let you into one of their societies when you get
to college.”
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
“I don’t feel as if I’d gone back on my own
school much to-day,” returned Thorne, quietly.
“It’s bad enough to be beaten without playing
the baby.”
“It’s a steal!” Newbold reiterated. “They
got our signals and won unfairly. Smith says
so.”
Smith was saying so at that very moment, in
strongly rhetorical language, to an eager crowd
outside the quarters, including in its front rank
a stout man with a diamond pin, and--on the
outskirts--Mike McKay and Dickie Sumner.
The high-minded president was sorely pained--not
at the defeat of his school--oh, no! Nor
by the anti-climax of his first gala day--certainly
not! Nor by his loss of prestige with
Alderman Skillen. He was pained, but only
impersonally and officially, as the offended guardian
of the moral majesty of the league.
“They was too smart for you, that’s about the
size of it,” Mr. Skillen was saying. “If the’
isn’t any rule against buying up a coach, why,
they’ve got you pinched.”
“No rule is needed,” answered President John,
pompously. “The league stands for the highest
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
ideals in sport. It won’t countenance low tricks or
dishonorable methods of winning or anything at all
in the games that isn’t absolutely fair and right.”
“It wasn’t fair and right to kick Jerry off the
field, that’s a sure thing,” declared the alderman.
“The other fellow got into him first with
his shoulder. I saw him do it time and again.”
An irrepressible titter ran round the circle at this
ingenuous view of football etiquette.
“We have to leave that to the officials,” President
John hastened to say. “I think they
roasted us several times, but we can’t help that.
The other matter is one for the league itself to
handle. It’s one of the most disgraceful performances
in the annals of football!”
The bystanders listened greedily. Mr. Skillen
gave a sharp nod of approval. “That’s the way
to put it--make it good and strong and stick
to it. Your friends can give us a nice little story
about it in the papers to-morrow. But what’ll
come of it all, that’s what I want to know? Will
there be anything doin’?”
“We shall protest the game before the committee
and demand that it be played again or
declared forfeited.”
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
“Forfeit!” decided Mr. Skillen, promptly.
“Forfeit’s the thing. It wouldn’t help any to
play it again. They’ve got too many trumps.”
“Forfeited, then,” agreed Mr. Smith. “I’ll
see Newbold about it at once.”
President John disappeared through the door
leading to the Newbury quarters, whither the
curious young Westcott lads had not the audacity
to follow. They hung about, however, hoping
that he might reappear, and talked over the
startling news in indignant whispers. They didn’t
understand it all, but it was clear that their admired
heroes were charged with buying signals
from a Newbury coach and winning the game
through the knowledge thus acquired.
“It’s all rot,” decided Mike. “Somebody’s
been kidding ’em. They’d believe any old lie,
if they thought they could make anything by it.”
“Why, my brother Jack would no more do such
a thing than he would pick pockets!” said Dickie.
“He’s awfully particular about those things, and
Pete is just the same.”
“They’re all the same, except Jason,”--there
was nothing evil Mike wouldn’t believe about
Jason,--“and Jason doesn’t count any more.”
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
The president came forth, mopping his face
with his handkerchief and setting his hat firmly
on his head. From the window of the dressing
room he had seen Mr. Westcott, lingering with
three of his old boys near the entrance to the
grounds. Toward this group he set a straight
course, while the two lads fell in unnoticed behind
him.
“Mr. Westcott!” called the high official, sharply,
as he drew near. The college boys lifted their
hats and went their way. Mr. Westcott turned
with a pleasant look on his face, and in his heart
a kindly feeling for all the world, including this
man Smith. The afternoon had brought him a
full measure of happiness; first the splendid
playing of his team, then a shower of hearty
greetings from old boys--and tokens of regard
from former pupils, be it understood, are the
sweetest morsels an honest schoolmaster can roll
beneath his tongue.
“Mr. Westcott!” came in a loud, contentious
voice from beneath the brown derby. “We shall
protest that game,--I mean the captain of the
Newbury team has protested it.”
Mr. Westcott’s smile vanished in a flash, and an
.bn 122.png
.pn +1
expression of bewilderment overspread his face.
“Protested!” he repeated. “I do not understand.
On what ground, pray?”
“Your team, it appears, bought or at least got
the signals which Newbury was to use from a discharged
coach, and so were able to anticipate and
block the Newbury plays.”
“It appears from what?” asked the schoolmaster,
coldly.
President John hesitated. “Well, from the
game itself and--from other facts.”
“Mr. Smith,” said Mr. Westcott, speaking
with head thrown back, in tones resonant with
indignation, “you probably do not realize the
insulting character of the charge which you are
bringing. If I understand you to mean that the
Westcott management plotted to win the game
with stolen signals, I assure you the charge is both
false and slanderous. There is a bad mistake
somewhere. I know my boys, as you do not;
they are incapable of such an act.”
“I didn’t want to believe it myself, sir,” said
President John, for the instant abashed, “but
the facts are such--” He stopped and tried to
think what the facts really were.
.bn 123.png
.pn +1
“The facts?” persisted Mr. Westcott.
“They will be stated fully at the meeting of
the committee which I shall call,” answered John,
recovering himself. “I merely desired to give
you notice that I had received the protest.”
He turned and bent his steps toward his allies
at the dressing rooms, driving two urchins in
flight before him. Long before his pompous
strut brought him to the Newbury end of the
locker building, the two young scouts had burst
in among the Westcott players with a whoop and
a yell, had gathered about them in a trice an
elbowing crush of the dressed and half-dressed,
and with mutual support and interruption, were
devoting themselves to the delectable task of
relating the news. The audience listened wild-eyed,
questioned, and exploded in exclamations.
When the fire of questions slackened and the
exclamations began to pop, Dunn seized his
suit-case and silently stole away. This crowd
was no place for him.
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI || A FRUITLESS INTERVIEW
.sp 2
When the Westcott boys gathered Monday
morning at the corner outside the school building,
every third comer bore a newspaper in his
hand and hot indignation in his heart. Only
those who did not read the papers, and had not
learned the news which Mike and Dickie brought
to the quarters, wore the complacent smile which
they had carried from the field on Saturday.
President John’s friends, the reporters, had
done their work thoroughly. While most of the
Sunday journals merely announced the result of
the game, or gave a few inches of space to a more
or less inaccurate description, the Trumpeter
and the Mail each sacrificed to it the best
part of a column on the page devoted to sports,
introduced by heavy headlines such as: WESTCOTT’S
KNEW THE SIGNALS. SENSATIONAL
CHARGES AGAINST BACK BAY
BOYS. GAME PROTESTED. INTERVIEW
.bn 125.png
.pn +1
WITH PRES. SMITH! From the interview
it appeared that President John saw the affair in
a very serious light; that the league stood for the
highest ideals in sport,--a familiar phrase in the
mouth of its president,--and would certainly
deal sternly with dishonorable practices of any
kind. A special meeting of the managing committee
of the league was to be called immediately
to consider the protest. If the charge should be
sustained, clearly the only fair course would be to
declare the game forfeited to Newbury, the score
to stand on the record as one to nothing.
To say that the Westcott lads felt indignant
at being thus advertised as unscrupulous cheats
when they knew themselves absolutely innocent,
is like describing a raving maniac as the victim of
hallucination. They boiled and bubbled with
rage. If President John had shown himself at
the corner of Otway Street at that moment,
they would have flown to mob him, though every
bell in the Westcott school were clanging in their
ears. But as the exalted official did not present
himself to be mobbed, and the school gong did
ring, they filed obediently in, and taking their
seats, brooded in sullen bitterness on the outrage.
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
A boy’s sense of justice--or, as some one has
better expressed it, sense of injustice--is always
morbidly keen. The boys at Westcott’s were
used to a life in which the good things flowed in
on them naturally, with few questions as to
whether they were deserved or undeserved.
Good behavior, fair work, regard for their parents’
wishes, constituted the price they were expected
to pay; even on this discounts were sometimes
allowed. Flat over-riding of just rights had entered
into their experience as little as physical
hardship. They reared against the blow like a
young, high-spirited horse which feels for the first
time the sting of a cruel whip.
After the morning Scripture reading, to which,
it is to be feared, few gave heed, Mr. Westcott
called Harrison and Wilmot into his office, where
he kept them for a quarter of an hour. The other
football men, if they could have had their hearts’
desire, would have sat outside the office, matching
expletives, until their comrades should come
forth and give them the history of the interview.
This being for obvious reasons impossible, the
excited lads kept their curiosity under control
and went about their morning tasks with
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
what interest they could muster,--wrestling,
nauseated, with the dullness of Burke on Conciliation,
abusing good English by turning it into
worse than peasant German, and finding Cicero’s
maledictions on Catiline but weak and watery
dilutions compared with the things they could
say of President John Smith. Dunn alone of those
especially concerned studied that morning with absolute
diligence; he did this in self-defence, to keep
his thoughts from a subject--more disagreeable
than lessons--to which they would wander if his
grip upon them slackened but a moment.
At the lunch hour the ban was raised. A
crowd packed itself about Harrison and Wilmot
as soon as the two got within the lunch-room door,
demanding news, and news condensed. “What
did he say? What are you going to do?” was
the burden of the questions, but they fell like a
hailstorm in various forms and at various angles,
from scores of lips at once. Harrison was staggered,
but not Wilmot, whose nimble wit served
an ever nimble tongue.
“He says we’ve disgraced the school,” said
Wilmot, with a tragic gesture. “We’ve got to
go to Mr. Smith and apologize and--”
.bn 128.png
.pn +1
He stopped, not because he had run out of
ideas, or was put to shame by the serious faces
about him, but of simple necessity. A hand was
pressed upon his lips and a strong arm embraced
him from behind.
“Shut up, or I’ll break your ribs,” said Talbot,
quietly. “We don’t want to hear from you at all.
Harry’s the man. Go ahead, Harry. I’ll keep
this fellow quiet.”
Harrison, thus encouraged, started on his report.
“He wanted to know all about it, and
we told him. He said it was an insult to the
school which we must treat with dignified contempt.
We’ve got to keep cool about it and not
get crazy and shoot off a lot of wild talk. That
would hurt us more than anything those fellows
can say. He’s going to have Yards write to the
two papers, and he’ll write to the head-master
at Trowbridge.”
“They’ve called a meeting for Wednesday,”
said Pete.
“Do you think Trowbridge will side with ’em?”
asked Hardie.
“I hope not,” answered the captain, doubtfully.
“If they think they can beat us,” offered Cable,
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
“Trowbridge will side with us, because if we beat
Newbury and Trowbridge beat us, the worst
that could come for Trowbridge would be a tie,
even if they got beaten by Newbury.”
“How’s that?” demanded Reeves.
“It’s right. Think it out for yourself, and
you’ll see,” said Talbot, impatiently.
“And if we get one vote from Trowbridge, and
one goes against us,” continued Cable, encouraged
by the attention given to his remarks, “we’re
sure to lose our case. There would be two votes
of Newbury and one of Trowbridge against us,
and two of Westcott’s and one of Trowbridge
for us. Then the president would vote against
us.”
“That’s right, too,” said Pete, ruefully.
“And if Trowbridge doesn’t vote at all or
doesn’t come to the meeting, the result will be
the same.”
“I don’t believe Trowbridge would play us
that kind of a trick,” remarked Sumner; “it’s
too mean a thing to do.”
At this point the suppressed Wilmot began to
wave his hands about in gestures which indicated
that he wished permission to speak.
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
“Let go of him, Pete; he wants to say something!”
commanded the captain.
Wilmot, obtaining release by this pantomime,
escaped to a safer position. “You haven’t said
anything about going to see Callahan.”
“I forgot that. He thought Jason and some
one else had better hunt up Callahan and get his
evidence.”
At this proposal, Dunn, who stood on the outskirts
of the crowd, was edging away, but Eaton
dragged him back. “I won’t!” said the unfortunate,
sullenly. “I don’t want anything more
to do with it.”
“You’ve got to,” Eaton retorted. “You’ve
got us into this scrape; now you must get us out.”
“You’ll have to go, too, Harry,” said Talbot,
calmly treating Dunn’s refusal as if it had not
been made.
“I must be at the practice. Steve can go.
He’s no use for anything else.”
“I can’t go, either,” began Wilmot. “I’ve
got to look after the balls and take care of the
sweaters and--”
“Shut up!” interrupted Talbot. “Mike will
attend to all that, won’t you, Mike?”
.bn 131.png
.pn +1
“Sure!”
“I’m not the man for it; I couldn’t get anything
out of him,” insisted Wilmot. “A simple,
inoffensive fellow like me could never make any
one do anything he doesn’t want to. Pete ought
to go. He’s got an awful crust.”
“You’re going,” answered Talbot; “it’s the
manager’s job. If Callahan can stand your talk
for ten minutes without giving you anything
you ask to get rid of you, he’ll be the first man
who’s ever done it. You remember the address,
Jason?”
Dunn thought he did. “Then it’s settled,”
said Talbot. “Let’s get something to eat.”
That afternoon Wilmot and Dunn journeyed to
East Boston together in search of Callahan. They
had little to say to each other on the way. Wilmot
disliked Dunn, and Dunn was afraid of Wilmot;
neither relished the expedition on which they
were engaged. After much questioning and unnecessary
wandering they arrived at No. 73
Doble Street and asked if Mr. Callahan lived there.
Yes, Mr. Callahan lived there, but was not at
home; he would be in about five. The boys
drifted forth to kill time as best they could,
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
hung round the steamship docks, where a big
Cunarder was being loaded, until darkness fell,
and then strolled slowly back to the abode of the
ex-coach.
Callahan had returned. They waited in the
dimly lighted entry while their message was
carried aloft, depressed by the strange surroundings
and a sense of inadequacy to the task which
they had undertaken. Presently a heavy step was
heard descending the bare treads of the second
flight above, and soon Callahan’s forbidding face
came into the half-light. He stopped on the third
stair and peered suspiciously down upon his
visitors.
It had been arranged that Dunn should begin
the interview, but at the crisis Jason was dumb.
“What is it?” demanded Callahan. “What
do you want?”
“We come from Westcott’s School,” said
Wilmot, perceiving that it was useless to wait
for Dunn. “You’ve probably seen in the papers
the trouble we’re in about the Newbury game.”
“Yes, I have,” snarled Callahan, with an oath;
“and a nice mess you’ve got me into with your
talk!”
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
“We haven’t been talking,” Wilmot answered;
“it’s Newbury that’s doing the talking. We
thought you’d be willing to help us out by
saying that we didn’t get any signals from
you, and--”
“Of course you didn’t get any signals from
me--for the very good reason that I wouldn’t
have given ’em to you.”
“But you offered them to us,” said Dunn, his
tongue loosened by this strange statement. “You
told me that day at Adams’s--”
Callahan turned fiercely upon him. “It’s a
lie! I never offered you any signals. I said I
was through with Newbury and could coach you
if you wanted me.”
Dunn, amazed, opened his mouth to reply, but
Wilmot was too quick for him. “Will you write
us a statement that you didn’t give us any signals?
Of course we know you didn’t, but the statement
might help us.”
“Write nothing!” said the coach, shortly.
“It’s none of my business. There’s nothing in it
for me.”
“We’ll pay you for it,” began Dunn, with eagerness;
but Wilmot, who perceived instantly that
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
an evil interpretation might be given to this
transaction, checked his colleague.
“No, we couldn’t do that, of course. It wouldn’t
look right. But if you’d give us a statement
denying that we got the Newbury signals from
you, we should be very thankful for it.”
“I’m not giving statements. Anybody who
knows Jake Callahan knows he wouldn’t sell signals.
Anybody who says he did, lies!”
While speaking these words, Callahan had
finished his descent of the stairs and opened the
outer door. Wilmot said good night and went
forth, dragging after him Dunn, who seemed on
the point of raising again the question of the
conversation which he had held with Callahan
at the field.
“But he did offer the signals just the same!”
Dunn broke out, after they had walked in silence
a hundred yards down the street.
“What difference does it make?” answered
Wilmot, wearily. “He’s no good to us, anyway.”
Yards was no more successful with his communication
to the newspapers. The Mail hid
it away in the bottom corner of the market
page, where Yards himself had difficulty in
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
discovering it. The Trumpeter sandwiched it
in between a letter on Esperanto and another
from an opponent of the battle-ship programme.
As few who read the sports pages know of the
existence of the correspondence column, and no
one who reads the letters cares anything about
sports, Yards’s chance of undoing the impression
made by President John’s friends was about one
in a thousand.
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII || PRESIDENT JOHN’S IDEALS
.sp 2
Talbot and Sumner were the Westcott members
of the general committee which was to consider
the protest of the Newbury captain. They
did not lack advice as to what to say and what
not to say, nor original suggestions concerning
methods of influencing the Trowbridge vote,
which, as everybody understood, must really
decide the matter. Mr. Westcott was the only
counsellor to whom they gave heed, and his
directions they determined to follow to the best
of their ability. They were to avoid all display
of feeling, keep their tempers under absolute
control, tell their story calmly without acrimony,
and throw themselves unreservedly upon the
sense of fairness of the committee. Such a course
was especially difficult for Talbot, whose vehemence
tolerated no trifling or evasion, and whose
frankness verged on discourtesy. He felt his
own unfitness for the task before him, even while
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
he longed to be brought face to face with the
traducers of his school.
“You’ll have to do the talking, Jack,” he said,
as the two delegates, having patiently endured
to the end the fusillade of admonitions and counsel
with which their ears had been deafened all day
long, took seats in the car which was to carry
them to the Newbury School. “If I once get
going, I’m bound to go off the handle and ruin
the whole business.”
“I don’t believe you will,” answered Sumner,
reassuringly. “There’s too much at stake. You
just want to think of it as seven honest people
brought together to consider a question of fact,--that’s
what Mr. Westcott said,--not as if you
were out for a fight with three sworn enemies and
two doubtful characters.”
“If Smithy isn’t an enemy, I don’t know what
an enemy is! I wish Harry or Steve were here
in my place; either would be a lot better than I.
Harry can hold his tongue, and Steve can talk
an apple off a tree!”
“You can hold your tongue, too.”
“I will, if I have to bite it off--until they
decide against us. When that comes, I’m going
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
to call ’em just what they are, a pack of
thieves!”
“But it may not come,” said Sumner, quietly.
“Oh, it will. Everybody thinks so. Mr. Snyder
will vote with us because Trowbridge will want to
seem to be fair, and Frost will vote with Newbury.
That will make a tie, and Smithy will be forced
in the interests of pure athletics to give the deciding
vote against us.”
“I don’t believe it. Anyway, if that’s your
opinion, you don’t want to show it, or they’ll
think you know you haven’t any case. We want
to act as if we were sure of the rightfulness
of our claim, and had only to state it to have
it granted.”
“I wish there was something I could do!”
groaned Pete. “I hate to sit around and pretend.”
The other members of the committee were
already assembled when Sumner and Talbot were
shown into the room. The glance with which
Pete took in this fact hardened immediately into
a look of hostility, for it seemed to him probable
that the five had already used their opportunity
to come to a decision with reference to the object
of the meeting, and that the proceedings would
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
now be merely formal. But Sumner was already
going the rounds, shaking hands with everybody
in a spirit of great friendliness; so Pete, suspecting
that this was the proper time to begin that
assumption of confidence to which Sumner had
urged him, fell in behind his colleague, with a
mighty effort crowding back his feeling of distrust.
Mr. Snyder and Frost greeted him cordially,
and though Newbold vouchsafed but a
languid clasp of the hand and murmured a palpably
empty phrase of politeness through a
frigid grimace, Thorne gave him a grip of reassuring
warmth. He tarried therefore at Thorne’s
side and talked with him for a few minutes on
indifferent themes,--such as sailing and summer
dances,--thereby turning his back on President
John and avoiding the necessity of dissembling
before that much-hated dignitary.
Thorne and Talbot were old friends, although
their position now seemed to Pete more like that
of enemies approaching the battlefield. Their
summer houses stood within a mile of each other
on Buzzard’s Bay, and even now their boats
lay housed side by side. It was a pity that a
naturally decent fellow like Thorne could be so
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
blinded by rabid partisanship as to lend himself
as an abettor to the scheme of a John Smith!
So Talbot was thinking, more in sorrow than
in wrath, when President John mounted the
platform--a recitation room was their council
chamber--and called the meeting to order.
They separated now to three benches, Newbold
and Thorne on the left wing, Mr. Snyder and Frost
in the centre, Talbot and Sumner on the right.
“It’s like a court,” whispered Pete, “with Trowbridge
for judge. We’re no good except to pair
with Newbold and Thorne.”
The chairman introduced the business of the
hour with all solemnity. The committee had
met to consider the charge made by Newbury
that Westcott’s had won the game of Saturday
by unfair and dishonorable methods. It had been
to him a great disappointment that the first contest
in the new league, to which he had devoted so
much time and thought, should have been darkened
by scandal. He felt, however, and he was
confident that the majority of the committee
agreed with him, that there could be no turning
back upon the ideals of the league--again those
ideals!--The mere winning or losing of a game
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
was of slight consequence compared with the
supreme importance of holding unswervingly to
the highest conceptions of honor and gentlemanly
conduct.
“The old hypocrite!” whispered Pete in Sumner’s
ear.
“Hush!” and a warning hand clutched the
offender’s knee.
The chairman now read the protest,--which
wound up with a demand that the game be declared
forfeited to Newbury,--and complacently
asked what should be done with it, addressing presumably
the whole committee, but looking straight
before him at the two members from Trowbridge.
“I think we ought to consider first the grounds
for the protest, and afterwards, if the protest is
sustained, the penalty,” said Mr. Snyder.
“Very well,” agreed the chairman; “we will
hear the Newbury statements first.”
If the protest is sustained! Why should they
mention the penalty at all unless they meant to
sustain the protest? Talbot became more than
ever convinced that the whole affair was prejudged
and that the proceedings would be merely the
carrying out of a prearranged plan.
.bn 142.png
.pn +1
He listened closely to Newbold, none the less,
when the latter, in the capacity of prosecuting
attorney, presented his case. Newbury had been
unfortunate this year in the selection of Callahan
as coach. A week before the game with Westcott’s,
for certain reasons unnecessary to state, he
had been discharged. Callahan was very “sore”
and declared in presence of witnesses--Newbold
held up a paper which he said contained their
statements--that he’d “get even.” A few days
afterward, Callahan had been observed at the
Westcott field in long conversation with a Westcott
player--another display of papers. Later
this player was seen conferring with Harrison and
others of the football men. In the course of this
conference, one of the Westcott men dropped a
paper which the witness secured; on it was written
the address of the discharged coach. Suspecting
an attempt to steal a knowledge of their game,
Newbury had changed certain plays and signals,
but because the time was too short to master an
entirely new set they had been compelled to use
a large number of the old ones. In the game
Westcott’s had often understood the Newbury
signals as soon as they were given out, and it was
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
the old signals which they understood. Through
a knowledge of the signals, Westcott’s spoiled
Newbury’s play and won.
As Newbold sat down, Mr. Smith drew his hand
across his forehead, swept the line of benches
with a look of sorrow and pain, and sighed audibly.
There was plainly no doubt at all in the chairman’s
mind as to the substantial truth of the charge.
It was but too clear that a treacherous blow had
been struck at the fair fame of the Triangular
League, and at those ideals of sportsmanship which
were ever the objects of President John’s highest
solicitude. But Anglo-Saxon justice has established
the principle that the worst criminal has
a right to be heard in his own defence. Mr.
Smith turned therefore to the bench on his left,
and with the manner of a judge asking the
convicted felon whether he has any statement
to make before sentence is passed, invited
the representatives from Westcott’s to
make response.
Sumner had prepared no speech; he lacked,
moreover, as he would himself assert, all talent
for impromptu oratory. But he could tell a plain
story with candor and simplicity, and there spoke
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
in his tones an honest conviction, which
would inspire belief if the listening ears were attuned
to such a voice. He denied with all the
vigor he could put into words that Westcott’s
had bought or stolen or had any previous knowledge
of the Newbury signals. Callahan had
approached one of the Westcott players and
offered to betray the signals, but Westcott’s had
scorned the offer. The address which the Newbury
spy had discovered was thrown away, not
dropped. In the game Westcott’s had learned
a few signals by listening to them as they were
given by the Newbury quarter, but before the
game began, they had absolutely no knowledge
of the signals to be used by their opponents.
“I should like to know, then, how it happened
that it was the old signals, not the new ones, that
you found out,” began Newbold, savagely, as
Sumner dropped back into his seat.
“If that was the case,” answered Sumner,
“it was merely chance. All we got was three or
four numbers for holes.”
Newbold sniffed. “I should like to ask something
else, too,” he continued. “You’ve played
football and you know what the excitement
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
is in a game. Do you think it is an easy thing
to detect a lot of unknown signals while the game
is going on?”
“No, I don’t,” answered Sumner, calmly, “but
you could get a few if they were given as openly
as yours were.”
“They weren’t given openly!”
At this point, perhaps in the interest of peace,
Mr. Snyder interposed with a question. “What
has Callahan to say about this? Have you his
statement?”
Sumner recounted the futile efforts which
Westcott’s had made to induce the coach to give
evidence, not concealing the fact that Callahan
now denied that he had offered any signals
at all.
At this frank admission Newbold gave vent
to a nervous titter of derision. President John
smiled contemptuously. “Your stories do not
hang together, Mr. Sumner,” he said.
“One story is ours and the other is Callahan’s,”
answered Sumner, quickly. “They can’t hang
together if Callahan lies.”
Pete whispered into Sumner’s ear, “Ask Thorne
about it!”
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
“Ask him yourself!”
Talbot got upon his feet. “We’ve been answering
questions for a while, now I think it’s our
turn to ask a few. I want Thorne to tell us
whether we recognized any signals on his side of
the line.”
“Yes,” answered Thorne.
“How many?”
“I am sure of one, the play outside tackle.”
“Was it in the first or last part of the game?”
“The last.”
“Was it an old signal or a new one?”
“A new one.”
“I think he’s mistaken about that,” cried
Newbold, and he applied himself immediately
with angry exhortations to his colleague’s ear.
Thorne reddened under the attack, but did not
retreat.
“You see, it was just as Sumner said,” commented
Talbot, addressing the central bench.
“We picked up a few signals during the game.
Callahan couldn’t have given us that tackle signal,
if we had asked him.”
“Unfortunately it isn’t a question of one signal,
but of many,” said President John, quickly.
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
“You ask us to believe what the football experts
assure us is impossible.”
“If you have a fool quarter-back, anything is
possible,” retorted Talbot. “When three plays
out of four in succession are sent at the same hole
with only a slight alteration in the signal, a fellow
must be an idiot not to guess what the signal
means!” Pete stopped short there, for Sumner
pulled him down.
“We didn’t do that!” snapped Newbold.
Again Mr. Snyder interfered. “I think we
may as well vote now,” he said. “We have heard
both sides.”
“Yes, vote!” muttered Talbot. “That’s what
we’re here for! It’s no use to waste time on the
truth if you’ve already made up your minds not
to accept it.” The words were spoken too low
to carry distinctly, a prudence which must be
credited to the restraining influence of Sumner’s
clutch upon the speaker’s knee.
“We will take the vote then,” announced the
chairman, in accents of genuine relief; but he
added immediately, “Unless some one has additional
evidence to present or questions to ask.”
“I think further discussion would be unprofitable,”
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
said Mr. Snyder, quickly. “Newbury
has made a charge and Westcott’s has denied it.
It only remains for us to give our decision.”
To this sentiment the general silence gave
consent.
.bn 149.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII || THE COMMITTEE DECIDES
.sp 2
President John had his ballots ready. “I
will distribute blank slips of paper,” he said,
“and Mr. Frost will kindly gather up the votes.
Those who think that the protest should be sustained
will write ‘Yes’ upon their ballots, the
others will write ‘No.’”
He descended from his throne and paraded
along the line, distributing blank ballots with a
great show of solemnity. Those which he put
into the hands of the Newbury delegates could
hardly be called blank, as they had the word “Yes”
written clearly upon them. The great chief was
determined to reduce the chances of error to a
minimum. Presently Frost gathered up the
momentous tickets and delivered them into the
hands of the chairman.
“Four to two against us!” whispered Talbot,
as Mr. Smith began to separate the ballots. A
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
squeeze upon his knee was all the answer Sumner
vouchsafed. An instant after, they were both
intently watching the president, across whose
face, bent eagerly over the desk, swept an expression
of astonishment and indignation.
“I think there has been a misunderstanding
here,” he said slowly, as he lifted his eyes to the
occupants of the Newbury bench. Newbold returned
his look with a stare of fright and curiosity,
but Thorne was gazing out of the window. “On
one ballot ‘Yes’ had been first written and afterwards
changed to ‘No.’ It is possible that
I did not make myself entirely clear. I think we
had better take another vote.” And he repeated
once more the conditions of the balloting.
This time all the slips given out were blank.
Thorne wrote his, holding it in front of him in the
palm of his hand. Newbold peeped over his
shoulder, uttered an exclamation and snatched
at the ballot, but Thorne repulsed him with a
quick uplift of the elbow and dropped the vote
in the hat. The chairman sorted the ballots in
feverish haste, his cheeks dark with gathering
wrath. Then, rising to his feet, he darted a furious
glance at Thorne, who met it bravely.
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
“The protest is not sustained,” he announced
with an effort at calmness.
“What is the vote?” asked Frost.
The chairman made unwilling answer, “Five
to one.”
Pete’s hand fell with a resounding slap on
Sumner’s shoulder. “Five to one!” he whispered,
exultant; “Thorne voted with us! Isn’t
he a corker to do that?”
“Five to one,” repeated Mr. Snyder. “It is
too bad it couldn’t have been unanimous. I
should like to say before we separate that this
whole affair seems to me in the highest degree
ill-advised and unfortunate. Unless we respect
each other sufficiently to trust in each other’s
honesty and honor, we have no right to be leagued
together. To encourage accusations like these
we have heard to-day without incontrovertible
proofs to support them is in itself an act of treachery
to the League. I hope we shall never be compelled
to discuss such a question again.”
The meeting was over. President John was
jerking on his coat and savagely stamping his
feet into his overshoes. Sumner and Talbot,
having exchanged congratulatory grips, were
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
pouring out fervent expressions of gratitude to
their friends from Trowbridge, who had believed
them honest men, not liars and cheats. At the
moment of adjournment Thorne had taken his
hat, and without a word to friend or foe, had slipped
through the door. Newbold, following closely
after, overtook him in the hall.
“That’s right! Run away and hide yourself,
you traitor!” shouted the captain, his voice
trembling with rage.
Thorne swung sharply round. “I’m not hiding
from you, anyway,” he said coolly. “What have
you got to say about it?”
“I say you’re a disgrace to the school. First
you threw us by letting on that that tackle signal
was a new one, and then you voted against us,
against your own school!”
“I told the truth, and I voted for what I thought
was right!”
“What you thought was right!” sneered Newbold.
“You voted that way just to get in with
those Westcott fellows, that’s what you did it for.
But you won’t succeed. No one respects a traitor,
least of all those who use him!”
This was a shot which wounded, not because
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
it was true, but because it suggested a despicable
motive for an act prompted solely by scruples of
conscience. Thorne started as if pricked by a
pin.
“That’s a lie, Tom Newbold, and you know
it!” he flung back hotly, advancing a step toward
his assailant. “I’m not trying to get in with
any one, not even with you. I did it because I
believe in getting games by winning ’em, not by
stealing ’em.”
The captain clenched his fists and glared. “You
won’t get the chance to win any more on my team,
I can tell you that. No team is big enough to
hold us two, after to-day’s work!”
“All right!” returned Thorne, who had recovered
his self-control. “I’ll consider myself fired.”
On escaping from the council chamber, Talbot
spent half a dollar of precious allowance money
in telephoning to various people the happy result
of the meeting. Later, he went home and devoted
the hour before dinner to composing a letter to
Thorne, which should express his admiration of
Thorne’s honesty and courage. It was a difficult
letter to write, because it was necessary to praise
Thorne without condemning his schoolmates,
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
for Thorne was not one to listen with pleasure to
abuse of his associates by an outsider. As Thorne
did not answer this letter, Talbot concluded that
he must have bungled it.
In fact, Talbot’s honest eulogy was one of the
influences which enabled Thorne to face the unpleasantness
of the next two days at school with
head high and colors flying. He did not answer
the letter because under the circumstances he did
not wish to have any correspondence with Westcott’s.
The Newbold party did their best to set
the ban upon him in school, to brand him as a
traitor and expose him to public contempt. The
means employed to accomplish this purpose, the
misrepresentation, the distorted version of the
proceedings at the meeting, spread broadcast,
the gathering of an anti-Thorne party by promises
and threats, all might interest us, if it belonged
in the story. It is the result alone that concerns
this narrative. The movement was ill-timed.
After two days of practice with a substitute tackle
in Thorne’s position, the practical politicians
forced the hands of the extremists. On the morning
of the Trowbridge-Newbury game, Newbold,
driven to the hated course by the overwhelming
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
demand of the school, went morosely to Thorne’s
house to ask him to forgive and forget and take
his old place in the game.
It was too late; Thorne had gone out of town
with his father for the day. So Newbury fared to
Trowbridge, spiritless through dissensions, and
weakened by the absence of the best defensive
player in school. Trowbridge met them with a
fresh, well-fused eleven, opposed harmony and
dash to disunion and blind resistance, got the
jump on their adversaries in the line three times
out of four, made first downs through the weak
tackles almost at will,--and piled up three touch-downs
while Newbury was securing one lucky goal
from the field.
Alderman Skillen left the field in the middle of
the second half, disgusted with football and those
who had fanned his interest in it. When the score
reached seventeen, President John followed the
alderman’s example. Newbold, having suffered
the humiliation of defeat on the field, returned to
school to face cold looks and hear contemptuous
comments, and to see Thorne treated as a victim
of jealousy who might have saved the day if he
had only been allowed to play.
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
But the worst blow was dealt in the meeting for
the election of next year’s captain, when the team
not only rejected Newbold’s candidate--Newbold
himself was a senior--but actually elected
Thorne by a seventy per cent vote. And the
fickle school loudly acclaimed the choice.
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV || THE TROWBRIDGE GAME
.sp 2
To Sumner more than to any one else of the
Westcott School was due the fine spirit of caution
and determination with which the eleven faced
the momentous game with Trowbridge. He had
not slackened for a moment his devotion to the
team from which, according to Stover, he had
been ignominiously fired. He had watched the
Trowbridge-Newbury contest with a sharp eye and
an open note-book. The newspapers remarked
after the game that Trowbridge had gained on end
runs and tackle plays and lost on kicks; and that
Ricker, the Trowbridge back, was the star of the
game. Sumner had not been content with any
such general impressions. He had observed how
the plays were started behind the line, what holes
were relied on for emergencies, who was most likely
to fumble punts, and in precisely what way Ricker’s
interference formed and hit the line. During
the last week of practice, his second team was an
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
imitation Trowbridge, with Trowbridge end runs
and genuine Ricker dashes. The Ricker of the
Westcott second was alumnus Bill Ellery, Harvard
junior, who could cover the two-twenty in twenty-three,
and started like a deer. Two active old
Westcottites from across the Charles personated
Trowbridge tackles, and another guarded right
end. Yards practiced his linesmen in breaking
straight through, with a spring and a dart and a
slap of the open hand against the opponent’s
headguard; he forced them to make gripping
tackles on the slippery dummy; he taught them
how to master, not to kill, the men in front of
them; he furnished practicable plays adapted to
the powers of the team, and drilled the players in
signals until obedience was automatic--but it
was Sumner who prepared them for Ricker and
the deceptive end runs.
“This last week’s work has been the best of all,”
said Yards, the evening before the game. “If
Pete’s knee holds out, we ought to be able to put
up a pretty good offence, and Sumner’s second has
developed our defence wonderfully.”
“And he won’t even make his W!” lamented
Harrison.
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
“No, he won’t!” answered Yards, who could
afford to be outspoken now that the end of the
season was at hand. “On every point of the game
McDowell is better.”
“Then you don’t think there’s any chance for
Jack to get in?” asked Harrison, wistfully.
Yards shook his head. “Not unless Mac is
laid out or we get a big lead.”
.if h
.il fn=i160.jpg w=428px
.ca
Regular Westcott Defence--Open
(Outside thirty-yard line)
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in +8
.ti -4
[Illustration:Regular Westcott Defence--Open
(Outside thirty-yard line)]
.in 0
.if-
Harrison smiled feebly at the sarcasm of this last
suggestion. There was about as much chance of
getting a big lead on Trowbridge as that Mac would
make half a dozen goals from the field or that
Bumpus would find big Hubbard an easy victim;
while it was quite within the range of probability
that Pete would injure his knee again and deprive
the team of its only good punter, or that some
accident would befall Eaton or Hardie or some
other strong player whose place no one could fill.
Subconsciously he shared the view prevalent in
school that Trowbridge was likely to win, though
he did not admit the possibility even to himself.
He had never wholly approved the system of open
defence which Yards had adopted from the Harvard
theorists. To one used to a solid line of
bodies before the ball it seemed a reckless scheme
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
to pull the centre out of his place and put him
behind the line, thus leaving open, in the wall of
defence, an avenue wide enough for a cart. He
could see that this method of resistance strengthened
the wings, through which the longest gains are
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
made, and rendered it possible to keep two backs
in reserve for on-side kicks and forward passes;
but would not this open highway through centre
furnish an easy route for heavy plunges? Yards
maintained that if Ford and the guards would
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
but watch the play carefully, the gains through
centre could be made unprofitably small; yet Harrison’s
doubts, though unuttered, were none the
less real.
.if h
.il fn=i161.jpg w=431px
.ca
Regular Trowbridge Defence--Closed
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration:Regular Trowbridge Defence--Closed]
.if-
Roger Hardie’s heart was beating quick with
eagerness to get into the play, when Talbot opened
the game by sending the ball spinning down to
the lower corner of the field. Cowles took it on the
bounce, and had worked it back fifteen yards
before he ran into Eaton’s arms. Through the
centre highway Ricker pushed for five yards before
Ford and Talbot reached him and brought
him down. Another assault at the same place
gave a first down. The open defence was showing
its weak side. Then they sought a hole outside
Bumpus, but Bumpus got free and threw
the runner into Talbot’s hands. Another dash at
centre yielded two yards, and with five to gain
Cowles punted. Mac took the ball safely on his
thirty-yard line, and sent Horr twice against the
Trowbridge right flank behind Eaton and Hardie,
each time gaining five yards; and Bradford once
just inside Harrison, who, tugging with Tracy
and supported by Talbot behind, dragged the
runner eight yards before the Trowbridge men
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
pulled him down. A tandem through right
guard yielded a first down. After that an end
run was blocked with the loss of a yard through
the quickness of the Trowbridge tackle, and Mac
decided to kick.
Pete’s punt, which was got off so quickly that
the defence was hardly ready for it, went diagonally
down the field, and, by rolling out at
the Trowbridge thirty-yard line, prevented any
running back. Trowbridge tried an end run
from a fake kick, but Harrison was not deceived,
and threw the runner behind the line. Then
recourse was had to punting once more, but the
back was slow in getting off his kick, and Bumpus,
who had slapped his way through the line and
leaped wildly in the air in the path of the ball,
took it on his chest and beat it down to the
ground. Three men threw themselves at it as it
struck, and buried it deep under struggling brown
bodies; but the one who lay closest to it, hugging
it ecstatically in his arms, proved to be the Westcott
left end.
The wave of the referee’s hand which moved
the measurers down was the signal for shrill
whoops from the excited band of youngsters in
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
the Westcott cheering section. Sumner on the
side-lines flung his arms about the coach in a
transport of delight.
“Our ball on the fifteen-yard line!” he cried
jubilantly. “We’ve got ’em now!”
“Don’t be too sure,” answered Yards, who,
though just as eager, had himself under better
control. “It’s a hard fifteen yards to cover.”
The players were in position now, nerved for
the great struggle. Behind their forwards, the
Trowbridge backs stood in a line of three. Each
linesman recognized that the success or failure
of the next play might depend on the quickness
with which he leaped. The signal which rang
out in Mac’s clear, sharp voice called for a tandem
play between left tackle and guard, with Talbot
carrying the ball. Eaton, straining to get the
jump on his antagonist, moved before the ball,
and was off side. The umpire blew his horn; the
referee counted back five yards; the lines formed
again.
“O dear!” groaned Sumner. “What’ll he do
now?--I believe he’s going to try a drop!”
“It’s a fake,” said Yards, composedly. “He’d
try another down if he meant to do that.”
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
McDowell was back holding out his hands, the
backs had taken the formation for interference.
Ford passed, but it was Talbot who received the
ball and made a short, quick kick over the right
side of the line. Harrison charged after it with
all his speed, but Ricker beat him in the sprint,
took the ball on the bounce, and ran round the
Westcott captain for a gain of fifteen yards before
Talbot forced him out of bounds.
From his chagrin at this failure Sumner was
aroused by a loud chuckle of mirth close behind
him. He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes
met the exultant gaze of President John.
“Wasted his chance,” remarked the dignitary,
with an oily grin of recognition. “I’m afraid
he won’t get another.” Sumner nodded and
moved down the line.
And now the Trowbridge men, taking courage
from their escape, began to put new life into their
play. Ricker shot through centre and squirmed
forward ten yards. His second attempt was
blocked by Ford and Channing after a short gain.
Then a trick was sprung; the guards, tackles,
and ends moved out suddenly six paces, leaving
the centre all alone before the ball, with a great
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
space on either side of him. The movement
was supposed first to confuse the enemy, then
to draw them out of position so as to leave a
big hole near the centre, or to furnish a close interference
for a run at end. But the Westcott rushers,
having had experience with this very play as
practiced by Sumner’s eleven, took it coolly as
a matter of course, went through evenly along
the line, and downed the dangerous Ricker before
he got well under way. On the third
down Trowbridge tried a forward pass on a
crisscross formation, but Horr blocked off the
end, and the ball, striking the ground, fell
once more to Westcott’s. McDowell wasted a
down in a fruitless effort to push Bradford
through centre, and Horr fumbled. Trowbridge
made seven yards and kicked, Talbot punted
back, and for ten minutes the play oscillated between
the thirty-yard lines.
At last--it seemed to Sumner that the half
must be nearly at an end--a rash attempt on
the part of Trowbridge to gain four yards after a
third down gave Westcott’s the ball fifty yards
from their opponents’ goal. Mac, who had by
this time “sized up” the Trowbridge defence,
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
now ceased experimenting, and applied his whole
mental power to the task of matching the strong
points of his team against the weaknesses of the
foe. On the defence, Trowbridge played the
centre in the line, with but a single line half-back.
The Westcott quarter brought his end over, and
drove his backs outside tackle and outside end,
now on the short side, now on the long, gaining
satisfactory distances at each stroke. Presently
a second Trowbridge back came up to support
the line, leaving the back-field clear. Mac recognized
this opportunity for a forward pass, and
seized it. Pete’s long spiral throw fell into Eaton’s
hands on the enemy’s twenty-yard line. It was
a close shave, for Cowles was upon him as he leaped
for the ball, but Eaton held it, though he was
thrown hard. A crash through centre, a skin-tackle
play, a split play on a delayed pass, and
Westcott’s brought up at the third down on the
Trowbridge thirteen-yard line with three yards
to gain, the enemy’s linesmen on their knees, and
their whole back-field pushed up to support them.
But two minutes remained. If the ball were
lost now, the opportunity to score would go.
Harrison shouted a signal from his end. McDowell
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
nodded, and fell back to a kicking position,
giving his signals clearly as he went.
“Look out for an on-side kick!” yelled the Trowbridge
captain. “Get through on them now!”
While he spoke, the ball went back. The line
in the centre swerved, but held; the Trowbridge
ends, followed by the tackles, swooped down upon
the waiting quarter, but the Westcott backs
blocked them off from the danger zone. Mac
got his drop away safely, and, holding his breath,
watched the ball floating upward beyond the
reach of human hands. It crossed the bar three
feet inside the post.
The play during the rest of the half was comprehended
in two kicks. Trowbridge sent the
ball on the kick-off deep into Westcott territory;
and Talbot on the first down punted it far back.
Sumner, dancing with joy round Mike and the
water pail, found himself again in the presence of
the lord of the league.
“What about that chance that wasn’t coming?”
he asked, with a sudden accession of friendliness.
“The game isn’t over,” answered President
John, sourly. “A single touch-down will wipe
that gain out.”
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
At the dressing rooms the usual discussion of
the developments of the game was going forward.
The bedraggled players, their mud-streaked faces
aglow with hope, lay stretched on the floor about
the coach, listening eagerly to his last directions.
In one corner, Duane, of the Harvard Second,
was explaining to Bumpus how, by proper use of
his knee, he could hold Hubbard on the offence
at least a second longer. Yards, having finished
his general exhortation, drew McDowell aside
to talk over with him the strategy of the second
half, which was, in brief, to play safely, keep
the ball in opponents’ territory, and watch for
chances.
“If we hold them well, you’ll put in Sumner
at the last, won’t you?” Mac asked.
“Not with the score three to nothing,” answered
Yards, quickly.
“If we should make a touch-down, then?”
persisted Mac.
The coach hesitated a moment before replying,
but when he spoke, there was no uncertainty
in his words. “It wouldn’t be safe. Sumner is
a good fellow, and he’s worked hard for the team,
but we’re playing the game to win, not to give
.bn 170.png
.pn +1
good fellows a chance to make their W’s. I
sha’n’t take any risks.”
The Westcott players trotted forth at the call,
determined to make at the outset such a show of
power and dash as would put Trowbridge immediately
on the defensive. The Trowbridge
rushers strung out across the field on a line with
the ball. Westcott’s took the usual defensive
positions, the centre ten yards back from the ball,
the guards flanking him, but behind, the tackles
outside the guards and still farther back. Cowles
ran forward for his kick-off, but instead of driving
the ball to the limit of his powers down the field,
he sent it with a little stab of his foot diagonally
across toward the side-line. It struck the line
outside the Westcott left guard. Bumpus, perplexed
at the unexpected play, hesitated a moment
before he leaped for the ball. His hesitation cost
his side dear, for two Trowbridge rushers crashed
into him before he had taken three steps, and the
Trowbridge end flung himself on the ball just
ahead of Eaton, who pounced upon him like a
wild beast upon his prey. Trowbridge had gained
the ball on Westcott’s forty-yard line!
Sumner’s heart was like lead, as he saw the
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
Trowbridge line open in wide gaps for a trick play.
If the Westcott rushers lost their heads now, there
was no hope for the team. But a line that sifts
evenly through, with each man keeping well
within his own territory, is a hard line to work
tricks upon; and a strong, aggressive tackle is a
dangerous obstacle to end plays. The Westcott
line did sift evenly through, and Eaton was a good
tackle--so good, indeed, that he burst straight
into the Trowbridge interference, and, hooking
the runner with a long reach, swung him directly
into Hardie’s arms. The next play, which was
directed at the open centre, was spoiled by
Bumpus, who burned to retrieve himself, before
it had advanced three yards. Then, with six
yards to gain, Cowles drew back for a kick.
“Fake!” shouted Harrison. “Look out for a
forward pass!”
His warning proved false; it served only to
check his own line, and give Cowles a better opportunity
to get off his kick. He punted high
and with such splendid accuracy that the ball fell
at the Westcott six-yard line. McDowell stood
under it as it came down, holding his hand high
aloft and claiming the privilege of a fair catch.
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
All about him thronged the menacing Trowbridge
forwards, ready to seize the ball and carry it
across the line should Mac fail to hold it.
“I’m glad I’m not there!” thought the anxious
Sumner. “I’d fumble it sure! If it should slip
out of his hands, now--”
But it didn’t. As calmly as if he were in mid
field with no one near to disturb him, Mac gathered
in the descending ball and heeled his mark.
Twenty seconds later Pete’s long punt rolled out
at the Westcott forty-five-yard line.
Again Westcott’s held Trowbridge to a seven-yards
gain in two downs, and Trowbridge, as a
last resort, tried a complicated forward pass;
but Tracy worked through on the end who had
come round to make the pass, and threw him
before he could complete it. Now, for the first
time during the half, the Westcott lads took the
offence, though Mac still preferred to rely on
Talbot’s foot. Down sailed the ball to the Trowbridge
twenty-yard line, only to be kicked back
beyond the centre of the field a few minutes later.
Here for some minutes the play wavered within
the neutral zone. On the exchange of punts
there was little advantage except that gained by
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
.if h
.il fn=i173.jpg w=327px id=i173
.ca
Swung him directly into Hardie’s arms.
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration:Swung him directly into Hardie’s arms.]
.if-
Hardie and Harrison as they dodged down the
field under the kicks, and nailed the receiver of
the ball at his first step; but on the rushes Westcott’s
covered more ground, and the play gradually
drew near the Trowbridge end of the field.
A series of successful line plunges had brought
the Westcott offence to the Trowbridge twenty-yard
line, when the referee announced at the
third down that four yards of the necessary ten
were still lacking. Mac conferred with Harrison,
and, falling back to the kicking position, knelt
at Talbot’s side. The quarter caught Ford’s
pass, but instead of placing the ball for a kick,
he waited until the Trowbridge men were sweeping
down upon him, when he passed to Talbot, who
threw the ball in a long spiral that bored its way
through the air far over the left side of the line.
Hardie was ready to receive it, and so was Ricker.
They came together with a shock, but Ricker
was short and Roger tall, and the Westcott man
clutched the ball over his rival’s head, as the
latter tumbled him to the ground. The eight
yards to the goal line Pete covered in two downs.
Sumner did not see the goal kicked; he was
coasting along the side-lines in search of his friend
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
Smith. He found him at last, just as the elevens
were changing ends, standing alone near the corner
of the field.
“Great game, sir!” offered Sumner, politely.
“I call it a very poor game,” answered President
John, staring straight before him. “That
Trowbridge line is rotten.”
“It’s hard to understand how they could beat
Newbury seventeen to three,” remarked Sumner,
cheerfully. “About time enough left for another
touch-down, isn’t there?”
Smith made no reply to this question, unless a
scowl and an unintelligible exclamation could be
construed as a reply. But even thus Sumner
seemed to consider the conversation worth while,
for as he hurried back to the side of the Westcott
coach, he was bubbling with glee.
With the score nine to nothing and the game
nearly over, there seemed no serious doubt as to
the outcome. So thought Mac, at least, when
Harrison recovered the ball on a fumble near his
fifty-yard line, and Pete punted down close to the
Trowbridge goal. It was high time that Sumner
should appear if he was to be sent into the game
at all, but Yards made no move to send him. Mac
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
considered the matter at intervals, while he stood
far back waiting for his friends in the line to gain
possession of the ball. The result of his consideration
was to arouse in his mind the suspicion that
Yards was working, not for a safe victory, but
for a score which would leave no doubt as to the
success of his coaching.
“Jack deserves a chance, and he is going to get
it!” muttered Mac to himself. “If it can’t
come one way, it shall another.”
The Westcott defence had just thrown back
another attempt at a skin-tackle play, and Harrison
signalled to his quarter to be ready for a
kick. Mac was under the ball when it came down,
and slipping by the end, zigzagged a dozen yards
up the field before he succumbed to two hard
Trowbridge tacklers. Ford came puffing back and
took the ball from his hand; but Mac, instead of
scrambling to his feet and calling out his signals
as the team gathered, remained squirming on the
ground.
“What’s the matter?” asked Harrison, anxiously,
as he knelt beside him.
“My right ankle!” groaned Mac, twisting his
face into an expression of frightful pain.
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
Time was called; Mike appeared with his water
pail and sponge, closely followed by Yards. Together
they rubbed the injured joint, while Mac
writhed and moaned.
“How much time is left?” he asked.
“Three minutes.”
“I’ll see if I can stand.”
Yards and Harrison lifted the sufferer to his
feet. He took a step with his right foot, rested
his weight on it,--and went down in a heap.
“Do you think it’s broken?” asked the coach
in alarm.
“I guess not,” replied Mac, transforming a grin
into a grimace, “but you’ll have to send Jack in.”
Yards called for Sumner, and the maimed quarter
went hobbling off the field, supported by Yards
and Louis Tracy, and saluted by a booming salvo
from the graduates, and an impassioned cheer
from the schoolboy section. Yards proposed to
send him directly to the dressing rooms and call
in a physician, but Mac pleaded piteously to be
allowed to see the game out. So he stood at the
side-lines, leaning on Louis’s shoulder.
“We should have made another touch-down if
you hadn’t got hurt,” said the coach, in a resentful
.bn 179.png
.pn +1
tone, as Horr at the first signal was pushed
through outside Ben Tracy for a gain of five yards.
“We had ’em on the run.”
“Jack will do just as well,” answered Mac,
calmly. “He’s better on the offence than I
am.”
In truth, Sumner had the advantage over Mac
in some respects. He was heavier, he got into
the plays better, and he profited by his close
study of the game from the side-lines. The team
reacted to a fresh voice, while Sumner’s strength,
applied at the critical instant, helped to break
the resistance and roll the wedge along. Outside
guard, outside tackle, around the end, changing
his attack from side to side, Sumner pushed his
backs to a first down, to another, to a third.
Then, when the Trowbridge secondary defence
concentrated close behind the line, he worked a
forward pass himself, running backward to make
sure of his throw, and delivering the ball safely
into Tracy’s hands. Westcott’s was on the Trowbridge
ten-yard line, pressing hotly forward, when
the referee’s whistle put an end to the game.
Mac lingered on the side-lines, waiting for an
opportunity to congratulate Sumner on his playing.
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
As they walked together to the dressing
rooms, escorted by a half-dozen admiring youngsters,
the injured quarter forgot to limp. Close
by the entrance Yards accosted them.
“You ran the team finely, Sumner,” he exclaimed,
with radiant face. Then, suddenly recalling
Mac’s misfortune, he turned upon him and
demanded, “How’s that ankle?”
“It seems all right now,” replied Mac, with an
abrupt lapse from his gayety.
Yards gave him a sharp glance, and his eyes
darkened ominously. “I believe you--” he
began, but the beseeching look on Mac’s face
checked him. “I’m glad it’s no worse,” he
finished lamely.
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV || DUNN’S DISAPPOINTMENTS
.sp 2
Jubilation and swaggering self-satisfaction
reigned triumphant at Westcott’s Monday morning.
Certain small boys who had acquired a
habit of arriving half an hour before the time of
opening so as to have opportunity, before the
advent of interfering teachers, for tag through
the play room and up the stairs, found their
numbers doubled. Instead of scampering wildly
off like frolicsome kittens, they gathered in solid
clusters at their end of the big schoolroom and
exchanged opinions and reminiscences, sprinkling
their conversation richly with comments like
“Wasn’t it great when Mac made that goal!”
“Did you see Fat Bumpus slide on his nose?”
“I was dead scared that time when Trowbridge
got down to our ten-yard line!” “The paper
said--” “Papa thought--” and so on, in a
series that developed itself by arithmetical progression.
Richard Sumner, who had a gift for
.bn 182.png
.pn +1
drawing, spent ten minutes, hedged in by a semicircle
of admirers and supervised by Mike, in
chalking on the board a splendid figure of a
plunging half-back, armed cap-a-pie, which he
reproduced by memory from a magazine cover.
The breast of his player rampant he covered
with a huge W, and underneath he printed in neat
characters the score by games. When this was
done, Mike produced a list of an All-Triangular
eleven, which he had elaborated over Sunday,
and defended with a great show of expert knowledge
the right of seven Westcottites to a place
thereon.
Then the older boys came in a bunch, driven
in by the cold from the corner outside. They
took places in the alcove that commanded the
street, on watch for the members of the team as
they arrived. Each one as he appeared was
signalled at a distance, and hailed by name and
applause as he entered the room. Harrison, of
course, received a prolonged salvo, but Talbot,
Eaton, and Hardie were welcomed almost as
heartily, while Bumpus’s bruised face, and Mac’s
complacent grin, called forth a special demonstration.
Last of all Sumner was seen, hurrying
.bn 183.png
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late across the street, and an original salutation
that would be sure to rattle him was suggested
by Wilmot--but the bell rang and spoiled it all.
At noon, by general agreement, ten minutes were
taken from recess and another ten from recitation,--a
phenomenal concession on the part of Mr.
Westcott,--speeches were made, and the school
cheered their throats and enthusiasm out. It was
a new experience for Roger Hardie to hear the
leader call his name, and to feel in the wholehearted
volley, to read in the enthusiastic faces
bent upon him, that he was accounted worthy
the gratitude of the school; and his content was
not lessened by the fact that he had gained his
place, against the general expectation, by his own
merit. Yet proudly happy though he was in the
consciousness of a certain success achieved, he
felt no temptation to that silly vanity which is too
often the result of public praise, and transforms a
reasonably attractive boy into a bumptious,
overweening cad. There was a reason for this,
other than natural modesty. Roger had conceived
a new ambition--to row on a school
crew. Here again he stood at the foot of a ladder.
To gain a place he must push ahead of a dozen
.bn 184.png
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others whose experience gave them a right to
laugh at his pretensions.
Dunn cheered with the rest, but every “rah”
which he forced himself to utter cost him as much
effort as a line of Virgil dug out with a vocabulary.
He had been badly frightened by the incident of
the Newbury protest. The upper school had held
him in a measure responsible for the false position
in which they found themselves--most unjustly,
Dunn maintained, since he had been but the
bearer of a message. Certain persons, more frank
than polite, had said unpleasant things in his
hearing; his closest friends had for a time been
cool toward him. When, with the decision of
the committee, the cloud passed, Dunn plucked
up spirit again, and for the last week of football
practice really tried hard to retrieve his reputation.
He succeeded so far, indeed, that Harrison
held out hopes to him of getting into the Trowbridge
game in the second half, if things went
well. But things did not go well, at least from
Dunn’s point of view, for at no time during the
game had Yards considered it safe to exchange
the steady, clear-headed, hard-tackling end for a
substitute of doubtful quality. So Dunn was left
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
minus the coveted W, and plus a strong conviction
that he had been ill-used. It was not easy
for him to forgive Hardie for robbing him of his
place and gaining the opportunity to achieve a
triumph which Dunn felt sure he could have
achieved just as well. Equally unpalatable was
the fact that Hardie seemed to be established on
good terms with the influential set, of which Talbot,
Sumner, Wilmot, and Trask formed the solid
centre. On the other hand, while there were
many whom Dunn called his friends, no one
showed any great liking for his society except Ben
Tracy and Stover, neither of whom was able to
help him along toward that popularity for which
his heart yearned. His poor recitation work also
seemed to count against him in this strange school
in which the boys actually held it the proper thing
to work on lessons, and while they pretended to
make light of low marks, at bottom despised a
numskull. Can we wonder, then, that the disdain
with which Dunn first regarded his quiet housemate,
Hardie, should have turned to envy?
That afternoon Roger went down town with
McDowell to buy their football hatbands--a
white background striped three times with blue,
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
the outer stripes wide, the inner one narrow.
McDowell took his hat off as they emerged from
the shop, and gave the new decoration a long
look of admiration, regardless of the jostling
crowd. “It’s not so pretty as the crew band
that Pete wears,” he said slowly, “but I’d a lot
rather have it. It means something.”
“So does the crew mean something,” answered
Roger. “It means more than any band there is.
Only a few fellows can get it, and at least a dozen
can sport football bands.--Put on your dip,
you lunatic. They’ll think you’re crazy!”
Mac replaced his hat, pressing it down carefully
on his hair, and giving the brim a downward tilt.
“The second crew get bands if they win their
race,” he said; “that’s eight, and the two coxswains
make ten.”
“But they don’t all get crew W’s. Only five
fellows in the school have a right to them. I’d
rather wear a band as a member of the first crew,
if it were just one dirty yellow streak, than have
both baseball and football combined.”
Mac laughed. “Why don’t you, then? All
you have to do is to make the crew.”
“You can’t make the crew just by coming out
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
for it. You’ve got to know how to row, and it
takes lots of practice to learn. There isn’t any
chance for an inexperienced man, with six or
eight old fellows in school who have all had a year
or more of it.”
“Isn’t there?” answered Mac, absently. He was
looking about him at the faces hurrying past,
wondering that no one seemed to mark the significant
symbol that he bore. Just then a small
boy in knickerbockers and light top-coat, wearing
a flat hat with white band edged with blue--the
regular Westcott hatband--appeared in
front of them. He caught sight of the new bands,
glanced at the faces below, smiled, and, stopping
short in the crowd, fixed his gaze upon them, revolving
in his tracks as they passed. Here was one
who knew the token.
It is ever thus. The small boy looks up with
veneration to the wearer of the school letter.
The school athlete admires the member of a freshman
team; the freshman adores the varsity captain
who has so long worn the stately letter that
it has quite lost its glamor. The varsity captain
thinks chiefly of the task which he has taken upon
his shoulders, and admires only some lucky captain
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
before him who won his race or his Yale game,
or some frail, pretty, unathletic girl whose weakness
her schoolboy brother flouts. So the chain
is looped.
“Who was that?” asked Roger.
“Stanley Hale,” answered Mac, with a grin.
“The football band is good enough for him.--But
why isn’t your chance for the crew as good as
any one’s? Pete’s a friend of yours.”
“That’s just it: for that reason he wouldn’t
put me on unless he had to. But what’s the use
of talking about it? I shall be lucky to get on
to the river at all.”
That night Louis Tracy appeared at the
dinner-table a little late. “Did you get your
bid for the Fridays, Ben?” he asked, turning
to his cousin as he unfolded his napkin.
“I’ve got one.”
Ben nodded. “Mine came this afternoon.”
“I got mine this morning,” said Cable.
“So did I,” announced Roger, who was feeling
particularly happy. Talbot’s brother had procured
him a good seat for the Yale-Harvard game,
and Sumner had got his name put on the list for
the dancing class.
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
Dunn looked up inquiringly. “What’s that?”
he demanded. “I didn’t get anything.”
“Just the Friday dancing class at the Crofton,”
said Ben, carelessly. “A good many of the fellows
go.”
Dunn pondered a few seconds, then blurted
out, “How do you get into the thing?”
“I was on the list last year,” replied Ben.
“So was I,” said Cable, answering a look from
Dunn.
“My Aunt Mary got me my invitation,” Louis
Tracy explained.
There was a moment of silence which to some
at the table seemed a bit awkward; but Dunn,
who was determined to probe the matter to the
bottom, pushed boldly on. “How did you work
it, Hardie?”
“Mine came through Mrs. Sumner. She is
one of the patronesses. Jack asked me last
week whether I’d like one, and I jumped at the
chance.”
At this point Mrs. Adams interposed a new
topic of conversation, and the tongues were soon
flying at the usual rate over a safe course; but
Dunn’s voice, commonly the loudest and most
.bn 190.png
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insistent, was only heard when a question was put
directly to him. He ate his dinner in moody
silence, his face darkly clouded. In the middle
of dessert he excused himself, leaving the ice-cream
half eaten on his plate.
“It’s tough on poor Jason to get left out of the
Fridays,” said Cable, as the door closed behind
him.
“What in time did you want to bring it up
for?” exclaimed Ben, turning reproachfully on his
cousin.
“I didn’t think about it,” answered Louis.
“Jason had no business butting in, anyway.”
“He’d have found out about it sooner or later,”
suggested Cable. “We were all as much at fault
as Louis.”
“Can’t you do something to help him out?”
asked Roger. “You might get him an invitation,
Ben, I should think.”
“Well, I can’t,” Ben answered impatiently.
“I don’t run the things, and none of my people
do, either.”
Later in the evening Dunn came into Ben Tracy’s
room and sat down on the bed. “Say, Ben,” he
began, “can’t you help me to get an invitation
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
for that dancing class? I don’t care anything
about the dancing part of it, but it’s going to be
awfully disagreeable to hang round here all
winter and be the only fellow left out. I shall be
ashamed to live.”
Ben didn’t answer. He knew very well that
if he took Dunn’s name to his Aunt Mary, she
would want to know all about the applicant, his
character, appearance, manners, habits, church
relations,--all about his father, mother, relatives,
acquaintances, ancestors, his father’s business
and his grandfather’s. And after her nephew
had undergone the cross-examination, she would
probably refuse to help him and admonish him to
avoid such associations.
“You might try Mr. Westcott,” said Ben,
jumping at a stray idea, as Jason jumped at
answers in the history class. “He could get your
name on the list easily enough.”
“He wouldn’t do it if he could,” answered Dunn,
despondently. “He’s down on me and would be
glad of a chance to sting me and preach at me.
If your Aunt Mary can get one for Louis, she can
get one for me, too. Try her, won’t you? It’ll
be the greatest favor you could do me. I’ll pay
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
it back sometime, I swear I will. Say you will,
please!”
Ben looked hard at the floor. He didn’t want
to say yes, and he hadn’t the heart to say no;
yet something he must say. He lifted his eyes
for a moment to Dunn’s pleading face.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Dunn leaped forward and gripped his hand.
“That’s the way to talk. You can fix it up all
right. I’ll make it good to you some day before
the year is out, ten times over!”
Dunn went back to his own room, leaving his
anxieties behind him. They had settled on unlucky
Ben, who brooded for a long time on the
best way to approach his hypercritical aunt.
When he crawled into bed at last, he was no
nearer a satisfactory conclusion than when Dunn
left him.
“If I ask her and she refuses, Jason will be worse
off than he is now,” he muttered to himself as
sleep crept over him. “I don’t know what to
do!”
He knew no better when he awoke the next
morning. As a result he did nothing at all, except
to pity himself as a victim of unkind fate.
.bn 193.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI || MIKE ADVISES
.sp 2
The next morning--it was the day for election
of a football captain--Roger found Pete and
Jack Sumner in the cloak-room talking earnestly
together. “I want to ask a favor of you fellows,”
he began, as soon as he caught sight of them.
“Everybody out at Adams’s has invitations to
the Fridays, except Dunn. He is awfully cut up
about it.”
“I can’t help it,” said Talbot. “It isn’t my
fault if he doesn’t deserve any.”
“He’s no worse than Snobson and Newgeld,”
insisted Roger. “They both got in.”
“Not with my help,” retorted Talbot. “What
are you bothering about it for? He wouldn’t
do it for you.”
“I don’t care whether he would or not. It just
isn’t a fair deal to leave him out.” Roger turned
to Sumner. “There’s no use talking to Pete;
he’s nothing but a savage. You’ll get it for him,
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
Jack, won’t you? You can work your mother
for it. Think what it would be yourself to be
left out of a thing when all the others are in!”
“Think what it would be to be Dunn,” said
Pete; “that’s a much more horrible thought.”
But Sumner was a friendly soul. “If you’re
really set on it, I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“I shouldn’t want him to commit suicide out at
Adams’s!”
Sumner’s words were exactly those which Ben
Tracy had used to Dunn the evening before, but
his deeds, as will appear later, were wholly different.
Before the football meeting, Talbot suggested
that Horr deserved the captaincy, and would
perhaps make as good a captain as any one else.
Roger assented readily, and cast his vote in accordance
with Pete’s suggestion. With Harrison,
Eaton, Talbot, Sumner, and other boys of
the first class out, there was left little room for
choice. He had not thought of himself as a possible
candidate. When the votes were counted,
and the announcement was made that Horr had
eight votes, Hardie four, with one each for
McDowell and Ben Tracy, Roger felt grateful that
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
four fellows had thought so well of him as to give
him the compliment of their votes, but it did not
occur to him either to question the loyalty of
friends or to wonder why Horr should be preferred
before him.
A day or two later Dunn came to the dinner-table
beaming with joy, and slapped Ben Tracy
hard on the shoulder.
“I’ve got it!” he announced jubilantly. “It’s
all right.”
“Got what?” asked Ben, staring blankly.
The face which for the last forty-eight hours had
reflected nothing but spleen now shone with
satisfaction.
Dunn flourished a square white envelope.
“My invitation for the Fridays. It was just
delayed.”
“Good for you!” exclaimed Cable. “I congratulate
you,” purred Mrs. Adams. Hardie
smiled, but said nothing; Ben Tracy continued to
stare, puzzled to find that some good angel had
relieved him of his unwelcome task.
After dinner Dunn drew Ben into the corner
of the general room, and poured fervent expressions
of gratitude into his ear. “Talbot
.bn 196.png
.pn +1
and Hardie thought they were going to get
me stung,” he exclaimed, “but they didn’t succeed.
I had some friends myself! You’ve helped
me in this thing, all right, Benny, and I won’t
forget it!”
“I haven’t done anything,” protested Ben,
weakly, “at least nothing worth while.”
“It’s worth a lot to me. I’ll get even with
you for it some day,--and I’ll get even with
that sucker, Hardie, too; he’s put those fellows
against me.”
Dunn’s first step in getting even with Hardie
was taken that very evening, and the method of
it showed that some of Jason’s brain cells were
more highly developed than those on which he
relied in the preparation of lessons.
Just before bedtime he knocked at Roger’s
door. “Hello!” he cried, putting his head into
the room. “Will you give me a lift on this confounded
Virgil?”
“Certainly,” answered Roger. “Come in--.
Doesn’t your trot tell you about it?” he added
with a sly grin. Dunn still adhered to the theory
that the literal translation affords an excellent
short cut to proficiency in an ancient language.
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
The twenties and thirties that he received on
examinations were fully offset, Dunn maintained,
by the great success of his daily recitations. He
always knew what the Latin ought to say, anyway;
he never made any crazy blunders such as
Redfield perpetrated.
“I can’t make connections with the trot in this
place,” answered Dunn, calmly, “and Ben can’t.
I don’t believe you can, either, if you did get
eighty on the exam.”
Roger soon proved that he could--indeed, the
problem presented no difficulties except such as
Dunn’s stupidity had raised or his cunning invented.
Having thus paved the way for his
main business, Dunn leaned against the door-post,
and, holding a finger between the leaves of his
Virgil to strengthen the impression that he was
stopping casually on the way back to his interrupted
work, began to talk.
“You didn’t get the captaincy, did you?”
Roger gave a good-natured little laugh. “No, I
didn’t, and I didn’t expect to.”
“You came mighty near it.”
“Four votes out of fourteen--that’s not very
near.”
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
“I don’t mean that. You know what I mean.”
Hardie shook his head.
“The day before the election it was all settled
that you were to get it. I heard so from McDowell
and Bumpus and two or three others. Then
something happened, and the vote went the other
way.”
“What happened?” Roger was listening
eagerly.
“Talbot went against you and bulldozed ’em
into electing Horr. You know he’s always got
to have his way.”
Roger smiled bravely. “He probably thought
Horr would make a better captain.”
“I don’t know what he thought. I know what
he did. He pretends to be a friend of yours, too.”
“He is a friend,” said Roger, quickly.
“The way he treated you didn’t look much like
it. Good night.”
Dunn returned to his room fairly well satisfied
with himself; he had given Hardie something to
think of that would take down his insufferable
conceit, a conceit which Dunn was convinced must
be the worse since it was masked by such a quiet
exterior.
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
In fact, if thinking was all Roger was expected
to do, Dunn’s mission of malice was wholly successful.
Roger did think, lying awake an hour
after he went to bed, and fighting vainly against
an insistent mental activity that would not be
cajoled by firm resolutions or new arrangements
of pillow; but the direction which his thoughts
took was different from what Jason had anticipated.
A week before, he would have ridiculed
the idea of his being made captain; his ambition
did not fly so high. Now, when the opportunity
had come and gone, when the honor which, it
seemed, had been almost within his reach, was
bestowed upon another, he understood how much
he should have prized it. Why had Talbot interfered
against him? Surely not from ill-will,
for the record of the season proved him as stanch
a friend as an insignificant new boy ever acquired;
nor from personal liking for Horr--they belonged
to wholly different sets in school. It must be,
then, that Pete regarded him as incompetent for
the position. Moreover, if Pete thought so, it
was probably true; he was just a meek, harmless,
flabby sort of fellow who happened to be able
to play a fair game at end, but wasn’t fit for
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
leadership! Dunn’s shot had wounded, but not
in the spot at which it was aimed. Hardie’s self-esteem
was hurt, not his trust in Pete.
The next morning he turned over the subject
again as he dressed. “Pete was right to think
as he did, and yet he was wrong,” he said to
himself. “I should have made just as good a
captain as Horr. The trouble with me is that
I’m always waiting for some one to recognize
me and push me forward. I haven’t confidence
enough in myself; there’s where I’ve got to change.
I can do things when I have to. Why do I always
act as if I couldn’t?”
He rode into town that morning with Mike.
Mike’s society was usually a pleasure. His mind
was always brimful of the present. He knew
exactly what he thought on all the matters that
entered into his experience, and exactly what he
wanted to do. Mike never hesitated through
bashfulness, nor wasted opportunities because of
lack of faith to accept them!
“You ought to have been football captain,”
declared Mike, as they stood on the back platform
of a crowded in-bound car. “You’d make
a lot better one than Horr. Horr really doesn’t
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
know the game. I told Pete Talbot so, too.
They needn’t think that because you’re quiet,
you haven’t any push in you. I know better!”
“Thank you for your good opinion, Mike,”
returned the smiling Hardie. “What did Pete
do, fire you out?”
“No, he said he didn’t know but I was right.
It ’ud have been fine to have a captain at Adams’s.
We haven’t had one since I’ve been in school.
There’s no one else there who’ll ever come near
it.” He stopped, and a sudden gleam flashed over
his face. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he exclaimed,
“make the crew and be crew captain. That’ll
be better yet!”
Roger laughed aloud. “Make the Harvard
Varsity, why don’t you say? I may make the
pair-oar if I’m lucky.”
“You’ll never make anything if you talk like
that,” answered shrewd Mike. “You’re as bad
as Jason, only the other way round. Jason thinks
he’s everything when he isn’t anything, and you
tell people you aren’t anything, and they believe
you! You tell it and act it both. That’s not
the way to do.”
And Hardie, being an open-minded youth,
.bn 202.png
.pn +1
accepted this wisdom from the lips of a babe, and
resolved immediately that he wouldn’t act the
incapable any more, even if he must needs remain
such. He didn’t tell Mike so, however; that
would be throwing improper encouragement to
small boys who criticised their betters. Instead,
he gave a sudden jerk to the visor of the boy’s
cap that brought it forward on his nose, and said
reprovingly: “There’s one thing certain, Mike,
you’ll never suffer from over-modesty. Now don’t
say anything more about the football captain.
Horr’s elected, and we’re all going to help him the
best we can.”
“Sure!” answered Mike, as he calmly restored
his cap to the proper place. “Don’t you suppose
I know enough for that? I wouldn’t say what I
did to any one but you.”
Dunn went to his first Friday in high feather,
picturing to himself in advance the conquests he
should make. Dancing, he felt, was his strong
point. But Trask and Wilmot, the head ushers
for the day, had laid strict commands on their
subordinates, and Jason was introduced to none
but “pills.” He did not suspect this fact until
the afternoon was two-thirds gone, when after
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
beseeching three ushers in succession to present
him to Molly Randolph, a much talked-of “queen,”
and being put off with flimsy pretexts, he at last
discovered that there was a plot against his
dignity. After that he sulked in the corner to
which ungallant youths retired when the attractive
partners were taken and only pills remained
disengaged. Hardie, blest beyond his deserts,
made the acquaintance of numerous favorites
and danced the german with Helen Talbot, who
amused him with a vivacious narrative of certain
disputes with Joe, in which, with the help of her
older brother, she came out victorious. Miss
Helen vanquished Roger also, for she got him
to promise her a football hatband, which, as she
frankly confessed, “Joe would never give me in the
world.”
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII || A KINDLED AMBITION
.sp 2
Westcott’s was in some ways a bit old-fashioned.
Holidays were grudgingly given, visitors
were not suffered to intrude on recitations,
and every school day was made a working day,
with enforced privileges on Saturdays if the week’s
work was not satisfactorily done. Scholastic
flummery, the advertising quackery of shows and
visitors’ days and special programmes, found no
favor with the authorities. If any exception is
to be made to this general rule, it must apply to
the day on which school closed for the Christmas
holidays, when for half an hour at the close of
recitations the boys themselves took charge of
the schoolroom, and celebrated in their own way
their approaching liberty and their loyalty to the
school.
Even here the programme was very simple.
When the twelve o’clock gong sounded, the whole
school assembled in the big room. Old Westcottites
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
from college poured in, thronging the
wide doorway of the library, and circling the end
of the schoolroom in a long line. A representative
of the first class came forward, and in a little
speech, delivered usually with a flushed face and
in a faint, agitated voice, presented to the school
a gift which should be a permanent reminder of
the affection and esteem of the outgoing class.
Mr. Westcott then made a response, which was
followed sometimes by a few words from some
teacher. After this various boys chosen from the
managing class stepped forward and led cheers
for the school, for the individual teachers, and for
the athletic teams. Then old boys, if any were
bold enough, or unable to resist the pressure put
upon them, took their turn, and exhorted the
school or praised it, as inspiration (or their confusion)
led them. No boy who was present on
the day when three captains of Harvard teams
and two class-day marshals--all old Westcottites--followed
each other to the platform, will soon
forget the impression made by those stalwart
figures, intelligent faces, and sincere if inartistic
speeches. Not the bishop nor the learned professor
nor the governor himself could so stir the
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
hearts of the school. These college men were
authorities, men who had achieved, heroes within
the range of every boy’s admiration.
This year, only one of these representatives from
the upper world was booked to address the school,
but as he was no less a personage than captain
of the Varsity crew, he counted in general estimation
tenfold. Roger Hardie, being in the second
class, played spectator and common soldier in
the cheering battalion. Mr. Westcott’s speech
and Mr. Cary’s left him rather cold; he had heard
these gentlemen many times before in various
forms of discourse from cautious praise to unreserved
condemnation. But when Deering was demanded,
and in response a tall, broad-shouldered,
deep-chested, bronzed young man emerged from
the library and pushed forward through a tumult
of welcome, Roger’s heart leaped to greet him.
For half a minute Deering stood with his hand
on the desk, waiting for the din to subside. Roger
fixed his eyes upon him, and in an intense stare
drank in an impression of the man. He was
quietly dressed, his necktie subdued, his trousers--Dunn
might perhaps have noticed--not
absolutely fresh from the tailor’s goose. But
.bn 207.png
.pn +1
Deering was one for whom clothes could do little.
Such bigness, honesty, cleanness, determination,
and withal such fresh unconquerable strength
of youth, no smart costume could adorn. In some
manner he suggested Talbot--Talbot as he might
be four years hence, when his body had reached
its growth and the maturing influences of college
life had tamed his explosive violence.
Deering’s speech was addressed to the first
class. When the boys before him reached college,
he said, they would find certain men doing all
sorts of things that they’d better not be doing,
wasting their money and time and strength, and
thinking that they were cutting a great figure.
There were plenty of such fellows hanging round
the college, who were of no use to the college or to
themselves. They make a great mistake. No
one cares anything about them, and they don’t
make good. The fellow who has principles and
tries to live up to them, who is willing to work
hard and keep faced in the right direction, is the
man who is respected, whether he makes a
name for himself or not.
“You’ve got to mean right and work right,”
he said in closing. “You can’t mean right unless
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
you have principles to follow, and the only way
to work right is to work hard. Here in school
is the place to make a good start. I don’t need
to say anything about your studies, for your
teachers will see to that, but in your athletics,
unless there’s been a big change since my day,
there’s room for improvement. You want to
play fair and play like gentlemen, but play hard.
Give the best of yourselves to your practice as
well as to your matches. Don’t fool, and don’t
shirk, and don’t quit. And when you come to
college, don’t let any one persuade you that the
ideals and moral standards you’ve learned here
will have to be changed.”
Had the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric from
across the Charles been present in the Westcott
schoolroom that morning, he would have listened
patronizingly and given the speaker a passing
grade in consideration of his earnestness and good
intentions. Had the professor spoken in Deering’s
place, the boys would have closed their ears to his
careful sentences and mentally marked him F--flat
failure. They voted Deering A, and after
their reserved fashion, assented to his maxims
and treasured up his words. Even Dunn had
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
visions of a time coming--in the dim future,
of course--when he should throw off his indolence
and self-indulgence, be a “good boy”
and a grind, work like a Trojan in school and out,
and win back the ground that he had lost. When
it came to baseball, he could show them a few
things!
As for Roger Hardie, Deering’s exhortation,
and even more Deering’s personality, was as a
match applied to tinder. His zeal took fire immediately.
If the rowing men were like Deering,
if rowing made such men, rowing was the thing
for him! If honest, serious work profited at all
in this untried sport in which experience was held
to be so important, Roger would give that work
ungrudgingly as long as his presence was tolerated
on the squad. This resolve sent him to the
gymnasium to exercise every day during the
Christmas recess, when, save for himself and Mike
and two smaller urchins, Adams’s was bereft of
boys. It forced him to look upon himself as,
in a fashion, consecrated to a special ambition,
none the less wholesome and potent because
cherished in secret. It made it easier for him to
keep faith with his parents and his own conscience
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
in the presence of the insidious temptations to
which he, in common with all boys of his age, was
subjected.
The tide of boys flooded back to school on the
second of January, noisy with reminiscences of
good times enjoyed. Talbot came from a camp
on the shore of Cape Cod, where he had been
shooting with Trask; Ben Tracy from Montreal.
Dunn had spent his freedom in New York, where
he had “been to something every night and had
the highest old kind of a time.” The anecdotes
of his experiences furnished him amusement for
a week; his listeners tired of them in a much
shorter time. Aside from these anecdotes, Dunn
brought back little that was new from his vacation,
certainly nothing so beneficial to himself or the
school as an earnest purpose. He continued to
slide downhill with careless content, finding
specious excuses to present to teachers for classroom
failures, and flattering himself that he was
playing a grand rôle in the eyes of his mates as
a jaunty, devil-may-care loafer.
The winter term in all schools is sacred to work.
The boys at Westcott’s, under pressure at home
and in school, on the whole did their full stint
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
with faithfulness and good-will. But there was
no lack of distraction abroad or fun at school.
Outside were the official amusements at Adams’s,
skating at the Country Club, occasional dancing
parties, lectures for the intellectual, theatre for
the frivolous, and jolly visiting among friends for
all. At school, some petty excitement was always
to be found. A lively recitation has its interest
for a keen-witted boy, especially if it exhibits a
Dunn trying to palm off an old excuse or a Redfield
to originate a new blunder. Some one was
usually in trouble, and the trouble of a school-mate,
if not too serious, is always interesting to
the bystanders. And there were occasions when
the amusement was not wholly innocent.
The great fault with the Westcott lads was their
thoughtlessness. They had never known the
sting of poverty, nor suffered from the want of
anything which it was at all desirable that they
should have. Some of them had feeble sense of
the sacredness of property; a thing that could
be bought by a small requisition on their pocket-money
possessed in their eyes slight value. When
Wilmot unscrewed an electric-light bulb in the
lower hall and flung it the whole length of the
.bn 212.png
.pn +1
play room to smash into a hundred pieces against
the brick wall, he was simply yielding to a reckless
impulse of fun. He would have taken his
punishment without complaint if he had been
caught, and he would have confessed the deed
honestly if he had been questioned; but he had
no idea that he was stealing. When Cable dropped
a new stiff hat at the cloak-room door, and half
a dozen rascals immediately kicked it into tatters,
they thought they were having fun with Cable--until
after an interview with Mr. Westcott. If
a book was left about the halls,--the owner had
no business to drop his books around,--some one
was quite likely to use it as a missile on his way
out. Talbot and Hardie and Harrison and others
of the older boys regarded such an act as “kiddish”;
Wilmot would commit it because of uncontrolled
recklessness, Dunn because he was a
fool.
It was the laboratory at the top of the building
that offered to heedless spirits the greatest temptation.
Here both the chemistry and the physics
classes performed their experiments and made
their recitations. Mr. Cary, the instructor, was
neither incompetent nor a weakling; but he
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
couldn’t be in the laboratory all the time nor in
all parts of it at the same time. Interesting experiments
were tried that had no place in the
text-book. For two weeks a jar hidden in the
corner served as a receptacle for odds and ends of
chemicals, and was visited surreptitiously every
day by various members of the class, curious to
see what new color it had taken on. Reeves discovered
that a cent could be silvered by dipping
it in nitric acid, then in mercury, and then, for
an instant, in the acid again. Thereupon a mania
for silvering objects suddenly developed which
had to be repressed by official order. With a
piece of glass tubing drawn to a point and attached
by a rubber hose to a faucet, Trask found
that he could throw a fine jet of water to a considerable
distance. He used to train this with
great effect on persons standing yards away, the
spray being invisible but very distinctly felt.
It struck Hardie one day in the back of the neck
just above his collar, as he was standing beside
Mr. Cary’s desk. He couldn’t turn round or dodge
the stream, for Mr. Cary was looking over his note-book,
and any movement would have betrayed
the offenders. So he stood helpless, furtively
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
swabbing with his handkerchief at the back of
his head, but failing with all his efforts to dam
the stream that trickled down his back.
Impunity encourages. One day at recess, some
scapegrace made an obnoxious mixture in an open
dish by means of iron sulphide and hydrochloric
acid, and fled for his life, leaving the laboratory
door open. The fumes descended the stairways
and reached the noses of innocent sufferers below.
Mr. Westcott and Mr. Cary arrived at the laboratory
simultaneously, hot on the scent, and took
counsel together. Later in the day Mr. Westcott
called the laboratory classes into his room and
demanded the culprit. No one volunteering, he
explained the danger and wrong of fooling in the
laboratory, and declared that he should punish
severely any further misdemeanor, even if it were
necessary to inflict the penalty on the whole class.
As Mr. Westcott was not given to idle threats,
there was seriousness on the top floor--for a
time.
.bn 215.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch18
CHAPTER XVIII || THE SHOOTING MATCH
.sp 2
Saturdays Roger usually had to himself.
On these days he took advantage of his freedom
to visit the library or a museum, or strolled about
the city, entertaining himself with the shop windows
and the mob of bargain-hunters. Occasionally
he hunted up some landmark of history
which appealed to his interest, turning aside on
the way for a glimpse of the waterside or the
markets or the queer foreign quarter where the
native-born American feels himself a trespasser
and is grateful for the presence of a policeman a
block away. As he was new to the fascinating
variety of city scenes, his attention was often
caught by objects which his town-bred companions
passed without noticing, either because they
lacked curiosity, or because familiarity with city
streets had made them indifferent.
On two or three occasions, while traversing an
irregular old square, Roger had noticed a second-story
.bn 216.png
.pn +1
sign bearing the words: “Professor Pillar,
Magicians’ Supplies and Novelties. Outfits for
Professionals and Amateurs. Come In and See
Us.” One morning in February he decided to
accept this invitation. He found himself in a
little dusty room packed full of juggler’s paraphernalia.
A friendly old man with very nimble
fingers greeted him warmly, and pressed upon him
various tricks and trinkets with such persuasiveness
that Roger left the wizard’s cave poorer by
a dollar and a half, and richer by a variety of queer
acquisitions.
When he reached his room, he spread out his
purchases on the desk before him and assured
himself with some heat that it was unquestionably
true that a fool and his money are soon
parted. While he was thus making himself uncomfortable
with reproaches, Mike happened in
and became enthusiastic over the collection.
“I’ll sell them to you,” offered Roger.
Mike considered. “How much?”
“Just what I gave for them.”
“You wouldn’t do that unless you wanted to
get rid of ’em,” remarked Mike, shrewdly. “I’ll
give you a dollar for the lot.”
.bn 217.png
.pn +1
The haggling spun itself out to a length which
would prove tedious to the reader if the conversation
were reported in detail. The upshot
of it all was that Roger reserved two articles
from the collection, and sold the balance to Mike
for the sum which the latter had first offered.
“Now what are you going to do with them?”
asked Roger, when the dollar had been paid and
the goods delivered.
“I’ll tell you,” returned Mike, proudly, “but
you must keep it to yourself and not bring in
anything more to spoil the market. I’m going
to show one of ’em downstairs when there are a
lot of kids around, and then auction the thing off.
After a few days I’ll bring out another and auction
that off, and so on, till they’re all gone. If I
don’t make fifty per cent on the trade, I’ll give
you back your money.”
It took Mike three weeks, we may add in dismissing
the incident, to carry out his programme,
but in the end he got back his dollar, together with
a clear profit of seventy-one cents.
Among the objects which had caught Roger’s
eye at the juggler’s were so-called “shooting
matches,” which came in little boxes like those
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
which contain safety matches. In appearance
they resembled cigar lighters, with a smooth
brown coating running up two-thirds of an inch
from the tip; in action their vigor was such as
to fill the heart of a non-possessor with envy.
If you held one in your hand after the first flare
of ignition, you got a very pretty series of tiny
explosions that gave you a pleasant little thrill,
and to the ignorant onlooker an amusing little
shock. If the ignorant onlooker could be beguiled
to strike one himself before he saw any of
its fellows at work, he furnished you pleasanter
thrills by dropping his match in a panic at the
first pop and jumping about delightfully as it
finished its performance on the floor.
In his deal with Mike, Roger reserved two boxes
of these fireworks, meaning to exhibit them at
the next afternoon gathering in Trask’s roof
chamber, where special cronies occasionally assembled
on Trask’s invitation and amused themselves
with jokes and gossip. Here, if the truth
is to be told, some boys smoked a little,--as a
rule smoking was considered not the thing at
Westcott’s,--and it would be a great joy to offer
the innocent brown-tipped object to the desperate
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
character who announced that he was going to
try a pipe. On this occasion Wilmot was one of
the first to arrive and the first to be tricked;
afterwards he became a leader in entrapping the
others. As smokers were few, non-smokers had
to be drawn on; they were beguiled with invitations
to light papers in the fireplace. Talbot,
who appeared late and found a circle of ten eager
to see him light a match, became suspicious and
declined the privilege. “Light it yourself, if
you want it lighted!” he said grimly. “What’s
the good of doing it, anyway?”
“Just for the fun,” pleaded Wilmot. “You
needn’t be scared; it won’t hurt you.”
“We all did it, and you’ve got to,” announced
Trask. “If you don’t, you’ll have to smoke a big
cigar.”
“It’ll take more than this bunch to make me do
that,” answered Pete, looking round in smiling
defiance. “I’m no cigarette sucker!”
“He’s trying to get out of it!” declared Wilmot,
triumphantly. “A football player and captain
of the crew hasn’t the sand to light a piece of
paper!”
“He’s just contrary-minded, that’s all,” Sumner
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
threw in. “He won’t do it because we want him
to.”
“Oh, if you want me to, that’s different,” answered
Pete. “Anything to oblige such dear
friends. Only I won’t take Steve’s match; he’s
too forward. Here, Roger, give me one. I’ll
trust you.”
Roger drew out his second box, took a match
from it, and handed both to Talbot. Pete
stooped to perform the task expected of him,
read the inscription on the box, and decided instantly
on the course to be pursued. At the first
explosion he whirled about with the sputtering
thing in his hand and plunged toward Wilmot,
who sprang away from him with a yell of
fright.
“Aha!” cried Talbot, dramatically, as he threw
the spent match into the fireplace, “who’s the
sandless one now? He’s afraid of his own innocent
little matches!”
“They aren’t mine,” replied Wilmot, a little
rattled by the fact that the laugh had turned
against him. “They belong to Hardie, and he
won’t tell where he got ’em.” This last statement
was added in the hope that it might lead the
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
conversation away from his own discomfiture.
“Did you ever know such a hog?”
“Let him discover the place himself, as I did,”
protested Roger. “He’s lived in the city all his
life.”
“Don’t tell him,” advised Talbot. “He’s
better off without ’em.”
And then the whole company fell to questioning
Roger, as in a game, concerning the kind of
shop at which the matches were procured. He
answered all questions truthfully, though insulting
doubts as to his honesty were cried aloud
before the end of the list was reached, a list
which began with possibilities such as groceries,
drug stores, cigar stands, news stands, street
fakirs, toy-shops; proceeded with dealers in firearms,
fireworks, sporting goods--and tailed out
into the most idiotic suggestions that foolish
brains could originate. Wilmot capped the climax
by declaring that it was from a school-supply house
that the matches came. “They’re for use in
school,” he shouted with glee; “that’s what they’re
for!”
Hardie laughed and shook his head.
Then Wilmot started on a new course, and
pleaded for a few out of the new box.
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
“You’ve got a whole boxful, and I’ve only one
left,” he urged. “Go halves, and I won’t call
you a hog any more.”
But Hardie was still obdurate. “Children
shouldn’t have matches,” he said.
Wilmot turned away in disgust. “You’re
worse than a hog, you’re a whole drove of swine!
I wouldn’t look over the edge of the sty at you!”
The next morning Roger relented. He didn’t
feel at all sure that Wilmot was to be trusted with
tools of such potential power for disturbance;
but like all right-minded boys, he hated to be considered
stingy. He hunted up Wilmot as soon as
he reached school the next morning and reopened
the case.
“Do you still want those things, Steve?” he
asked.
“Sure I do,” answered Wilmot, promptly. “I
think you might at least tell me where you got
’em.”
“Well, you can have my box. Only you must
be careful with them.”
Wilmot pocketed the box with alacrity. “I’ll
be careful, all right. You don’t suppose I’d set
the building on fire, do you?”
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
“No, not that! You don’t have to do that
to get into trouble.”
“You needn’t worry. I’m not looking for
trouble.”
Wilmot never was looking for trouble; he had
no need to do so, as it had a habit of coming to
him unsought. The caution, too, which he had
promised to exercise, was rather of a wily than
a practical character, as was demonstrated by
his conduct when he reached the laboratory
that morning. Six or eight fellows were already
there waiting for the new experiment to be announced;
Mr. Cary was still on the stairs; and
Redfield and a few others had gone down for
books.
“I’ve got Hardie’s matches!” Wilmot called
eagerly to the waiting audience, “and I’m going
to put ’em in the back part of my drawer.
If any fellow should happen to take one out,
break off the end, and put it into Reddy’s sand
bath, why, I shouldn’t know anything about it.
See?”
“None of it for me,” remarked Trask. “I’m
not going to run my head into any noose.”
“You haven’t the nerve,” said Wilmot.
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
“Neither have you, or you’d do it yourself!”
Mr. Cary now appeared with the laggards, and
the class was soon set to work. On one boy
Wilmot’s short address made a deeper impression
than the directions of the teacher. Dunn
had long been casting about for some easy means
of raising himself in the popular esteem. While
he felt no doubt that his true worth must appear
as soon as the baseball season began, he was unwilling
that this recognition should be postponed
to so late a day if he could achieve it earlier.
Here was an opportunity to take a long step forward
by accepting the general challenge which
Wilmot had issued, and proving himself a bold
fellow when Trask had acknowledged that he
did not dare and Wilmot himself hung back.
A sand bath, as most of my readers know, is
a bowl-shaped vessel filled with sand in which
fragile glass flasks are placed in order to insure
an even heat. A bunsen burner under the sand
bath heats the sand, and, through the sand, the
flask and its contents. Redfield had just lighted
his burner and was busy weighing out his chemicals.
Dunn passed behind him, and directing his
attention to something across the room, tucked
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
a match-end into the sand in Redfield’s bath
and went on to his own table. Scarcely three
minutes had elapsed when the half-dozen lads
who had been watching furtively over their work
heard a slight explosion, followed immediately
by an exclamation from Redfield, who went
crashing back on the row of tables behind. At
the same time they beheld a small geyser of popping
sand spurt into the air and descend in a
shower about the burner.
Mr. Cary rushed to the spot, likewise all the
boys, both those who were in the secret and
those who were not. “Go back to your work!”
ordered the teacher, and the boys slunk away,
though not beyond earshot. “What’s this, Redfield?”
he asked sharply.
The victim of the explosion, having recovered
from his fright, stood giggling with nervousness.
“My sand blew up, sir,” he said.
“Do you know what made it do so?” demanded
Mr. Cary, sternly.
“No, sir. I was standing right here waiting
for the thing to heat. It went off all of a sudden,
right up in the air, and kept snappin’ all the way
up.”
.bn 226.png
.pn +1
“And you know absolutely nothing more about
it?”
“Not a thing!” answered Redfield, with evident
honesty. “I wouldn’t blow myself up if I could
help it.”
There seemed no reason to doubt the truth of
Redfield’s statements; he was not only incapable
of skilful dissembling, but also, as was generally
known, a favorite target for heartless schoolboy
pleasantry. Mr. Cary, therefore, asked no further
questions, but turned off the gas from the burner,
and dumping out the smoking sand poked it
over in search of clews to the explosion--to the
great delight of the half-dozen unworthies who
were in the secret. Finding nothing, he bade
Redfield start again with fresh sand, and returned
to his desk.
A half-hour later Fluffy Dobbs’s mess blew up
in the same way. This time the instructor, being
hardly a dozen feet away, caught the full effect.
He came directly to the smoking bath, but though
his face blazed with indignation, he was too wise
to embark on an interrogation which was unlikely
to yield positive results.
“Don’t you think something is the matter with
.bn 227.png
.pn +1
the sand, sir?” asked Wilmot, innocently. “Perhaps
there’s nitre in it.”
“It isn’t likely.”
“Can this have anything to do with it?” suggested
Wilmot, offering a charred bit of wood
which he had picked up from the floor. The instructor
took it, smelled of it, and shook his
head. “I don’t know,” he said. “If these
explosions are due to the sand, it is a remarkable
occurrence. If they were deliberately
caused, it is a very dangerous and culpable
form of joke. We shall take only one experiment
to-day. As soon as you have finished with
that, you may go.”
Mr. Cary stood close to Wilmot’s desk during
the rest of the exercise, either because it was in a
central position or because he saw in the disturbance
the fine Italian hand of that young gentleman.
One awkward result for Wilmot was that,
not daring to take the match-box from his drawer
in the presence of the teacher, he was obliged to
leave it behind when he went. Dunn, too, made
a misplay. He had used two of the three matches
taken from Wilmot’s box on Redfield and Dobbs;
not knowing what to do with the third, he broke
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
off the end and poked it into the bag of fresh sand
which stood at the end of his table.
The first thing Mr. Cary did after the boys had
left the laboratory was to examine the sand in
the bag. At the very top, like Benjamin’s cup
hidden in the mouth of the sack, he found the
match-end which Dunn had placed there. He
compared this with the charred piece picked up
by Wilmot. Over these he mused a few minutes;
then, with the instinct which sends the police,
after an important break, to the haunts of certain
well-known criminals, he went straight to Wilmot’s
drawer. There, under the soiled laboratory coat,
he discovered the fatal box. He broke off a
match-head, put it into a sand bath, and in five
minutes had an explosion of his own. After that
he gathered up his exhibits and hied him to Mr.
Westcott’s office.
The laboratory excitement furnished a topic
of deep interest to certain groups during the lunch
hour. Dunn, who was sure that he had made a
hit, talked largely of his achievement. Wilmot,
though pleased with the unexpectedly full success
of his idea, was a little worried that he had been
forced to leave his treasure in the laboratory.
.bn 229.png
.pn +1
It wouldn’t do to use the thing too often, and Dunn
was capable of firing off all the precious matches
in a day. By the end of recess, largely through
Dunn’s enthusiastic narratives, the incident had
been aired among the older boys. Towards two
o’clock word came to Wilmot that he was wanted
in the head-master’s office.
What happened in the half-hour during which
Wilmot was closeted with Mr. Westcott was never
fully known to the boys. Steve spoke of it very
unwillingly, and his memory of such scenes was
never good. The instant he saw the fatal box
of shooting matches on the table before him, he
knew that it was all up with him, and his only
course was to obtain the best terms of surrender
possible. The terms were hard. He was suspended
from school for a week. His parents
were to be notified; he was to make up all lost
lessons at home with a tutor; the school was to
be informed of the misdeed and the penalty; he
was not to return to the chemistry class unless
Mr. Cary expressed a desire to give him another
trial. Against the suspension Steve pleaded
piteously; he would copy thousands of lines, stay
after school hours every day, apologize to anybody
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
and everybody,--if only the message didn’t go
home. But Mr. Westcott was inexorable; the
letter was posted that very afternoon.
The next day was a bitter one for Steve Wilmot.
Immediately after breakfast his mother retired
to the privacy of her chamber to weep; his father
paced the library for some time before he could
calm himself sufficiently to give the boy a hearing.
It was not the first occasion on which Steve had
brought unhappiness upon his family. From
the day when he began to walk he had been
blundering into scrapes. He had been dealt
with by all recognized methods of discipline.
Severe punishment, denunciation, threats, gentle
remonstrance, pleading, exhortation, loss of allowance--none
had prevailed to change his
nature. A psychological expert had once declared
that since Steve’s escapades were mere boyish
tricks without malice, they would be outgrown
in time. The hope born of this assurance had carried
the parents over such shocks as the visit of
policemen to warn against trespassing in the
public garden, or an indignant letter from a good
lady whose cat Steve had snowballed as the dear
animal was taking an innocent walk on the alley
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
fence. Now it appeared that their hope had
been a delusion, for suspension from school was a
humiliation which the family had hitherto been
spared. Mr. Wilmot talked gravely about putting
the young man to work, but he didn’t mean it.
In the end, he accepted Steve’s promise that he
would walk circumspectly hereafter all the days
of his life. Mrs. Wilmot also found comfort in
the reflection that Steve was at bottom neither
dishonest nor vicious, and that the salutary effect
of the lesson might be expected to outlast the
four remaining months of his school career. After
all, he might have done worse things than carry
shooting matches into a school laboratory. So
she dried her tears and hoped again.
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch19
CHAPTER XIX || A LOSS TO THE NINE
.sp 2
Meantime the school had heard the proclamation
of the sin and its punishment, and looked
upon Wilmot’s vacant seat. The exile was missed.
Dunn chuckled ecstatically over the amusing fact
that the official lightning had passed by the
bold man of action and struck the crafty suggester.
His merriment was coldly received.
“You’d better shut up, Jason,” said Trask,
roughly. “Any fool can stick a match into a
sand box when he’s given the match and told how
to do it.”
“And no one but a fool would have put that
one into the bag,” declared Eaton. “I believe
that’s what gave poor Steve away.”
“That’s right,” said Sumner, in confirmation.
“And Steve said one, not three. If only one had
gone off, Cary wouldn’t have suspected anything,
and Steve wouldn’t have got stung. You gave
the thing dead away.”
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
Dunn, who had by this time lost all pride in his
handiwork, glowered across the table. “If he
was afraid of getting stung, he ought to have kept
clear of the thing altogether,” he growled. “He
took his risk, and I took mine. It isn’t my fault
if he left his matches in the drawer!”
“He wouldn’t have left them there if Cary
hadn’t forced him to, and Cary wouldn’t have
been standing over him if you hadn’t tried to burn
the whole box at once.” This, from Trask, was
but a repetition of Sumner’s argument.
“You both ought to be spanked,” remarked
Talbot. “It isn’t fair that one should be soaked
and the other not.”
“Would you have me go to Westcott and say,
‘I’m guilty, please sting me too?’ I see myself doing
that!” Dunn gave a derisive laugh at the idea.
“No one who knows you would expect that of
you,” replied Talbot, significantly. “It wouldn’t
do any good, either. Hardie tried to help Steve
out by confessing that he brought the matches
to school and offering to take part of the punishment,
but it wouldn’t go.”
Dunn sniffed his contempt. “And old Westcott
soaked him for it.”
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
“No!” answered Talbot, shortly. “He isn’t
that kind of a man.”
After this conversation Dunn avoided all reference
to the laboratory incident, and would have
been glad to have the others forget it, but they
continued to regard him as responsible for Wilmot’s
misfortune, and withdrew their favor from him.
Those were unpleasant days for Archibald Dunn; no
one at Adams’s would have much to do with him,
and the conviction, in part justified, that he was not
receiving from the boys a fair deal kept him
morose and sulky. Moreover, frank letters
concerning his work were going home to his
parents, which served to plunge him more
deeply in trouble. Having shirked and trifled
so long, he was well-nigh incapable of doing
anything else.
About the time of Wilmot’s return to school,
Talbot called out the candidates for the crew.
They came in a flock, ranging in size from Bumpus
the fat to McDowell the small, and in degrees of
chance according to the popular estimate, from
Talbot the sure-to-make-it to any one of a half-dozen
equally sure not to make it.
“What’re you doing here, Bump?” asked Mac.
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
“You don’t suppose any crew could pull you,
do you?”
“I’m out for the exercise,” responded Bumpus,
unruffled. “What’re you doing here? You don’t
suppose you could pull any one, do you?”
“I’m out for the fun,” explained Mac. “There’s
nothing doing, and I’m tired of the gym.”
These two, of course, were among those considered
sure not to make it. Where Hardie stood,
no one could tell until he began to row on the
machines, and then the experts opined unanimously
that his chances were slim. The captain
arranged the candidates in fours to suit himself.
There was a first four, which Talbot stroked, made
up of the fellows left in school who had rowed in
the first or second boat the year before. Then a
second containing those of unofficial rank but
known experience; and after these, squads of
four taken without much care in grouping. All
the instruction they received was such as could be
given by the captain or his aids.
Roger got a place at two in the third squad,
and did what he could to carry out the directions
given him--pull his stroke through hard all the
way, recover sharply, start his slides back with
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
a gradual, deliberate movement, and use his legs.
It was all new and strange to him, so totally different
from anything he had tried before that
experience in rowing in an ordinary skiff with an
ordinary pair of oars seemed of no help whatever.
He perceived his awkwardness quite as clearly
as the bystanders who whispered together as they
watched him,--and he felt it besides, as they
could not. The secret ambition which he had
cherished since the day when Deering made the
speech in school assumed the form of an absurd
presumption. But he had no thought of giving
up.
Bumpus got his exercise, and Mac his fun.
The others got fun, too, when Bumpus rowed,
for he proved the; jolliest clumsy porpoise that ever
tried to sit in a boat. He was too big for his seat.
He couldn’t get forward to begin stroke, and when
he finished, the chances were even that he couldn’t
recover at all. His candidacy was of short duration.
Talbot had to get rid of him to keep his
squad under control.
Mac, on the other hand, took to the practice as
if he had done it for years. Every suggestion
made to him was translated immediately into
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
his stroke. From catch to finish, from recovery
to catch, his stroke seemed one blended, graceful
movement.
“What a pity he isn’t bigger!” said Talbot to
Eaton, who stood beside him. “He’s a natural
oarsman.”
The second day McDowell stroked the third
crew, while Hardie blundered along on the fourth.
A fortnight later he was still blundering along,
with nothing to sustain his courage but a resolution
to hang on as long as there was anything to
hang to.
And now Dunn received a blow that hurt. The
call had gone forth for candidates for baseball,
and Dunn’s name appeared near the head of the
list. Mr. Westcott then summoned Dunn to an
official interview, in which he informed the sanguine
ball player that in consequence of his continued
poor performance of school work, he could
not be allowed to play on the nine. “We have
kept you here,” said the head-master, “in spite of
your neglect, only because we were not willing to
believe that a boy could be six months among us
without catching from teachers and boys something
of the spirit of serious work. So far, we
.bn 238.png
.pn +1
have apparently failed to make any impression
upon you. At the present time there is not a
single subject in which you could be recommended
for college examinations. This being the case,
we cannot allow you to assume new responsibilities
which would interfere still further with
your study.”
And then the teacher made a serious attempt
to bring home to the misguided boy the wrongfulness
and folly of his course, but Dunn heard
nothing but the fact that for him there was to be
no baseball. His answers were given in stolid
monosyllables; he went forth suffocating with
rage.
No one knew better than Dunn that his school
life had been a failure, but his point of view was
very different from that of his teachers. Dunn’s
scholastic ideal was formed somewhat on the lines
of Kipling’s Stalky. To dodge one’s work, outwit
one’s teachers, and triumph at examination by
luck and cleverness represented to Dunn the only
truly desirable way of conquering school drudgery.
The real thing was to be popular, to be in the
important set, to play on the teams, and be talked
about. When Stalkyism, as exemplified in Dunn’s
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
recitation career, proved a flat failure, and the
expected popularity turned out to be only a kind
of contemptuous freedom to disregard him, he had
consoled himself with assurances of a different
experience on the baseball field, where he should
shine with no uncertain light. Now with a single
word Mr. Westcott had robbed him of his opportunity.
He felt like a soldier who at the critical
moment of defence finds that his cartridges have
been stolen and that he is at the mercy of the
enemy.
Stover listened to his tale, deeply disgusted.
Braggarts are usually liars or victims of delusion,
but occasionally one is found to make good some
of his boasts. Stover had investigated Dunn’s
baseball career and believed in him.
“It’s a low-down trick!” he burst forth.
“That’s the way they do here. If they find a fellow
who can play something, they scare up some
excuse to rule him out. Anything to discourage
athletics!”
“I suppose it’s no good to kick,” said Dunn,
despairingly.
“I’ll tell you what to do. Go to the old man
and play the penitent. Tell him that you’ve
.bn 240.png
.pn +1
done wrong, and that you’re going to study hard
from now on. If you can put it up to him strong
enough, he’ll fall on your neck and forgive you.
You’ll have to make a good bluff at work for the
next two or three weeks until you get your
reputation up, but it won’t hurt you any to do
that. Some of the fellows out there at Adams’s
will give you a lift. There’s Hardie, now; he’s
a good-natured fellow and a pretty good scholar;
he’d help you out if he knew what you’re up
against.”
“I guess not,” said Dunn, hopeless. “He’s
always been down on me.”
“I don’t believe it. He got you that invitation
last fall for the dancing school. I don’t see why
he shouldn’t help you now.”
“It wasn’t Hardie. Ben Tracy got it,” corrected
Dunn, quickly.
“Ben Tracy nothing! It was Hardie. I heard
Sumner talking about it at the time. It was
Hardie that did it. He isn’t so conceited as some
of that crowd. If you go at him right, he’ll help
you. Now do as I say, and see what comes of it.”
This news concerning the invitation to the
dancing class--he had not forgotten his anxiety
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
at the time--set Dunn’s thoughts in a new
direction. The more he recalled the circumstances,
which included Ben’s clumsy disclaimer, the more
he was inclined to believe that Stover was right.
For the first time during the year Dunn clearly
perceived that he had been in some respects a
silly fool. For the first time it dawned upon him
that some of these fellows whom he had been
so ready to disparage might be in reality better
and more deserving of honor than he. He was
honest enough to recognize that if he had been
in Hardie’s place he would have acted in a far
different way.
Following Stover’s counsel, he went to Mr.
Westcott with an artificial penitence on his lips;
but there was already a half-formed, half-real
penitence in his heart. By what means Mr.
Westcott pierced his shell and made this half-penitence
wholly real, we may not inquire. The
head-master had a skill in such interviews, the
product of much experience and a genuine desire to
help rather than to punish; and Dunn’s career
offered few points capable of defence, when considered
with frankness and honesty. That his
repentance was indeed real, and his resolution
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
to face about, was, for the moment at least, genuine,
is proved by two circumstances: first, he
acquiesced, though sadly, in Mr. Westcott’s decision
that if he was to regain lost ground, he could
not afford the time and the thought which school
baseball required; secondly, he confessed, unsolicited,
many of his misdeeds, including his
part in the episode of the sand bath.
“I suspected it,” said Mr. Westcott, “but we
won’t consider that now. That belongs to the
past. We start anew to-day.”
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch20
CHAPTER XX || IN THE PAIR-OAR
.sp 2
Dunn’s change of heart was not as sudden as
it seemed. A boy often builds for himself a certain
structure of false principle which it gratifies
his vanity to consider his permanent philosophy
of life. When faults in this structure develop,
he shuts his eyes to them or patches them with
flattering sophistries; and even when the foundations
are actually crumbling away, he affects a
firm confidence because he is too weak to face the
task of rebuilding. In the end some bitter experience
may undermine the last support and
bring down the edifice with a crash.
So it was with Dunn. He had been aware for
some time that he was on the wrong track, but
he could not bring himself to acknowledge the fact.
The information that even when he felt most
bitter against Hardie, Hardie had secretly done
him a good turn, stirred his sense of shame
and disproved his assumption that all the boys had
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
been down on him from the beginning. He recognized
clearly enough now that he had been making
a fool of himself, and that the only sensible course
was to retrace his steps and start anew in a different
path. He went that evening to Hardie’s
room, announced that he was going to turn over
a new leaf, and asked if he might drop in occasionally
for a lift over a hard place. He said
nothing of the dancing-school invitation; that
lay now too far away in the past.
Hardie met him so cordially that Dunn was
moved to open his heart still further. “What is
the matter with me, anyway?” he demanded
bluntly. “I wish you’d give me the bottom
facts, right out straight.”
Hardie smiled. “You don’t do any work.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I’m a loafer and
a goat besides. I don’t mean about studies.
Why don’t the fellows like me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Hardie, warily.
“Don’t they like you?”
“No, they don’t. You know they don’t. Now,
what is it?”
Roger looked shyly across the table at the
questioner; he didn’t know what to answer.
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
“Spit it out!” insisted Dunn. “Just give me
the truth. I can stand it.”
“Well,” said Roger, slowly, “for one thing,
you talk too much.”
Dunn stared. “I don’t think that’s such a
crime. I’m nothing compared with Wilmot.
His tongue’s going all the time.”
“Oh, he’s different,” exclaimed Roger, hastily.
“He talks a lot of trash, but he’s amusing, and
the fellows like it. He never talks about himself.”
“And my talk isn’t amusing and is always about
myself.”
“Not that exactly, but you’re always thinking
about yourself. You don’t take much interest
in anybody else.”
“It isn’t easy to do it if they won’t let you,”
said Dunn, with a gloomy smile. “What else?”
“Your ideas are different from theirs. You
think things are funny that they don’t. They
don’t like your way of looking at things.”
“In other words I’m all wrong,” growled Dunn,
in disgust, as he rose to go. “I couldn’t please
’em, anyway, and I shan’t try it, but I’m going to
stop talking and cut out smoking and get right
down to work.”
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
“For how long?” asked Roger, with a grin of
incredulity.
“Right through the year,” returned Dunn,
hotly. “You don’t believe me, but you wait
and see!”
With this bold assertion on his lips, Dunn made
for his room. The door was just closing behind
him when Roger called out, “Oh, Jason!”
Dunn returned, closed the door and backed
against it.
“Aren’t you going to play ball at all?”
“No; what’s the use? If I can’t play on the
team, I might as well cut the whole thing out and
study.”
“You can’t study all the time. You might
come out just the same and play on the second
and pitch for batting practice. It would show
the right spirit, and the fellows would appreciate
it. You know how they all felt about Sumner.”
“I won’t do it,” answered Dunn, stubbornly.
“I’ve been cut off from the team, and now it’ll
have to get along without me. Sumner always
had a chance to get on the team again; I’m out
of it for good.”
The time had come for the crews to take to the
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
river. The Boston schools row under the patronage
of the Boston Athletic Association, which
provides boats and coaches, arranges for the races,
and furnishes prizes. Each school enters two
fours, a first and second, which compete in separate
races. As Westcott’s possessed a pair-oar
of her own, there were places in the boats for ten
men exclusive of the coxswains. Talbot narrowed
down his squad to eleven, allowing an extra man
for accidents and illness, and getting rid of the
rest by the easy method of not inviting them to
report on the river. Hardie, to his delight, received
orders to bring his rowing clothes to the
boat-house. He did so fully conscious that his
destination was neither the first nor the second.
Talbot had said nothing to this effect,--indeed,
Talbot, now that the rowing season was actually
to begin, abated something of his intimacy,--but
there was a general agreement as to the provisional
formation of the crews which was almost
authoritative. Of the new men who had come
out, three had shown promise of skill as oarsmen.
One of them was Bursley, a quiet fellow who came
in every day from a suburb a dozen miles out,
tall, muscular, and teachable. Louis Tracy was
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
another, and finally McDowell, who, though he
had grown during the year, was still undersized.
On the first crew were to be tried--so the report
ran--Talbot, Bursley, Eaton, and Pitkin; on
the second, Weld, Sumner, L. Tracy, and McDowell;
Wilmot, Hardie, and Redfield would thus be left
over for the pair-oar.
This forecast proved correct except in one
particular. To his surprise, Roger got a trial
the first day out, at two on the second. We may
well call it a trial, for such it surely was to all
concerned. More accurately described, it was
a demonstration of incapacity. Roger’s struggles
with his oar stirred his rowing companions to
fierce growls, the coxswain to abuse, the loiterers
on the float to gestures and grins of malicious
enjoyment. Poor Number Two couldn’t get
his oar in right; it twisted in his hand and pulled
under, it wouldn’t come out when it ought and
as it ought. Delayed by the insidious clutch of
the water, he started his slide before he had freed
his blade, and his knees rose and blocked the
backward movement of his handle. Though he
put forth extraordinary efforts to master the oar,
the oar insisted on mastering him. By good luck
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
and violent slide rushing, he managed to avoid
taking Number Three in the back, but half the
time he was holding or backing water, and all the
time he was preventing bow from keeping stroke.
Strive as he might with mind and body, his strength
wrought nothing but confusion. A half-hour of
this fruitless wrenching and blundering was all
the crew could stand; the boat was headed in,
and Roger was unceremoniously dumped upon
the float.
Louis Tracy took his place--and kept it.
After that, the disenchanted but still determined
Roger rowed bow on the pair-oar to Wilmot’s
stroke, and toiled over the unmanageable oar.
It had a way of plunging under, every few strokes,
and pulling the side of the boat down; then it
stuck deep in the water, and Coolidge, the cox,
would reprove, and the offending bow would grip
his handle still tighter and vow that this particular
fault shouldn’t occur again. But it did occur
again, and others as heinous. He couldn’t get
his oar away after he had raised it from the water;
he rushed his slide instead of drawing it gradually
back so as not to check the motion of the boat;
he could not put into practice the apparently
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
simple direction that the legs were to bear the
burden of the work. As a result his back suffered,--and
the temper of his mates, who poured out
on his head reproach and sarcasm until the ineffectualness
of words was made apparent, when
they relapsed into a humorous pessimism that was
more unflattering than abuse.
The crew of the pair-oar was under another
disadvantage: very little coaching trickled
through to them. Caffrey, the Westcott coach,
gave his attention chiefly to the first and incidentally
to the second: the pair-oar shifted for itself,
or received one set of amateur directions one day
and another the next. As Roger thought of it,
he and Wilmot were in the position of a slow
steamer trying to overtake one which was several
knots faster. Only a breakdown in the leader
could prevent the distance between them from
growing hourly greater.
“What’s the matter with Hardie?” asked
Talbot, one day, as he walked down with Wilmot
to the boat-house. “He doesn’t seem to be gaining
at all.”
“He’s just rotten,” answered Wilmot, despairingly.
“A low-caste baboon would do better!”
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
“He may get it yet,” said Talbot.
“He may!” echoed Wilmot, derisively; “oh,
yes, he may! But I’ll bet you a dollar to a cent
that he won’t!”
A fortnight passed: Bursley was making good
in the first, and Mac had been promoted to stroke
on the second, but Roger’s improvement was
scarcely noticeable. He was beginning to fear
that rowing was something for which he was
physically unfitted, as a fat man for pole vaulting.
In spite of his hardened muscles he became easily
tired; his poor form wore on his back and wrists
and arms. Good rowing is easy rowing: Roger’s
was both bad and hard. Yet in spite of all discouragement
he enjoyed the practice. It was interesting
to struggle for the hoped-for improvement,
even though the hope proved vain, to
observe the other crews on the water, to rest on
the oar, a little out of the channel, and watch the
Varsity eight sweep magnificently by, with the nose
of the coaching launch close at the shell’s rudder,
the oarsmen’s bodies bending in beautiful unison,
the water boiling back from the driving blades.
Roger never saw Deering’s crew without a thrill
of that awe which the subaltern feels when he
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
stands in the presence of a famous general. It
represented power, skill, and determination concentrated;
in it was embodied a kind of majesty
before which the schoolboy oars bowed with
instinctive reverence. Every crew on the river
gazed at the Varsity in rapt admiration, but the
Varsity recognized the presence of no one but itself.
One afternoon in early May, Coolidge turned
the bow of the pair-oar upstream. For a mile
Hardie’s oar played its old tricks, twisting in his
hand and pulling under, tipping the boat, spoiling
the stroke, filling with disgust and despair the
hearts of the little crew. Near the Cottage Farm
bridge they stopped to watch a college eight pass.
When they started again, it occurred to Roger to
see whether the rowlock would not carry his oar,
and permit him to concentrate his attention on
his slide and the recovery. To his surprise the
oarlock did carry the oar. His wrists were relieved
of an exhausting strain; his blade plunged under
no longer. He found that a little easy toss of the
oar at the end of the slide would bring the blade
squarely into the water.
“What’s the matter with you, Bow?” called
Coolidge, amazed. “You’re rowing right!”
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
.if h
.pb
.il fn=i253.jpg w=331px id=i253
.ca
And watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by.
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in +8
.ti -4
[Illustration:And watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by.]
.in 0
.if-
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
“It’s about time,” growled Wilmot.
Hardie, delighted, gave his whole mind to his
movement, ceasing to steal side-glances at his
blade, and watching Wilmot’s back more closely.
The oar was beginning to catch spontaneously
and hard, his slide to return naturally with the
motion of the boat. The pair-oar continued
upstream to the edge of Soldiers’ Field, then turned
and retraced its course,--a three-mile row,--but
Roger felt no weariness. The relief from the
awkward strain which he had been putting upon
himself made the work seem like a rest. Just
above the Harvard bridge they met the first boat,
which stopped to enable the captain to watch them,
and Pete sang out something which could not be
heard. Later when they were all dressing in the
boat-house, Coolidge asked what this message
was.
“Oh, nothing of importance,” answered Talbot.
“I only said that bow was doing well.”
“It seems to me of importance,” said Roger,
whose face glowed with joy. “That’s more than
you’ve said so far this year.”
“I’ve been thinking lately that I might never be
able to say it at all,” said Talbot.
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
Meantime on the ball field things were going
badly for Westcott’s. Dunn reconsidered his resolution
and went out to give the batters practice
and play general helper, but he couldn’t make
Ben Tracy a good pitcher or Stover a forceful
captain. The school appreciated Dunn’s efforts
and thought better of him for them. Jason was
studying, too, though with no very startling classroom
results. He had a tutor for an hour every
afternoon, and he often worked the whole evening
in Hardie’s room.
“I’m almost glad that I couldn’t play on that
nine,” he said one evening as he brought in his
books; “they’re a terribly poor lot, and Stover
doesn’t get anything out of ’em. Think of Newbury
beating them twelve to two the other day!”
“They may brace up near the second game,”
suggested Roger.
Dunn shook his head; “No, they won’t. It
isn’t in ’em. Did you see Smithy leading the
cheering at the game? He was wild to beat!’
“If they can win the baseball and the crew
now, they can get along without the football.”
“Oh, they won’t win the crew,” declared Dunn,
“we’ll have ’em there.”
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
“Lanning says they’re going to,” said Roger.
“He coaches Newbury.”
Dunn considered a moment. “I don’t see how
Pitkin can be strong enough to row a hard race.
He’s bow on the first, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and he rows well, too.”
“You ought to be there. You could stand
the pace.”
Roger laughed. “I can’t even make the second.
A little while ago Wilmot wanted to kick me off
the pair-oar.”
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch21
CHAPTER XXI || THE SECOND CREW
.sp 2
Never did small boy yearn for the swimming-hole
as Roger Hardie for the next practice. He
lay awake for an hour, going over the details
of the stroke as he hoped to use it. He had got
control of the oar now, he was sure; he didn’t
swing out, he didn’t rush his slide, and he
did pull straight through--all positive virtues.
The problem now was to catch sharply, to pick
up the movement with the legs as his trunk came
up, shoot the whole body back in one continuous
and even strain, throwing his entire weight against
the stretcher--“jump right back from the
stretcher,” as Caffrey had once said. After that
he must make a smart recover, get the hands
away promptly, and rest as his slide went cautiously
back, so as to be able to put all his strength
and weight into the next push against the water.
It wasn’t the back that was to do the rowing,
nor the arms, but the whole body, and especially
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
the legs. All this as theory was splendidly clear,
but how much could he put in practice? What
right had a clumsy fellow like him to expect to
attain a skill which other fellows had failed to
gain with years of practice?
He fell asleep with this question echoing in his
brain, alternately vowing that he would do it and
convinced that he could not. The rising bell
woke him. He was unspeakably glad to be waked,
for he was dreaming that he had fallen back into
his old bad ways, that the water sucked the oar
blade down after every stroke, that Coolidge and
Wilmot had rebelled and Pete had told him to try
baseball, and put Redfield into his place. He
was inclined to take the dream as a bad omen
until at luncheon Talbot informed him that Weld
was out with a sore finger, and that he would have
to row bow on the second that afternoon. He
bethought himself then that dreams are said to go
by contraries, and took heart.
Caffrey seated himself in Mike’s place when the
crews went out--Mike was cox of the second--and
coached the first from the second boat,
occasionally transferring his exhortation to the
crew that pulled him. Hardie put his whole soul
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
into his rowing and listened with all his ears.
Caffrey’s principal point of attack in the first boat
was Pitkin at bow, whom he accused of minor
shortcomings and one very serious fault--not
rowing hard enough. “You’re late all the time,
Bow. Your oar must move as soon as it strikes
the water, otherwise you back water. You’re
shirking, Bow! Don’t let the boat finish out your
stroke. Keep over the keel, Two; you’re rolling
round too much. Don’t follow your arms around,
that makes you swing out. Together there--you’re
awfully sloppy!”
And then he gave his attention for a time to the
second. “Pull straight through, Three. Keep
your hands down and pull straight in. Quicker
on the recover, Bow. Don’t feather under. Take
your oar out square and feather as you drop your
hands and shoot away. That’s better. Don’t
bury your oar so deep!”
How different it was from knocking about with
Wilmot in the pair-oar! There was a feeling in the
boat as if boat and oars and men worked in unison,
a swift, steady, exhilarating, forward glide that gave
the oarsmen a sense of power and skill. Every
one worked intently with Caffrey’s eye upon him.
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
Every stroke was a contest against one’s own
treacherous faults, with the feel of the boat, the
facility of the oar, the criticism of the coach as
test of success. By this test Roger was satisfied
that he had acquitted himself well. When, at
the Cottage Farm bridge, the coach called, “Let
her run,” he rested on his oars, with such a feeling
of delight as he had not experienced even when
Westcott’s won the Newbury football game, back
in November. To make clear what happened
during the rest of the row that day, and to set
forth certain events of the remainder of the week,
we cannot do better than transcribe Roger’s
own letter to his mother, written on the following
Sunday. Nine-tenths of it was about rowing, in
which Mrs. Hardie could only feel the reflection
of her son’s interest; and half of what she read
she did not understand. Perhaps my reader can
do better.
.fs 90%
“Dear Mother:
“This has been a great week for me, and I’m
going to tell you all about it, though I can’t make
you see it as I do. You know I got saved over
for the pair-oar when the Westcott squad was
narrowed down to two crews and a pair-oar, with
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
coxes for each. This is the final narrowing down
except that the day before the race the pair-oar
bunch gets the hook. I had been slopping along
in the pair-oar with Steve Wilmot, being more
or less rotten all the season, never at all decent,
and often for long stretches absolutely ROTTEN,
making both cox and Steve awfully sore, and doing
much worse than the worst school crew on the
river, which is saying a good deal. A few days
ago I went out as usual and began badly, but after
a while I seemed to catch on all at once, and
began to row decently. We went a long way up
river, and I kept on getting the habit of pulling
somewhat right. By the time I got home my
rowing had improved several thousand per cent.
Pete saw me just as we came in (Pete is the captain)
and seemed awfully surprised that I was
doing so well.
“The next day Eliot Weld was out with a
sore finger, and they put me into his place in the
second. Caffrey acted as cox, and I felt that if
I ever was going to have a chance to show what
I could do, I had it then. I did pretty well, I
think, for Caffrey didn’t say much to me. The
two crews went along together for a while, then the
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
coach sent the first down and made us all stop
and put on sweaters. Then he pulled out a
clipping about the adoption of a new, unorthodox
stroke in England by some of their colleges, and
read it to us, making comments and illustrating
and explaining. He had found some one who had
the same idea he had and who believed in the
same stroke that he tried to teach us.
“We started down just as an inferior college
eight came along, pulling a regulation good hard
stroke. Caffrey said: ‘We may as well race this
eight now they are here,’ and started us up. He
is heavy, but he knows more about managing a
crew than all the other coxes together, and everybody
has confidence in him and doesn’t get rattled.
He pushed us along as fast as we could go to a
bridge. We had a fraction of a length start, but
we gained until we went through the bridge a
length ahead of the other crew. Of course the
eight was not racing, but it was pretty good for
us, to spurt a four-oar faster than an eight goes
when rowing at a good pace. This was not one of
the Varsity eights, of course, but an upper class
eight, or a club eight. It would have been the
height of ridiculousness and especially of freshness
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
to row against the freshmen or the 2d or 3d
Varsity. After a short stop to tell us what he
wanted us to do, we went all the way back to the
boat-house without a break and at a good pace.
On the way down Caffrey talked to us, telling us
how to save strength or favor some muscle, and
trying to get us to rest on the recovery.
“I was dead tired when we got to the boat-house,
but I think I pulled just as hard on the tired
stretch as at any other time, excepting, of course,
the race. I think Caffrey raced us to give us
confidence and to get us into the habit of not
getting rattled. And now for the most important
thing of all. I was promoted to the second. It was
because I pulled so hard and didn’t give in or
weaken. Pete told me so while we were dressing.
Weld must take the pair-oar. I’m out of that.
I may get kicked back in a little while, but it will
not be from lack of effort on my part if I do. I
would rather make the second crew than anything
else (except the first), as that means something;
for our crews are in a different class from any of
our other teams, and 2d crew this year means
1st crew next year (if I can possibly make it)!
“That was on Tuesday. Since then I’ve been
.bn 265.png
.pn +1
rowing on the second every practice without being
kicked, but I live in a continual state of terror
that some one will oust me from my place.
Of course there’s only Wilmot and Weld, and
Wilmot’s too short and fat to be any good, while
Weld is not supposed to have the staying power,
but I shan’t be free from worry until the race
starts (and that’s still nearly three weeks off).
Even if I can hold my place, I might get sick or
hurt somehow, and so be thrown out.
“On Friday we went out in the worst weather
we ever had. The rain blew so fast that sheets
of it would go into Mike’s megaphone, so that he
really spent more time in blowing out water than
in talking, though this was only when we were
bucking the wind. We were all soaked about
five minutes after we left the boat-house. The
waves were very bad, often piling right over the
boat. The rain came down so fast that it looked
like a mist, and you couldn’t see the shore from
the middle of the river. We didn’t stay out
long, for there was no chance for good rowing.
When we came in, we found that the roof leaked.
Little Mike was down on the Newbury bunch because
some one of them pinched his collar buttons
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
one day, so that he hadn’t anything to button his
collar to. So he put the clothes of the Newbury
crews, who were still out, under the leak.
“This is a terribly long letter and will cost
something to send it to Buenos Aires, but I wanted
to tell you all about the crew business even if it
does bore you. It means a lot to me. If you went
to Westcott’s, you would understand. You can
read between the lines that my health is good and
the studies are going all right. I got 82 in a
history exam, on Monday. Love to all.
.in 10
“Your affectionate son,
.in 15
“Roger.”
.in 0
.fs 100%
“What do you think of that?” asked Mrs.
Hardie, four weeks later, after her husband had
patiently toiled through the letter. “Fancy
their going out in a tempest that soaked them in
five minutes!”
“I don’t care about that,” said Mr. Hardie.
“It’s the race that troubles me. It is a great
strain on the heart, and the Hardies have a
tendency to weak hearts.”
“Roger takes after me, and my family have
good tough hearts,” returned Mrs. Hardie, quickly,
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
seeing, as she thought, a disposition on the part
of her husband to disapprove the boy’s rowing.
She was touched that her son should count on her
loving interest in all that occupied his thoughts;
she objected strongly to making use of his confidences
to thwart the ambitions which he
cherished most deeply, thus perhaps banishing
forever the frankness in which her mother heart
delighted.
“Besides,” she added, “I wrote him all about
that last week. He can be trusted to look out
for himself.”
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch22
CHAPTER XXII || A SHIFT IN THE BOAT
.sp 2
A fortnight later another letter packed full
of the inevitable rowing gush started on the long
journey to Buenos Aires.
.fs 90%
“Dear Mother:
“I have so much to tell you about the crew
this time and such a wonderful story of luck that
I must answer your questions right off at the
beginning or I shall surely forget to. You must
let me know what boat you’re coming on in June
so that I can meet you at the dock. It must
seem funny to get two summers in the same year.
If summer vacations went with them, I should like
that myself. It is all right about the Comptons.
I called there a long time ago. I did not want to
go, but as you wanted me to, I went, and had a
very decent time after all. They asked me to
dinner a few days afterward. I had to accept
because I couldn’t very well get out of it. They
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
gave me a swell feed, and there were two girls
there whom I had met at dancing school. Joe
Compton is a conceited little mutt. I will make
my party call when the rowing is over, as it will
be after another week. I think I shall get recommendations
for 16 points, though the English
isn’t certain yet. You must not expect me to
pass them all off. Nobody does that but the
sharks, and you know I am not a shark. Jason
Dunn, the boy you ask about who turned over a
new leaf, keeps it turned all right, but as far as
studies are concerned, it is still blank. You don’t
need to ask me to help him, I couldn’t prevent it
if I wanted to, as he studies in my room almost
every night. I don’t dislike him as I used to.
I will order the new suit, but I think the old one
would do, and I could spend the money more
profitably on something else. The boys here
don’t care much about outside clothes, though
they’re terribly keen about having fresh socks
and shirts every day, and they run wild on neckties.
My laundry bill is a whopper. Now for the
real news.
“I rowed on the second a whole week. Of
course we did not get a great deal of Caffrey,
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
but Mike is pretty good, and Pete Talbot would
tell me after the practice some special fault he
had seen in me, and then I worked with all my
might to straighten it out. I kept on getting
accustomed to use my legs and run the leg motion
into the body and arms (that doesn’t sound right,
but it is the best I can do to explain it), and I
found the work a lot easier. You see if you row
with a fixed seat, the whole strain is on the back
and arms, and the pull is with strength alone.
On the sliding seat, you row against your stretcher
(that’s the foot-board) and the legs furnish most
of the power. The skill comes in in blending
everything together in one easy, natural motion,
and getting back to take your next stroke without
checking the boat by the return of your slide.
I could feel all along that I was gaining, though
I was slow on the recover, and bungled my oar
still. The fellows all seemed to think I was going
to make good in the second, and I was delighted,
for our second is about the best second on the
river, and Mac sets a perfectly wonderful stroke.
“One day near the end of the week Caffrey
went out with us. He watched me all the time,
but he didn’t say anything to me in particular
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
except to get away on my slide hard at the start
and slow down at the finish, and to keep the top edge
of my blade just below the surface of the water,
and not feather under. I knew all this before,
but rowing directions are awfully hard to apply.
You have to watch the back of the man in front
of you for your stroke, and yet start at the very
instant he does. That means that you must
feel when he is going to start and start with him.
That’s an example of what they expect of you in
a boat; other things are a good deal harder.
“On Friday the first went to Suffolk to race
the Suffolk School. They have a little course
out there of about a quarter of a mile, and they
practice for just this short distance with an
awfully quick stroke. Of course they always
beat the crews that come to row them because
the visitors are not used to rowing that way.
It is like putting a half-miler to run a hundred
yards with a sprinter. Well, our crew pulled an
awfully snappy race and came within a quarter of
a length of winning. They would have won, too,
Rust said (the cox), if Pitkin had not got rattled
with the fast stroke and caught a crab and lost
a good half-length. He was all in, too, at the
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
finish, while Pete and Jim Eaton and Bursley
felt as if they were just beginning to row. The
Suffolk fellows always row themselves out. Rust
told me all about it. Of course I did not go. The
crew had to leave at 12 o’clock to get the train,
and they don’t let you cut recitations here to see
races. They think they are terribly generous to
let the crew off.
“Monday was our day on the river. We don’t
row every day, because there are not boats enough
to go round, and only two coaches for eight
schools. Caffrey coached us for a while from a
launch that belongs to one of the boys, and then
sent both crews up to the starting-place of the
regular mile course and told us to race down to
the boat-house. The first gave us a length start.
Caffrey had said that we must think of our form
all the time and pull for all that we were worth
every instant the oar was in the water. It was
the hardest work I ever did in my life, but I gave
all my attention to my form and my oar, and I
didn’t notice how tired I was till we got nearly to
the Harvard bridge. For a while I occasionally
got a glimpse of the first behind us, and that kept
me encouraged, but about halfway down they
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
passed us, and then I just had to pull blind, and
I did my best. I knew I could stand it if the rest
could. A little above the bridge, Mike called for
a spurt, and Mac hit it up three or four strokes
faster. I saw Sumner’s head begin to wabble,
and I knew that he was getting to the end of his
rope, and I began to worry about what I should do
if he gave out. But Jack is good stuff, and he
held out to the finish. By and by Mike cried out,
‘Ten strokes more! Make ’em hard now!’
and I found I had plenty of strength left after all.
It is strange that though you seem to be pulling
yourself out, there is always something left over!
“When Mike called ‘Let her run!’ I was so
tickled to think that I had kept my form all the
way and rowed a good race that I sat up and
grinned. That grin was worth a lot to me as you
will see. Pitkin slumped down in the boat as
soon as he stopped rowing. Caffrey had been
alongside of us all the time watching every man.
Afterwards he had a talk with Pete. I heard him
say, ‘Pitkin’s face was all screwed up the last
quarter, he was rowing weak; the other fellow
just went white, and at the end he sat up and
laughed.’ They saw me look up at that so they
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
moved away. I guessed they were speaking of
me, and I felt good, I can tell you, to think I had
done well and proved my right to be in the second
boat instead of the pair-oar.
“Pete asked me to wait for him (he’s an
awfully slow dresser), so I hung round on the float
and watched some of the other boats. Caffrey
had gone out with Waterville High who were
waiting for him. Their crew is pretty good too.
By and by Pete came along, and we went up together
to the car. And what do you think he
said to me? Pitkin and I were to change places.
“I was so set up and so happy that I couldn’t
study much, and I couldn’t get to sleep for a long
time.
“Since then I have rowed bow on the first all
the time, and there is practically no chance at all
of my being put back, as the practice is over now.
To-day the pair-oar bunch was fired. They knew
it was their last time, so Wilmot and Weld got
Trask for cox and came out, all three smoking
cigarettes with a great air of superiority and
rowing about as they liked. They came down
to where we were practicing racing starts with the
second, above the Harvard bridge, and watched
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
us. They were in very good spirits and jollied
the two boats, sitting in attitudes of ease in the
pair-oar in the warm sun, and occasionally rowing.
They thought they were having a fine time, but
any one of them would have given almost anything
to sneak into the boat--except Trask,
perhaps, who has a heart and isn’t allowed to
row. There was a lot of talk as to whether any
one would dare to call Caffrey ‘Bill,’ as it was the
last day, but no one was fresh enough to.
“The preliminary heats come on Wednesday.
Our second stands a good chance to get the championship,
but the first, which is the most important,
of course, has to face much better crews. I hope
we can get into the finals, anyway. Some of the
papers say Bainbridge is going to win, and some
say Newbury, which has a husky, big crew.
“All we want is to beat Newbury. They’ve
won the championship at baseball already, though
they have to play us one more game. If they
beat us in the crew, they get Smithy’s cup for a
year; if we beat them, we get it. Smithy has come
out again. He was at the baseball game in all
his importance, and they say he’s trying to work
the officials for the races so that Newbury can get
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
the best course. By the time I write my next
letter it will be all over. I’d cable you about it,
only it costs so much and you’ll have sailed by
that time. I am writing this on Friday to give
it a good start.
.in 10
“Affectionately,
.in 15
“Roger.”
.in 0
.fs 100%
The next morning Roger slept late. He got
up feeling listless and dispirited; and though he
assured himself as he dressed that he had every
reason to feel both happy and vigorous, the
lethargy clung to him so insistently that after
breakfast he returned to his room and lay down.
In addition he was troubled by an occasional
stitch in the left side. Was it possible that he
was going to fall ill, at this of all times? Could
it be that he too had developed a weakness of
the heart such as his father suffered from? The
thought sent a shiver down his spine. It couldn’t
be so, it shouldn’t be so! He would not be
cheated out of his reward after all these weeks
of hard uphill work.
Towards noon Dunn came whistling in from
school, where he had been spending his Saturday
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
morning in enforced diligence. He pounded on
Roger’s door, opened it, and dexterously flipped
a letter across to the figure on the sofa.
“Buenos Aires,” he said curtly. Then, suddenly
perceiving that Roger was lying in an unusual
state of quiet, or reading signs of discouragement
in his face, he added: “Hello! You
aren’t sick, are you?”
“I guess not,” answered Roger, smiling drearily;
“I felt a little tired.”
“You’ve been overdoing, that’s all, I guess.
Talbot works you too hard. You ought to cut
practice for a day or two.”
“Practice is over, anyway,” responded Roger.
“You want to take it easy until the race, then,
and not think about it,” said Dunn. “We can’t
afford to have you overtrained.”
Dunn departed and Roger took up his letter.
He read with keen interest until he came to the
last page, when a look of dismay swept over his
face. “Your father is greatly concerned about
your rowing,” ran the fatal passage. “We know
an English gentleman here who rowed on the
Cambridge crew, and he says that oarsmen not
infrequently get some form of heart disease from
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
the great strain put upon the heart in racing.
Your father wanted to write immediately and
forbid your rowing, but I told him that if you
could play football without harm, you ought to
be able to row a mile, and prevailed on him to
leave the matter in your hands. Before you take
part in any race you must see a good physician,
Dr. Long, for example, and make sure that your
heart is sound. You can’t afford to purchase the
petty glory of rowing in a schoolboy race at the
price of ill-health for the rest of your life.”
Roger dropped the letter from his hands and
groaned aloud. “He won’t pass me, I’m sure.
It’s all up with me if I go to a doctor. Why
couldn’t the confounded letter have got lost on
the way!”
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch23
CHAPTER XXIII || THE WEAKENED HEART
.sp 2
The rest of the day Roger spent in moping,
fuming, and intermittent attempts to divert himself
by reading or work. Feeling wholly without
appetite, he did not go down to luncheon when the
bell rang. As a consequence Mr. Adams came
up, inquired sympathetically about his condition,
and proposed to telephone for a physician.
But a physician was, at that moment, the last
person that Roger desired to see; he could not
reconcile himself to the thought of submitting
his dearly cherished hopes to the decision of some
bigoted foe of rowing who would condemn him
on principle and flatter himself that he had saved
another body from destruction. He had passed
the Athletic Association doctor at the beginning
of the season; why was not that enough to satisfy
his mother’s requirement?
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said, avoiding
Mr. Adams’s eye. “I’m just a little off my feed.
I shall be all right by to-night.”
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
“It’s always better to attend to these things
at the outset,” rejoined the teacher. “The doctor
wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I don’t want him!” persisted Roger, fretfully.
“He’d just stir me up.”
Mr. Adams observed him with curiosity. Here
was a childish unreasonableness which he had
never before seen in Roger Hardie. “I’ll wait
till to-night, then. Isn’t there something Mrs.
Adams or I could do to make you more comfortable?
Shouldn’t you like something to read,
or some one to read to you?”
Roger thanked him, but thought he should take
a little nap and then perhaps go for a walk. So
Mr. Adams was induced to leave, and Roger lay
back on his couch, with eyes staring wide open and
thoughts pounding hard. He had staved off the
doctor for a time at least.
As he lay there assuring himself that nothing
could be the matter with his heart and that he
should certainly be quite well by night, reviling
himself for being such a fool as to fall ill on the eve
of a race and vowing that he would row anyway,
Dunn came softly in on new rubber-soled shoes.
He was going to Cambridge to see the Harvard-Princeton
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
game, but before he went he wanted to
express his sympathy and offer consolation. Dunn
did not use these trite expressions nor did he
talk like a phrase book of etiquette, but he meant
well and Roger understood him. The consolation
took the form of a lurid, six weeks’ novel
which Dunn commended as “pretty fair.” An
hour with this pretty fair tale of Jason’s lending
was about all Roger could stand; he threw it
down gladly when Mike appeared to invite him
to go out and watch the game between the Weary-Willies
and the Easy-Resters which Mike was to
umpire.
He fared forth, therefore, with Mike, and established
himself at the shady end of the players’
bench, prepared to be quietly amused. Dickie
Sumner thrust a sheet of paper and a pencil into
his hand and bade him keep score. It was a great
game and most amusing, but totally devoid of
quiet. The Easy-Resters rested not at all, but
tore up and down the foul lines, jeering at the
battery of their opponents and abusing the
umpire. The Weary-Willies answered unweariedly
jeer for jeer. When, in the middle of the
fifth inning, the E-R’s assaulted Mike, and,
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
sweeping him off the field, dragged Roger out to
take his place, the new umpire could not for the
life of him determine whether the score stood
seven to six in favor of the E-R’s or six to five
for the W-W’s. So he left Mike to continue the
score after his own fashion, and devoted himself to
securing order on the diamond and enforcing his
decisions by threats of injury from the baseball
bat with which he had armed himself.
The game was over, and the players were arguing
noisily about the score--Mike had made the
E-R’s pay dearly for the violence offered to
the sacred person of the umpire--before Roger
bethought himself of his illness. He was apprised
of it now by a sensation of faintness, and a startling
dizziness that fell upon him suddenly and for
the moment frightened him with the fear that he
was the victim of one of the “spells” to which,
as he vaguely knew, people with weak hearts
are subject. But the fear was overborne by
a fierce determination that surged up in a defiant
flood, insisting that the undesired was the untrue.
It was not his heart! His heart was as strong as
any one’s, whatever his father might fancy.
He would not be ill, he would row! He set his
.bn 283.png
.pn +1
teeth and clenched his fists and steered his way
straight for the house. There he threw himself
into a chair in the common room, and taking up a
paper, turned to the sports page, on which a reporter
had given his opinion as to the probable
outcome of the schoolboy races. Newbury was
picked for first place, with a good fighting chance
for Bainbridge Latin,--both coached by Lanning.
Westcott’s was the best of the Caffrey
crews, but did not look like a winner; the Back
Bay boys rowed in good form, but they lacked
the power of the big men in the other boats.
While form was unquestionably an important
element in the success of a crew, mere style could
never take the place of endurance and strength.
So much Roger at last comprehended after
several readings and with much effort to control
his trembling hands and wavering eyes. He put
down the paper in disgust, and resting his heavy
head on his hand, mingled in a dizzy confusion despairing
self-reproach and genuine prayers for help.
The dizziness had worn off, but the weakness
still remained, and the consciousness of this weakness
undermined the props of determination as
fast as they were set up. The boys were gathering
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
for dinner; they threw curious and not unsympathetic
glances at the disconsolate figure in the
lounging chair, and talked in tones uncommonly
subdued of the effect Hardie’s illness would have
on the chances of the crew. Presently Felton
came in from the long corridor, surveyed the
room, and catching sight of Hardie in the chair
slapped him roughly on the shoulder.
Roger started and shot a menacing look at the
offender. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with you?” retorted Felton.
“Pete wants you at the telephone.”
Roger dragged himself to the telephone. “Is
that you, Roger?” sounded Talbot’s clear voice.
“Yes.”
“How are you? They told me this afternoon
that you were under the weather. You aren’t
going to be sick, are you?”
“No, it’s all right. I’m better to-night.”
“That’s good. Be careful what you eat, and
get to bed early. We can’t afford to lose you.
They assigned places this afternoon for the trials.
We got the outside.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. There won’t be any current
.bn 285.png
.pn +1
to help us, and a head wind would set us back
a lot. They’re counting on our weakening at
the finish. They don’t know us. I’m not afraid
of any weakening in the first boat now that Pitkin
is out.”
Roger groaned audibly. “What’s that?”
asked Talbot.
“Where’s Newbury?” substituted Roger.
“Inside, next to the wall. Smithy got that
arranged all right.”
“How does he come in?”
“How does he come into anything? Pulls
wires and works his friends in the B.A.A. He’ll
be on the referee’s launch in some official capacity,
I’ll bet my head. I’m willing to let Newbury
beat us in the trials, but we must make
second place so as to get into the finals. I
should like to save our strength as much as possible
for the real thing. We ought to find Brookfield
High and Boston Latin pretty easy; they are
the others in our heat.”
“That’s right; our second could put it over
either of them.”
“Well, take good care of yourself. Remember
about eating and getting to bed. Good-by.”
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
Roger hung up the receiver and returned to
the common room. The talk with Pete had put
new life into him. Excited by the news and the
prospect, he thought of his illness only as something
which he had really left behind him, and
which might be wholly disregarded. His mother’s
instruction as to the examination of his heart he
would not consider just now. There must be
some way out of the dilemma. He must row,
whatever happened; on that he was determined.
The dining-room doors opened just as he came
down the corridor, and Roger went in with the
first rush. Acting on the assumption that he
was well, and hungry from a day’s fasting, he
fell to greedily. Soup, roast, vegetables, pudding,
fruit--he took them all, like any of the perpetually
hollow boys who called the food at Adams’s
“bum,” yet devoured it like cormorants. Mr.
Adams was not at dinner; if he had been there
he must have marked with uneasiness the feverish
glitter in Roger’s eye and the abnormal convalescent’s
appetite.
After dinner the company sallied forth to the
playground, the younger lads to indulge in a
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
screaming game of scrub, the older ones to sit
round on the grass and watch Dunn trying to
teach Cable to hold a pitched ball. Dunn had
declared that Cable should learn, and Cable had
declared that he couldn’t. In the contest Cable
very clearly proved his case--to Dunn’s disgust
and the infinite amusement of the onlookers. The
sport terminated at half-past seven, when Jason,
spying his tutor coming across from the street,
drove a particularly vicious in-curve at the unfortunate
Cable, who dodged the missile by an
awkward sprawl, and trudged submissively after
it to the distant elm trees.
Roger followed Dunn into the house. For
the last fifteen minutes a sensation of approaching
calamity had been growing upon him. The
proud spirit of defiance with which he had declared
himself well had forsaken him. His brain reeled
under a dull, oppressive weight. The dinner which
he had so recklessly devoured seemed like a mass of
hardening cement in his stomach; his lips trembled,
perspiration broke out on his forehead.
Utterly wretched, he dragged himself upstairs
to his room and sank into a chair by the
open window.
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
“And you thought you could row!” he groaned.
“You poor fool!”
And then he was sick, violently sick, with convulsions
that shook his whole frame, sending great
throbs of pain crashing through his brain. He
dropped his clothes in a pile on the floor and crept
into bed, where he lay with cheek buried in the
pillow, listening horrified to his own heart beating
“tub-up! tub-up! tub-up!” in his ear. There was
no longer any doubt of his condition. “It’s my
heart!” he muttered wildly to himself. “My
heart has gone back on me. They knew more
about it than I did. I’m not fit to row!”
The head throbs subsided after a time, and
Roger began to think. He recalled certain occasions
in his childhood when he had suffered
from sick headaches. His mother used to sit
beside him then, holding his hand, and, with her
quiet, soothing presence, helping him to bear the
pain. He missed her now, terribly. He felt,
too, that he had forfeited his right to her ministrations;
he had been disloyal to her, in intent at
least, when she had been steadfastly loyal to
him. The very command against which he had
rebelled was proof of her sympathy, for it was
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
the result of her effort to save his rowing when
his father would have forbidden it out of hand.
“She did her best for me,” he thought in keen
self-reproach, “and she trusted me, and I was
going back on her. It’s all up with the rowing
now; I shall never sit in a boat again, but
I’ll have the examination if I ever get out of
this, just to prove that I’m what she thinks I
am.”
This resolution brought him a certain composure.
He ceased to mourn, and presently fell
asleep. The sun was already slanting down
through his open window when he awoke. Mr.
Adams stood at the bedside.
“How do you feel this morning?” asked the
master. “If sleep can cure you, you ought to
be well. You’ve slept over breakfast in spite
of all the noise.”
“I’m better,” answered Roger, who had profited
by the interval to get his bearings. “My
head doesn’t ache any more, but I feel rather
weak and hollow.”
“We’ll send you up something to eat. What
shall it be?”
“I think I’d better see a doctor before I eat
.bn 290.png
.pn +1
anything,” replied the boy, humbly. His attitude
had changed over night.
Mr. Adams nodded approval to this sentiment.
“That’s right. You ought to have
seen one yesterday. I’ll telephone for Dr. Brayton.
In the meantime I’ll have them send up
a little toast. You can nibble on that if you
feel faint.”
The toast came, and Roger nibbled on it as
long as it lasted. He felt better, far better.
The heart spell was evidently passing. Dunn
came in and sat on the bed for half an hour, telling
a long tale of his tragedy of hard work and not
forgetting at its close to exhort the patient to
keep up his courage and get well before Wednesday.
The exhortation drew a strained smile
to Roger’s face, such a smile as we assume to
shield from intruding eyes the knowledge of a
hurt--and the hurt smarted long after the complacent
Jason had left the room.
Mike was the next visitor. He sat down with
sober face in a chair fronting the bed, and said
nothing after his “Hello, Roger!” for some time,
though he stole occasional shy glances at his sad-eyed
friend.
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
“Are you much sick?” he asked at length.
“I don’t know,” answered Roger. “The doctor
will tell me when he comes.”
“Won’t it be terrible if you can’t row?” sighed
the boy, his big eyes soft with pity.
Roger squirmed. “It’ll be hard, of course, but
if I can’t, I can’t.” He tried to speak lightly,
but the attempt was a failure.
There was silence again for a time. Mike
looked obstinately down at the cap which he was
smoothing on his knee. Roger was thinking of
his condition and of the sacrifice which he was
making. He felt so much better this morning
that had it not been for the fatal heart weakness,
he could have fancied himself within a few hours
of complete recovery. He should be like Trask,
apparently perfectly well, but barred from everything
worth while--no more rowing, no more
football, no more long swims, or hard all-day
tramps over the mountain peaks with the joy of
covering, between breakfast and supper, the score
of steep miles which the average tramper was
happy to bring within the limits of two whole
days! Henceforth he must nurse himself and
avoid over-exertion and be content with golf or
.bn 292.png
.pn +1
tennis, playing with girls, perhaps, or kids! What
a dreary, disgusting prospect!
“Pitkin shirks,” offered Mike, who had been
pursuing his own train of thought.
Roger stared for an instant without comprehension.
Then, as he perceived that practical
Mike was worrying over the change in the first
boat, he answered hopefully, “He won’t shirk
in the race; he’ll put in all he has.”
“But he hasn’t the power.”
Before Roger could meet this objection, a knock
was heard at the door. As Mr. Adams came in
with the doctor, Mike slipped away unnoticed.
Dr. Brayton sat down by the bedside, and in a very
friendly, comrade-like way asked the boy questions.
Then he felt the patient’s pulse, looked at
his tongue, put the stethoscope to his chest, took
his temperature. Afterwards he drew out a little
block in a neat leather case and wrote on the top
leaf certain mysterious words.
“What’s the matter?” asked Roger, with an
anxious quaver in his voice.
“Over-eating and worry,” answered the doctor,
laconically.
“Is it bad?”
.bn 293.png
.pn +1
The doctor smiled. “We shouldn’t call it a
very serious case.”
“I mean my heart,” faltered Roger.
“Your heart! Have you had trouble with
your heart?”
“No-o, but my father has a bad heart, and I
could hear mine beat awfully hard last night.
I was afraid something was the matter with
it.”
The doctor took up his instrument and again
listened long and carefully. Roger could feel
his breath come and go with hurried, uneven
pace as the examination drew out. He was
excited, anxious, shrinking from the truth yet
eager to know the worst. It seemed ten minutes
before the doctor folded up his stethoscope and
returned it to his bag.
“What’s wrong with it?” demanded the boy,
faintly, after waiting for some seconds for the
doctor to speak.
“Nothing. It’s perfectly normal.”
Roger gasped. “And it isn’t weak?”
“It’s as strong as a prize fighter’s. Your
trouble is with the digestion.”
“Shall I be laid up long?”
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
“Not if you obey directions. You’ll have to
be careful for a day or two.”
A wonderful change swept over the patient’s
face. The dismal air of resignation to an evil
fate fell from him like a mask. His eyes flashed
bright with hope and eagerness. He popped into
a sitting posture with a quickness of recovery
that would have delighted Caffrey’s heart, and
stretched out both hands toward the physician.
“Can I row on Wednesday? Oh, doctor, please
say I can!”
Dr. Brayton laughed aloud. “Not if you act
in that way. Lie down and keep quiet, and do
what you’re told.”
“I’ll do anything, starve or eat slops or lie
here like a log till Wednesday,” declared Roger,
as he fell back again in obedience to orders, “but
you’ve got to make me well enough to row. You’ll
do it, won’t you?”
“We’ll see. Stay quietly in bed to-day, take
only the nourishment which I have ordered, and
don’t get up to-morrow until I come. You must
get your strength back before you can think of
rowing.”
For the rest of the day Roger lay in uneasy
.bn 295.png
.pn +1
happiness, taking with Fletcher-like deliberateness
the sloppy messes that were brought to him,
receiving visitors as they drifted in after church,
and kicking his legs like a lusty infant. The
burden of his despair had suddenly lifted as a
cloud cap lifts from a mountain peak and discloses
miles of glorious, sunny landscape that had
seemed but a little before as hopelessly buried
in gloom as the peak itself. At times he could
hardly restrain himself from leaping forth from
bed and dancing out his joy. In the afternoon,
when the fellows went off for walks, he took a
nap; he awoke refreshed and impatient to be
moving. He obeyed his orders, however, helped
out by a book and the presence of various friendly
souls who had time on their hands and could talk
indefinitely of nothing. At night he slept again
for long, unbroken hours.
In the morning the doctor came, looked him
over, ordered a beefsteak for his breakfast, and
told him to go back to school. Roger ate the
beefsteak with the satisfaction of a hungry tramp
who has chanced upon a square meal after an experience
of two days with dogs and crusts; but
before he left for school he slipped into the gymnasium
.bn 296.png
.pn +1
and tried a dozen strokes on the rowing
machine.
It was all right; he was a little weak, but he
could pull his old stroke. He had two days in
which to recover his strength.
.bn 297.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch24
CHAPTER XXIV || THE TRIALS
.sp 2
President John, glorious in apparel and self-importance,
strutted along the boat-house float,
blowing cigarette smoke into the faces of waiting
oarsmen, playing the patronizing oracle to the
newspaper men, and juggling rowing terms for
the benefit of everybody within earshot. What
strings the genius of the Triangular League had
pulled with the Athletic Association to obtain his
appointment as race official we may not inquire;
of the fact there was no question. A certain
Mr. Henderson shared with him the responsibility
of being judge at the finish, but the glory of office
President John took to himself. In his eyes
Henderson was but the zero which added to one
makes ten. He himself was both the one and the
ten.
On a heap of sweaters in a corner of the open
room of the boat-house lay stretched the Westcott
crews, awaiting, under pretence of calmness, the
.bn 298.png
.pn +1
moment for carrying out their boats. They could
not start until the arrival of the launch which was
to bear the officials. Meantime various friends
who had smuggled themselves into the close
quarters clustered about to stay up their champions
and divert their minds from the race.
“Ben has got his quinquereme out,” said Mike,
coming in from a visit to the float. “They’re
rowing round here challenging everybody to
race.”
“What’s the quinquereme?” asked Roger,
raising himself on his elbow.
“It’s an old eight-oared ship’s cutter from
some Spanish war vessel, that Ben discovered
down by the East Cambridge bridge,” explained
Pete. “He’s filled it full of fellows who want to
see the races.”
“Why does he call it a quinquereme?”
“Because he likes the name, of course,” declared
Eaton, laughing. “He doesn’t care what
it means. Fluffy and his gang have picked up a
big dory thing they call a bireme. They’re going
to row the quinquereme.”
“That’s all over,” said Mike. “The quinquereme
beat out the bireme and the pair-oar.
.bn 299.png
.pn +1
Tracy says he’s going to challenge the second
next.”
“Let’s go out and see them,” proposed Roger.
He raised himself into a sitting position as if to
carry out his suggestion, but Talbot pulled him
back.
“No, you don’t,” ordered the captain. “You
aren’t here to amuse yourself!”
Just then the cry arose that the launch was
coming, and the non-combatants crowded to the
door. Through one of the wide arches of the
bridge, its parapet topped for a hundred yards by
a dense row of heads, the slender Veritas was
speeding down upon the boat-house.
“Second crew out!” commanded Talbot. McDowell
and his men fetched their oars from the
corner and laid them side by side at the edge of
the float; then they brought out their boat, and,
dropping it into the water, fitted their oars into
the locks and took their places. When toe
straps were well adjusted and the slides fully
tested, friendly hands laid hold of the blades
of the port oars at Mac’s signal, and shoved the
boat forth.
“Attention!” called Mike. “Ready!--Row!”
.bn 300.png
.pn +1
The four oars took the water with a hard clean
catch. Backward swung the blue, white-lettered
jerseys in perfect unison; forward they
came again, their slides returning easily with the
motion of the boat, and again the blades snatched
at the water and drove it back in one steady,
prolonged push. The lads in the untippable old
quinquereme mounted their benches and yelled
the school cheers in a fierce burst of loyalty. A
knot of old Westcottites on the bank echoed the
cheer.
“What a stroke that kid sets!” said Talbot.
“If he were only six inches taller and twenty
pounds heavier--”
“I shouldn’t be on the first crew,” offered
Roger, as Pete hesitated.
“Some of us wouldn’t, that’s a sure thing,”
returned Talbot. “We’ll watch the launch off,
and then go back and lie down.”
The Veritas took on board the officials and the
newspaper men, and headed up river after the
crews. President John had elected to go with
the launch. He posted himself beside the steersman
in the bow, standing proudly erect to be
seen and admired of all men, and cast a long glance
.bn 301.png
.pn +1
backward at the common herd that thronged the
float.
“Doesn’t he make you sick?” growled Talbot,
as they watched the Veritas plough her way upstream.
“I suppose Newbury isn’t responsible
for him, but I’d give my allowance for all summer
to be sure of getting ahead of him. I’d row till
I dropped dead rather than let that goat see us
beaten.”
“He won’t see our second beaten, to-day,”
said Eaton. “We’ve got the best thing in
seconds on the river.”
“But he’ll see us beaten,” returned the captain.
“I hate to give him so much rope, but second
place is good enough for us to-day. On Friday
we’ll have a real try at ’em.”
They lay down again in their old corner, telling
Rust to call them out when there was anything
to see.
“This is the worst part of it,” said Pete.
“There’s nothing so hard as waiting. How goes
it, Roger?”
Roger shook his head with a melancholy little
smile that barely lifted the corners of his tight-closed
lips. Pete threw at him an uneasy look.
.bn 302.png
.pn +1
“You don’t feel sick again, do you?” he asked
quickly.
This time Roger’s lips parted to a full grin,
“No,” he answered with emphasis. “I’m nervous,
that’s all. I want to be doing something.”
“You’ll feel all right as soon as we get into
the boat,” rejoined Talbot, relieved. “What we
want is some one to jolly us up a little.”
Just at that moment, as if in response to the
captain’s wish, a young man, displaying under a
panama hat a face wreathed with smiles, appeared
at the door and trotted towards the Westcott
corner.
“It’s Happy Hutchins!” cried Pete. “Hello,
Hap! Why didn’t you come before, you old
fraud?”
Hutchins was shaking hands violently all
round, calling every one by name as if he knew
the whole crew as well as he knew Pete and Eaton.
“I couldn’t get here. I was afraid they weren’t
going to let me off at all. If they hadn’t, I’d
have cut the job entirely. How I’d like to be in
you fellows’ shoes! The Newbury cox will be
the only one on their boat to see Westcott’s to-day.
Gee, but I wish I was pulling an oar!”
.bn 303.png
.pn +1
Roger glanced with curiosity at Pete’s face to
see what effect this boundless confidence had
upon him. Pete was grinning broadly, but only
with pleasure in Happy’s society. He didn’t
need the stimulus of artificial encouragement.
“What’s the job, Hap?” asked Eaton.
“Arlington Trust. Fill ink-wells and run errands.
Three dollars a week. It nearly pays for
my lunches.”
“Don’t get discouraged,” urged Pete. “Perhaps
you’ll be made a vice-president next year.”
“I’ll probably get a raise next year that’ll pay
my car fares,” answered Hutchins, calmly.
“Where’s old Withers? Do you suppose he’ll
remember me?”
“He’ll never forget the man that stepped
through the bottom of the pair-oar!” declared
Pete. “He’s sore about it yet.”
That was the first link in a chain of reminiscences
that sent the minutes flying. Hutchins
had not succeeded in getting into college in spite
of an extra year, and two long summers of arduous
slaving; but he was the jolliest, best-hearted
chap that Westcott’s had ever failed to make a
scholar of, and he couldn’t open his mouth without
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
being entertaining. Eaton had just reminded
him of his historic attempt to prove to the coach
by argument that he wasn’t feathering under,
when two harsh toots of a steam whistle cut his
explanations short and sobered all faces.
“Trowbridge!” exclaimed Eaton and Pete, in
unison.
“What’s ours?” asked Hutchins, quietly.
“Three. If Trowbridge is ahead, we’re close
behind, you can depend on that,” said Talbot.
“Let’s go out,” proposed Roger.
“Not yet. They’re some distance up, still.”
For two minutes they waited in silence, listening.
Then the whistle screeched once more,
this time distinctly nearer.
“One! Two!” counted Hutchins. “Trowbridge!
Come on out!”
The captain made no objection, and the crowd
broke for the float. They were none too soon.
The launch was breasting the water a length out
from the arch in midstream. Alongside, but
still under the bridge, was Mac’s crew, an indistinct
streak in the shadow. From the second
arch inshore, the bow of the Trowbridge boat was
just emerging. Ten seconds later, both boats were
.bn 305.png
.pn +1
clear of the bridge, sweeping towards the finish
line. No other crew was in sight.
“Pull there, Westcott’s!” yelled Hutchins, as
if he could reach the distant crew with his voice.
“Hit it up, stroke!”
Talbot said nothing, but his eyes were glued on
the approaching boats, now hardly twenty strokes
from the finish line. His heart was heavy with
disappointment. He had expected much from
this second crew. When doubts as to his own
assailed him, his faith in Mac’s crew had never
wavered. He had expected them to win their
trial heat with ease, to make up in a measure for
the chagrin the school would feel if the first only
gained second place.
“Gee! see ’em hit up the stroke!” cried Hutchins,
suddenly gripping Pete’s arm and dancing
in the water that flooded the float. “Look at
’em gain! That’s the way, Westcott’s! They
can’t meet it! Look at their heads roll round!
They’re all in. You’ve got ’em, Westcott’s.
Hold ’em! Hold ’em!”
At this point Hutchins broke off his wild ejaculations
to splash across to a cluster of old Westcottites
standing near the boat-house and lead a
.bn 306.png
.pn +1
cheer. While the cheer rang out, Mike was
counting the last half-dozen strokes, and urging
his men to row them hard. His boat cut the
finish line half a length ahead of Trowbridge,
whose exhausted oarsmen fell forward upon their
oars as the coxswain bade them cease rowing.
The spurt had caught them with no surplus of
strength to draw upon.
After this there was no need of artificial diversion
in the boat-house. The fellows on the second
vowed that they had lots of strength left, that they
were holding back so as to keep Trowbridge from
pushing too hard, and that they could have kept
the lead from the beginning if they had wanted
to--all of which was believed because it was
pleasant to believe. The exchange of questions
and answers, explanations and congratulations
absorbed every one’s attention until the
toots of the launch again called the crowd forth
to see the finish of the last heat of the seconds.
And now the moment was come which Talbot’s
crew had been both longing for and dreading. As
he helped carry the boat out, Roger was conscious
of a shrinking--a nervous, unsettling fear that his
strength and skill might not be equal to the test
.bn 307.png
.pn +1
before him. He glanced at Pete to see if he too
felt the depressing influence, but the captain’s
face showed only a deeper line of determination
about the mouth, and his voice as he gave the
necessary orders sounded calm and reassuring.
The unnatural tension was at its height as Roger
sat with arms outstretched for the catch, waiting
for the coxswain’s word. It clung to him still
during the first strokes, as the boat got under way
from the float. Then gradually the familiar
movement absorbed his attention, and the grip
on his heart loosened. The harmony of the
swaying bodies, the monotonous creak of the
slides on their rollers, the wash of the water
against the sides, the “feel” of the boat beneath
him as it drove steadily forward--all contributed
to wake in him the old confidence and exhilaration.
As the crew passed under the bridge on their
way to the starting line, the cheers from admirers
above descended in a loud blare, but by this time
he was beyond the need of such encouragement.
He knew that the boat was going well, he exulted
in the conviction that he had his form and his
strength, and could row that day as well as any
other.
.bn 308.png
.pn +1
The crews got off well. The dozen quick
starting strokes put the nose of the Westcott boat
six feet ahead of Newbury. Brookfield High
and Boston Latin were still farther behind.
Roger was a little dilatory in obeying the starting
signal, and as a result, in his efforts to follow his
leader, he rowed his first strokes too much with his
arms; but by the time Pete lengthened out, he
was in form again, his legs thrusting strongly
against the stretcher, his blade catching the water
sharply and hard, his pull straight through to
the end of the long stroke. He bore in mind the
last warning he had received from the coach, and
gave particular attention to getting his hands
away quickly, keeping in the middle of the boat
and avoiding the abrupt return technically known
as “rushing the slide.” He saw nothing but the
back of the man in front of him, heard nothing
but the exhortations of the coxswain, until four
blasts of the whistle close at hand assured him that
the Westcott boat was leading. Soon after this
he began to feel tired, and wondered vaguely if
he were not pulling too hard, but with the second
toot of the whistle this sense of weariness yielded
somewhat, and a glimpse caught over Eaton’s
.bn 309.png
.pn +1
shoulder of Brookfield High, lengths behind, gave
him courage.
“Halfway!” called Rust. “Keep it up now,
Newbury’s gaining. Watch your form, Bow!”
From the launch came the signal that Westcott
had lost the lead to Newbury. Roger wondered
if he were really rowing badly or was just being
warned to prevent a slump. He wondered also
whether Talbot would spurt or let Newbury go
ahead. And while he wondered, toiling at his
oar and watching his slide, he felt the stroke
quicken and rallied to meet it.
And then a new sound reached his ears, the
sound of school cheers from the bridge. Again
the launch whistled four times. They were
ahead again! The cheers were clearer now and
close at hand. Roger’s breath was coming hard
with every stroke; he got no rest on the returning
slide; his legs were weakening, he was tired all
over, but not too tired to row; and he drove his
protesting muscles as if they were things separate
from himself, and he a cruel master lashing
them on.
As they passed into the shadow of the bridge,
the launch sent forth a single long shriek. The
.bn 310.png
.pn +1
sound filled the Westcott bow oar with furious
resentment. Was Pete going to let Newbury slip
in ahead now, after holding them the whole distance?
Why didn’t he spurt? Why didn’t he
give his crew a chance to win its proper place?
The spirit of battle that surged through Roger’s
heart blotted out the consciousness of weariness
and feebleness; he yearned for the opportunity to
do something more than pull with all his might
at the stroke set him.
But Pete did not respond to the ardent wish of
the bow oar. The race was approaching its end.
The launch gave its final signal--one hateful blast.
“Ten strokes more!” yelled Rust. “Make it
good now. Hard! Hard!”
Then Talbot, either to test his crew or to show
what he could do if he tried, suddenly “hit her
up.” Bow oar met the challenge with a burst of
furious energy. He was mad all through. He
felt like tearing his outrigger from the side, like
driving his stretcher into Eaton’s back. Those
ten strokes were the hardest Roger had ever rowed.
The boat leaped forward. The lead of three-quarters
of a length which Newbury had, grew
less with every push of the Westcott oars.
.bn 311.png
.pn +1
“Let her run!” called Rust, and the crew rested.
Newbury had won, by a quarter of a length.
Roger held himself upright, though breathing
heavily. His limbs were in a quiver, his heart
was sore against Pete’s cautious policy. They
had lost a race that might have been won! Brookfield
was splashing along five lengths away, trying
hard to avoid the ignominy of being last.
.bn 312.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch25
CHAPTER XXV || THE FINAL STRUGGLE
.sp 2
President John hurried from the launch to
the Newbury crew, who were stiffly disembarking
at the side of the float.
“A splendid race!” he cried exultantly, as he
grasped the hand of the victorious captain; “a
splendid race! That’s the way to do the thing,--get
the lead in the first half of the course and hold
it. And you had plenty of strength in reserve,
too, didn’t you?”
Downs glanced a little doubtfully at his men.
“I think so.”
“You’ll do it easier next time,” asserted the
distinguished man. “A defeat like this breaks
the spirit of a crew. What you want now is a
good rest. I’ll see if I can’t get you a holiday
for to-morrow.”
“That would be great! Do you think you
can?”
President John’s knowing smile suggested
.bn 313.png
.pn +1
mysterious reaches of influence which he was
much too modest to mention. “I guess it can
be arranged. We can’t afford to take any risks.
The first name on that cup has got to be Newbury
Latin.”
Westcott’s paddled in to the float, turning their
boat over directly to Bainbridge Latin. Roger
stripped for the shower in silence with lowering
face.
“How do you feel now it’s over?” asked
Pete, after staring for some seconds at his sullen
companion. “All in?”
“No! Mad and disgusted!”
“You’ve nothing to be disgusted about,”
said Eaton. “Rust says you pulled like a fiend
the whole way. I’m the one to be disgusted. I
didn’t row myself out at all.”
“That’s just it! If Pete had put up the stroke
two minutes earlier, we’d have left ’em behind
half a length! Now they’ll crow and the newspapers
will call us a sandy but outclassed crew,
and half the fellows will believe it.”
“Cut out the growling!” commanded the
captain. “What I did was right, and I’d do it
again. I didn’t know how you fellows were standing
.bn 314.png
.pn +1
it, and there was no use in killing ourselves,
with the finals on for day after to-morrow. But
I’ll give you one sure pointer: you’ll have all the
spurting you want on Friday.”
“Bring on your spurt!” snapped the bow oar.
“We’ll meet you.”
Roger felt calmer after his shower--calm enough
to regret his rash boast. Pete had the pluck
inherent in good blood, the indomitable spirit
that faces odds undaunted, and only fails when
brain and body can no longer serve it,--and
Pete was not one to forget. It was a foolish thing
to say, especially for an inexperienced oar who
had rowed but one race in his life, but as the
boast could not now be retracted, the only course
for Roger to pursue was to carry it out. This
he secretly resolved to do if his good-for-nothing
legs didn’t go back on him.
The papers next morning were scanned with
eagerness. They generally considered that first
place in the finals would lie between Bainbridge
Latin, which had run away from its rivals in the
second heat, and Newbury, with Westcott’s a
good third. All agreed that Westcott’s was
likely to win the race for seconds.
.bn 315.png
.pn +1
“It’s a wonder they concede that much,”
said Pete, sarcastically. “They always act surprised
if we win anything.”
Dickie Sumner, made audacious by the knowledge
that he was the bearer of important news,
came pushing into the group of older boys that
filled the big bay window. “Have you heard
about the Newbury crew’s getting a holiday?”
he demanded.
His brother Jack seized him roughly. “What
is it?”
“They’re going down to Cohasset to spend
to-day and to-night. They aren’t coming back
to school until ten o’clock to-morrow, and they
don’t have to prepare any lessons.”
“Who told you?” asked Jack, suspiciously.
“Winny Thorne. I saw him on the car. His
brother’s on their crew.”
“And we’ve got to stay here all day and study
all the evening on to-morrow’s lessons!” exclaimed
Louis. “It’s a roast!”
“They ought to let the first crew off, anyway,”
said Eaton. “The second doesn’t need it so
much.”
“They could come down with me to Manchester,”
.bn 316.png
.pn +1
offered Rust. “The house is open, and
I could take care of five perfectly well.”
“Do you suppose the old man would let us?”
asked Eaton.
Talbot considered. “He might, if we could
make him see that it’s necessary. I’ll try him,
anyway.”
After the opening Bible-reading, the captain
of the crew followed Mr. Westcott to the office.
He returned in three minutes, crestfallen. “It’s
no go,” he passed the news along. “He wouldn’t
even discuss it.”
Some very sour faces scowled over the tops of
books for the next half-hour. Those near the
windows stole occasional glances into the street
and across to the Garden beyond. It was a perfect
June day, warm and quiet, with limpid air
sleepily stirring and the sun beaming benignly
over all. The autos of the unimprisoned idle
slid by in endless succession, bearing their fortunate
occupants whithersoever fancy called. The new
green leaves on the trees in the Garden quivered
soothingly over the groups of nurses and perambulators
and playing children, and the poverty-blessed
loafers slouching in unambitious contentment
.bn 317.png
.pn +1
on the benches. And this beautiful day
Newbury could enjoy, care-free, on the rocks at
Cohasset, while the Westcott fellows were mewed
up in a stuffy schoolroom, grinding out loathsome
lessons. It was wicked!
The day passed as others before it. Lessons
had to be learned and recitations made. That
night every oarsman was pledged to be in bed at
half-past nine. Out at Adams’s all noise was forbidden
after nine o’clock, on pain of frightful
tortures. Roger slept ten hours without a break,
and awoke at sound of the rising bell, feeling
strong enough to row the race alone.
The school hours of Friday dragged out their
wonted course. At two, Talbot was called to the
telephone, and emerged, chuckling tremendously,
to meet McDowell at the foot of the stairs.
“It’s the biggest joke I ever heard. The Newbury
fellows sat round on the rocks all day yesterday
in sleeveless shirts, and burnt their arms
so that they couldn’t sleep at all last night. And
we slept like tops!”
“Gee, but that’s great!” crowed Mac. “I
hope the old man won’t hear about it, though!”
“Where you going?” demanded the captain,
.bn 318.png
.pn +1
as Mac started up the stairs. “You ought to be
getting out to the boat-house.”
“Volunteer French,” answered Mac, calmly.
“I can’t afford to miss it. I only got fifty on
my last exam. The race doesn’t come till three-thirty.
I’ll be out in time.”
Talbot gaped after the lithe figure as it scurried
up the stairs. “After-school work on the day of
the race!” he gasped. “And Newbury with two
days off! This is a pretty school!”
Mac turned up at three o’clock, whistling as
unconcernedly as if he were out for an ordinary
practice, quite undisturbed by the reproaches
hurled at his head. By the time he was dressed
the Veritas was in sight, bringing the whole
Varsity crew to see the races, and sailing under
the command of Deering himself. President John
again elected to go on the launch, convinced that
here his light would shine more brilliantly, and
desiring to make sure in advance of the best
vantage-point from which to gloat over the whole
triumphant course of his crew when the great
race came off.
The atmosphere on the launch that day was
unfavorable to the shining of lesser lights. Deering’s
.bn 319.png
.pn +1
authority and Deering’s personality dominated
the little craft. Though the Varsity captain
spoke pleasantly to the referee, discussed the
arrangement for sending off the boats with the
starter, and greeted one of the newspaper reporters
cordially as “Billy,” he ignored completely the
presence of the father of the Triangular League,
who sat obscurely in the stern, scowling with
affected indifference over his cigarette.
“He won’t speak to me, eh! Just like a Westcott
snob!” the president muttered to himself.
“What do I care? He won’t be so proud when
he sees Newbury lead his school by four or five
lengths. I hope Yale will lick his crew to their
knees!”--a feat, by the way, which Yale failed
to achieve by some quarter of a mile.
To the Varsity men in the bow of the Veritas,
the race for second crews seemed a tame affair.
Westcott’s got a lead of half a length at the start,
increased it to a whole one at the quarter, doubled
this advantage during the next half mile, and
added still another length in a pretty display-spurt
beyond the bridge. Hoarse and happy,
Mike brought his boat in to the float past a crowd
of yelling, dancing friends who were putting to
.bn 320.png
.pn +1
an extreme test the boasted stability of the old
Spanish cutter. The members of the first crew,
delighted to consider the complete victory of
their schoolmates a good omen for their own
race, helped Mac and his men out of their boat
and poured sweet praises into their ears.
“Nothing like a little extra French after school
to get you ready for a race,” panted Mac, as
Talbot wrung his hand and blessed him with a
dozen different kinds of exclamation. “I hope
you fellows won’t suffer from lack of it.”
“Suffer from lack of it, you old idiot! Do
you suppose we have strength to throw away?”
“Get a lead in the beginning,” urged Mac, becoming
serious. “It’s a lot easier to keep it than
to get it after you’ve lost it. Newbury will quit
if you can once show them your rudder.”
Pete nodded.
“And drive your crew,” continued Mac. “They
can stand a lot more than they did on Wednesday.”
“I think they’ll have a chance for all the work
they want to do. I’ll try to satisfy even Roger.”
Bow oar reddened, but said nothing. He knew
well that Pete would push the crew to its last
gasp, and he had doubts as to his ability to hold
.bn 321.png
.pn +1
his own with the hard-muscled, strong-headed
stroke, who was as incapable of yielding as the
Old Guard of surrendering, or the dying bulldog
of relinquishing his grip on his enemy. There was
one method, of course, by which Roger could meet
the strain, and come out fresh at the end to smile
at Pete’s challenge. He might weaken just a
little on his pull as the labor told, might put a
trifle less than his best into his stroke, and thus
shrewdly save himself from extreme exhaustion.
But to do that was to be a quitter, and bow oar’s
scorn for a quitter was equal to Pete’s. “I’ll
give him all I’ve got, anyway,” he said to himself.
“If I break, it will be because I can’t row any more,
not because I won’t.”
There was trouble in starting. Westcott’s and
Bainbridge got twice into position and drifted
away again before the others, shuffling for places,
reached the line. Waterville was badly cox-swained;
Newbury apparently loitered on purpose,
hoping, after the manner of certain Varsity
crews at New London, to worry opponents by
prolonged suspense. So at least Pete opined,
and his word, passed back through the boat, set
four pairs of jaws tight together and swamped
.bn 322.png
.pn +1
all nervous fear under a hot wave of determination.
When the pistol-shot rang forth, Newbury’s
oar-blades were already in the water. As the
stroke lengthened out, after a hundred yards,
Newbury and Bainbridge were neck and neck,
half a length ahead of Westcott’s, which was rowing
a steady, smooth stroke which looked like
an exhibition of skill, yet carried with it the
united heave of four straining bodies.
“Those Westcott fellows aren’t bad,” said
Deering, who stood beside reporter Billy and
watched the struggling oarsmen with the eye of
an expert. “They move well, catch together,
and get their hands away quickly.”
“Good crew!” answered Billy, wisely, “but
too light to last well. They’re coming up on
Newbury now. It’s about time for Bainbridge
to shake ’em both.”
Deering was silent for some seconds, gazing
with that concentration of attention which a
horse fancier gives to the movements of a blooded
steed. “That crew is going to be hard to shake,”
he said finally. “They’ve got a half length on Newbury
without raising the stroke more than a point.
There’s hardly any check between strokes.”
.bn 323.png
.pn +1
“And Bainbridge has got a length,” said Billy,
significantly.
In the Westcott boat Rust was urging Two
to be careful about his slide, and informing Talbot
of the relative position of the crews. Pete raised
the stroke slightly, and his crew pushed a whole
length ahead of Newbury, which likewise spurted,
but lost through inferior form the advantage
gained by the accelerated stroke.
“Halfway!” yelled Rust. “We’ve got a
good length on Newbury. Steady now! Hard
all the way through! Don’t rush your slide,
Two!”
Talbot held to the increased stroke, sure that
the critical moment of the contest with Newbury
was at hand; if he could open water between the
boats, he was confident that Newbury would
never rally. His men followed him in splendid
unison. For Roger the first great weariness had
passed. He was rowing mechanically now, putting
into his drive all the strength which he thought
safe to force from himself, his whole attention
concentrated on his oar and his slide and the back
of the man before him. He heard the four blasts
of the whistle which announced that Bainbridge
.bn 324.png
.pn +1
was leading, but he cared little for that; he was
rowing to beat Newbury, and Newbury was
behind!
“Open water!” exclaimed Billy. “Half a
length of open water! I wish I had taken that
bet of three to one on Newbury against Westcott’s.
Newbury’s out of it for sure.”
“Not yet!” said a stifled voice at his elbow.
“I’m not giving up yet. They’ll come up on ’em.
They’ve got to.”
Billy turned to find John Smith at his side,
occupying the place of the Harvard captain who
had gone aft to his crew. President John’s
eyes were fixed upon the Westcott boat in a
hostile glare, his hands tightly gripping the rail,
his face drawn with suppressed emotion.
“Make it up!” answered the unsympathetic
Billy. “How are they going to make up two
lengths against that crew? Why, the more they
try to spurt, the worse they row! Number Three
there is about all in now. You can see it yourself.”
“Bainbridge will beat ’em anyway,” muttered
Smith, fiercely. “Go it, Bainbridge! Kill ’em,
Bainbridge!”
.bn 325.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.il fn=i325.jpg w=329px id=i325
.ca
“Go it, Bainbridge! Kill ’em, Bainbridge!”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.in +8
.ti -4
[Illustration:“Go it, Bainbridge! Kill ’em, Bainbridge!”]
.in 0
.if-
.bn 326.png
.pn +1
.bn 327.png
.pn +1
Billy threw a glance of curiosity at his neighbor’s
face and grinned broadly. “Been betting heavy
against Westcott’s and feels sore,” he said to himself;
but Billy was mistaken. It wasn’t a losing
wager that charged that face with venom, but
defeat and wounded vanity. President John
considered himself a sportsman; in fact he was
only a partisan; rabid, narrow, unforgiving. He
hated the crew that was vanquishing his own, that
was stealing from him the triumph which he had
confidently expected and in the prospect of which
he had openly gloried.
The crews were close to the bridge now. Roger
longed for the comfort of its shadow, longed for
the word of the coxswain that the end was near.
He felt now as he swung forward to his catch that
he had but a half-dozen more strokes in his body.
To row another hundred yards seemed absolutely
impossible.
“Bainbridge only two-thirds of a length ahead!”
shouted Rust. In answer Pete bellowed over
his shoulder: “Get into it now! Don’t quit!”
Roger felt the stroke quicken and mechanically
followed. For the first time during the race the
remembrance of Pete’s challenge recurred to him.
.bn 328.png
.pn +1
He was worn and weak; his eyes bleared, his
head was a dull depressing weight upon his
shoulders, every muscle in his body cried aloud
for mercy; but his spirit rose in defiance and sent
along the quivering nerves a command which
the muscles could not disobey.
“Only half a length now!” cried Rust, as the
boat emerged beyond the bridge. “You can
do it, only twelve more!”
Talbot lifted his stroke another notch, and Rust
counted. At each pull Roger assured himself
that he could do one more, and threw into that
one all the power that was in him. He could
hardly see Eaton’s back as it swayed before him.
The race had lost interest for him; he was fighting
Talbot, proving that he was no quitter.
“Seven--eight,” counted Rust. “Pull! Pull!
You’re almost there!”
Four more! To Roger those four strokes
seemed like four of the labors of Hercules. He
could do but one before he broke,--but one more
after that. Dizziness came sweeping over him,
he gasped hard for breath. One more before
he fainted!--
“Let her run!” screamed the coxswain.
.bn 329.png
.pn +1
Roger dropped, but caught himself by a supreme
effort as Pete turned his dripping, heaving shoulder
to look at his crew. Over the stooping bodies
of Three and Two he saw the upright form of Bow,
smiled faintly, and lurched heavily forward, while
Rust splashed water into his face. Behind him
Bow slumped down upon his oar.
.bn 330.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch26
CHAPTER XXVI || CONCLUSION
.sp 2
“Westcott’s by six feet!” announced Mr.
Henderson, judge at the finish, as the crowd
pressed about him to learn the official verdict.
Mac and his men burst forth in a howl of joy.
Trask threw up his arms and yelled the news
across the water to the crew of the quinquereme,
who went wild with excitement. Their historic
boat, which had escaped the missiles of war unscathed,
very nearly succumbed to the perils of
peace. The Veritas, swinging round to the float
after the laggard crews had crept in, found the
cutter shoved directly into its path through the
efforts of two lads who continued to chop the
water vehemently while they yelled, as oblivious
to the direction they were taking as stokers in
the hold of a steamship to the course laid down
by the navigator. The Varsity manager, who
was steering the launch, backed his engine and
saved the cutter for another race day.
Meantime Billy was scribbling notes on a block
.bn 331.png
.pn +1
of yellow paper, Deering was smiling in dignified
exultation among his crew, and President John,
his face white with ill-suppressed rage, was reviling
to two curious reporters the folly of the Newbury
oarsmen who had thrown away a sure victory.
“The very best crew on the river!” he declared
with emphatic spacing of words and savage jerks
of the head. “Look at the weight and strength
in that boat! Why, they pulled away from
Westcott’s on Wednesday without half trying.
It was just a little practice spin for ’em. Then
I got ’em a holiday yesterday at the shore, and
what did they do? Trotted round on the rocks
and played ball in the red-hot sun in sleeveless
shirts! Burnt their arms raw, of course. They
didn’t get a wink of sleep all last night.”
“Westcott’s had it on ’em to-day all right”,
remarked the reporter. “That crew looked pretty
good to me!”
“It’s a fair enough sort of a crew, but they had
luck and we didn’t. That’s just what beat us,
hard luck.”
Smith turned away to leave the launch, which
was already fast. The Ledger man glanced after
him and winked at his companion.
.bn 332.png
.pn +1
“Sore!” said the latter, tersely.
By this time the Westcott oarsmen had revived
and brought their boat in to the float. Here, in
the forefront of the enthusiasts, stood a tall,
deep-chested young man, wearing a hatband with
the revered crimson and black vertical stripes,
who shook hands with each weary rower as he
left the boat and gave him a personal compliment
which was destined to remain a cherished memory
when the general events of school life should have
faded into the limbo of things forgotten. Then
Deering returned to the launch, which was soon
speeding up the river to its moorings; and the
Westcott crew, already recovering from the grinding
strain through the quick recuperative power
of sturdy boyhood, and too happy to heed their
exhaustion, carried their boat into the house,
where they gave themselves up to the refreshing
luxury of the shower bath and the delight of
mutual congratulations.
The next day was a happy one for the boys at
Westcott’s. From the older fellows who hailed
the triumph of their fortunate mates with a delight
untouched by envy, to the little chaps in knee
trousers in whose eyes the members of the first
.bn 333.png
.pn +1
crew were as demigods, complacency and pride
pervaded the school like a mild intoxication.
Mr. Westcott made a speech of congratulation
in which he expressed himself as especially pleased
that such excellent crews had been developed
without interference with the regular daily work--a
sentiment which the boys, if they did not
appreciate, were, under the circumstances, willing
to forgive. Pete, too, made a speech--a jerky,
inartistic, vehement little harangue, strong in patriotism
though weak in rhetoric, which was uproariously
applauded. Then the cheers were let
loose, a din that made the windows rattle and
caused the neighbors for half a block to regret
that they had not fixed upon an earlier date for
migrating to the quiet of the country. “It
clamor cœlo,” muttered Mr. Stevens, senior classical
master, with a quiet smile, and he stole away
to his own recitation room to save his ear-drums.
Almost as noisy was the welcome given a few
days later to the cup itself, when it made its
second appearance before the school, coming
this time for a year’s sojourn. President John,
who had gulped down the bitter medicine which
had been forced upon him, and now was trying
.bn 334.png
.pn +1
to forget the taste of it, sent with the trophy a
flowery note which Mr. Westcott read to an appreciative
audience.
“I’ll bet he swore when he wrote that,” whispered
Wilmot to his seat-mate.
Pete nodded. “It must have come hard.
When he showed the thing to us last fall, I never
expected to see it here again.”
“They probably can’t keep it another year,”
said Steve, loftily. “There won’t be much here
after we leave.”
But the little boys of big faith, in the front
seats, who were straining their eyes to make out
the inscription on the first shield, had not shared
the anxieties of their elders, nor did they now
worry about the year to come. They had known
all along that their champions could be trusted
to bring the school colors out on top, while as for
the future--what future was there but the June
examinations and the summer vacation?
One more formality had still to be attended to
before the athletic season could be declared closed,--the
election of a captain of the crew for the
next year. It was merely a formality, for, since
Roger Hardie was the only one of the five who
would not graduate, the choice was strictly limited.
.bn 335.png
.pn +1
“It’s a great honor to be captain of the Westcott
crew,” said Roger, as he came downstairs
with Pete after the meeting, “but I wish there
had been some competition. It’s like winning a
race by default.”
“You didn’t do any defaulting in the race,”
replied Talbot, somewhat illogically, “though
I was a good deal troubled about you early in the
season. I had a guilty conscience for several
weeks.”
“Why?”
“Because I had prevented your being made
captain of the eleven.”
“I knew you did. You didn’t think I was fit
for it. I didn’t blame you.”
“Nonsense! I wanted you for the crew captain
next year. I took long odds, and I couldn’t
explain because I couldn’t be sure you’d make
good. At one time I thought you never would.”
Roger gave a laugh of contentment. “I was
an awful dub at first. Wilmot wanted to fire
me out of the pair-oar.”
“And I wouldn’t let him,” said Pete, complacently.
“I thought you had the stuff in you,
if we could only bring it out. Next year you’ll
.bn 336.png
.pn +1
be first lord of the school, and I shall be lost
among six hundred freshmen.”
“Lost!” echoed Roger, derisively. “Anybody
can find you easy enough, if he’ll only search
the freshman boat. Your seat will be down somewhere
near the stern.”
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.nf c
THE END.
.nf-
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.pb
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.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistem spelling and hyphenation were only made consistent when a\
predominant form was found in this book:\
e.g. “practice” and “programe.”
.if t
.it Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in\
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-
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