CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VIAFTERMATHThe outcome of the game for several days cast a deep gloom over the school. No one apparently had seen Chapin’s dastardly play, so that the cause of the defeat was very generally ascribed to Tony’s fumbling. The Boxford boys had driven off in great glee, Deal joining good-spiritedly in their cheers; but the bells remained silent; the bon-fires were not lighted, and the school settled down to a doleful Saturday night. Little groups of boys gathered here and there after supper, and discussed the incidents of the day. Sandy Maclaren and Stenton were universally blamed for having risked the experiment of playing a green boy in a big game, but with boys’ native generosity they showed no animosity toward Deering. He had lost the game—the consciousness of that, they realized, was bitter enough punishment for him. Even his own form mates thought it natural that he should prefer to keep to himself that evening, and showed little sympathy for Jimmie Lawrence’s anxiety on his behalf. Jimmie had tried again and again to get into Tony’s room, but could get no response to his repeated knockings.Had he known all that was going on in Tony’s mind and heart, he would have understood. For shutin his bedroom, flat upon his face on the bed, Deering was struggling with the keenest temptation he had ever faced. He realized acutely the opprobrium, the unjust opprobrium, that he would meet with, perhaps not crediting his schoolmates for as much generosity as they had; and though he would not have feared to face the boys had the fault been his own, he could not trust himself yet to meet them, see their disappointment in him, receive their tolerant sympathy, when he knew that a word from him might free himself from ignominy and cast the blame where it belonged. And as he lay there, great waves of hate for Chapin swept over him. He clenched his fists and drove them into the pillows, longing that his fingers were about Chapin’s throat and that he might choke out of him a confession of his dastardly betrayal. To his overwrought mind his future in the school looked dark and unattractive. The two months that he had spent there had been so bright and happy; he had made such warm friends and won for himself, it seemed, such a promising place in the regard of the school; and now, he felt, all must change, and his fool’s paradise go tumbling down. To have been given his chance, and failed through the willful meanness of another, and failing, to have cost his school the victory! For a moment he felt that he would pack his trunk, go down and tell Stenton the truth, and then take the first train out of Monday Port and leave the school to settle the wrangle how it would.And then he remembered his grandfather’s parting words, as the old general had stood in the portico of the white-pillar’d house on the far-away bayou,“Never repay a meanness by a meanness, my boy; and you will make a good sort of Christian.” And now, would not telling, truth though it were, be repaying a meanness by a meanness? Yes; but with the acknowledgment, wrung from his conscience, he burst into tears, tears of helpless disappointment and chagrin. Telling on another, especially in his own defense, Tony had always instinctively felt the most exquisite form of meanness.After a time he slipped from the bed, and fell on his knees by the bedside, obeying an unconscious need, in response to the suggestion of an unbroken habit of putting his boyish trust in an unseen power that knew and understood. “Oh, God,” he cried, “don’t let me be mean.” And after a time, though as a matter of fact he prayed very little more while he knelt there, he rose up, removed his soiled football clothes, washed and dressed, and slipped out quietly upon the campus. He avoided meeting the wandering boys, took himself to the beach, and with wind whistling and waves roaring in his ears, in tune with his mood, he walked the four miles out to the extreme point of Strathsey Neck. It was a grim walk, but not an unhappy one, for he had won his battle and had definitely made up his mind to be silent about the game as he had been silent about the hazing.*********But Tony was not the only person who had witnessed the game that day and knew who in reality was responsible for the defeat. Mr. Morris, who chanced to be standing on the side near the Boxfordgoal-line, had seen with perfect distinctness all that took place during that exciting moment of the game. And though several of the boys standing near him had exclaimed, “It looks as if Chapin had knocked the ball out of Deering’s arms himself,” with his accustomed reserve, he held his peace and made no comment. The incredibility of such an act on Chapin’s part had speedily driven from the boys’ minds the momentary impression. Morris, observing at the time of the game that Reggie Carroll was standing near him, had moved over to join him. But at that instant time had been called, and immediately the field was a scene of indescribable confusion. The house master pondered over the matter during the evening, but could not make up his mind as to the proper course of action.Just before lights that night he strolled into Carroll’s and Deering’s study, where he found Reggie as usual at his ease in a Morris chair with a novel in his hands. Carroll affected French novels, largely because he could plead the excuse when he was caught reading them that it was for the sake of his languages.“Come in, do, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed Carroll, with a trace less than his wonted coolness. The master entered, closing the door behind him. “Where is Deering?” he asked, as he seated himself on the couch, and taking up a paper-cutter from the table, began to play with it.“He has just come back from a long walk, and turned in, sir. Would you like to speak with him?”“No, no, thank you,” Morris answered. “But I will sit for a moment, if you like, and talk with you. That was an unfortunate game to-day, was it not?” And as Morris asked the question he looked at Reggie closely.“Very,” the boy answered, laconically.“Particularly for our friend Deering,” persisted the master.“Yes, I wish they had not played him; it was a poor experiment.”“Had you supposed him a careless player?”Carroll looked up languidly, but there was a keen glance in his eyes, and a note of significance in his voice, as he answered, “No, sir, I don’t think him a careless player, Mr. Morris.”“And yet he fumbled at a most inopportune time,” suggested Morris, musingly.Carroll flung his book a little impatiently on the table, and looked the older man frankly in the eyes. “Mr. Morris,” he exclaimed, with every trace of indifference gone, “I am going to tell you in strict confidence what I know about the game. It is scarcely a decent thing for me to tell it, but then I saw it.”“Yes, yes,” Morris murmured, encouragingly.“I saw Arthur Chapin knock the ball out of Tony’s arms just as they crossed the line and the Boxford quarter tackled him. I believe he did it on purpose. Now, I know,” he went on quickly, “that it is a terrible accusation to make against a fellow even in confidence to you; but that’s what happened, and I don’t know what I ought to do about it. It’s incredible, but I saw it.” And springing from his chair, Reggie began to pace excitedly up and down the room.“Yes,” said Mr. Morris, quietly, “it is incredible, but I saw it too.”“What!” exclaimed Reggie. “You saw it, Mr. Morris?”“Yes, just as you describe it. It is due to the fact that I supposed you also had seen it that I came in to talk it over with you to-night. I am afraid Chapin is capable of that sort of thing.”“Well, then——”—Reggie stopped—”Well, then,” he repeated, “I suppose it is up to us to tell the Head.”Morris appeared to be lost in thought. “Of course,” he said, after a moment, “that is the right course to think of; but I am not sure, my dear fellow, that I think it best for us to do that just yet. I want to wait a bit, I think, and see what Deering might wish us to do. You can be sure he knows it.”“Oh, yes, I am sure he knows,—he couldn’t help knowing.”“Well, personally I can’t see what good will come by going to the Head right away. I am quite sure that if it is brought officially to Dr. Forester’s notice that he will feel obliged to make it known to the school, both as a punishment to Chapin and in justice to Deering.”“But ought that not to be done?” asked Carroll.“Well, in one sense, yes; but do you know, Reggie,—though it may seem unwise in me, I have an extraordinary faith in Deering’s judgment about this matter. I want to know how he takes it before we do anything.”“I don’t thinkhe willwant us to do anything. But, sir, think of what his not telling will mean to him; think of the way the school will treat him for a while!”“Yes, but only for a while. There are possibilitiesin the situation, Reginald, that I think we were wiser not to spoil by acting upon snap judgments.”Carroll reflected. “Right, O wise man!” he exclaimed in a moment. “Shall we sound Tony, then?”“Rather not, I should say. Let us see the line that Tony takes himself. A few days will not make any difference, and we can set things straight, you know.”“But, Mr. Morris, the school is going to lose the credit of victory.”“Ah! it must do that in any case.Oneof our men fumbled, you know, whether accidentally or not; it makes no difference in the result of the game:—Boxford won. What’s really at stake, my boy, is the character of those two fellows, and that’s everything—everything, Reggie!”“By Jove, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed the boy impetuously, “if anyone will ever make me believe that, you and Deering will.” And he shook the master’s hand more heartily than he had ever done before.Deering appeared the next day at his usual place in school, and faced the ordeal bravely enough. It was an ordeal despite a general effort on the part of a majority of the boys to avoid discussion of the game in his presence. Here and there, to be sure, he met with the veiled glance of contempt or unfriendliness. Hardest of all, however, he found it to receive Sandy Maclaren’s and Mr. Stenton’s kindly sympathy. The Great Sandy, as the boys affectionately called him, from his pinnacle as the Head of the School, was a hero to Tony. Sandy’s confidence and friendliness had been one of the chief factors in what he regardedas his success. The friendliness was still there, but Tony sadly feared the confidence was shattered.Stenton took him by the arm as the boys were pouring out of morning Chapel the next day, where they had heard a sermon in which the Doctor had obviously taken his illustrations from the defeat of the day before. Stenton drew Tony along with him toward the Old School.“I want to apologize to you, Deering,” he began, “for the way I spoke to you yesterday afternoon. I was horribly upset by the unexpectedness of things, and simply lost my temper. I know you did your best, and I know too that no one is proof against accident in football or anything else.”Tony bit his lip and set his teeth. “Thanks, Mr. Stenton,” he said briefly. “I appreciate your speaking to me in this way.”“It was poor interference, anyway,” went on the master, “Chapin might have saved the day if he had been a bit faster. He had no wind yesterday.”Tony kept silent, and there was an awkward pause in the conversation, during which they came to the steps of the Old School. “Well,” said Stenton, turning off, “I only wanted to tell you that I am sorry I spoke irritably. I want you to have your chance next year again, and show that you are the player I think you are.”“Thank you very much, Mr. Stenton,” said Tony again, and turned away.That night after Chapel Tony had his first talk with Carroll since the game. It was desultory enough, until Reggie spoke out frankly and expressed hissympathy. Then Deering was immediately alert, his face flushed quickly, and he spoke with rather a tone of irritation. “Don’t let’s talk about the game, Reggie. It was a bad business, and I have made up my mind that the less said about it the better. Matters can’t be changed, and all I can hope to do is to make good next year. Stenton has as much as promised that I shall have the chance. I want to forget yesterday’s game as quickly as possible.”“Right!” said Carroll. “I promise you, you shall hear no more of it from me.”A little later, after Tony had gone to bed, Carroll went in to see Mr. Morris, and repeated the substance of this conversation.“It’s as I thought,” he said in conclusion, “we shall hear no more of it from Tony. Do you still think, sir, that we should hold our tongues?”“For the present, yes,” answered Morris. “If you don’t mind, Reggie, I want to manage this myself. In the course of time, I shall see Chapin, if he takes no action to clear Deering. It will be infinitely better if he confesses of his own accord. The truth will be known some time, and in the meanwhile I don’t think Deering will really suffer in popular estimation. The boys like him, and they will forgive what they think is his carelessness. If the confession comes from Chapin both boys will get some good out of it. I feel sure that the Doctor would approve of this, though I feel equally sure that if the matter were brought to his attention now he would feel obliged to act as Head Master at once.”“Very good, sir: I shall say no more about it, until you give me leave.”Morris was right. Tony did not suffer very greatly, and in the course of a few weeks the game was practically forgotten. Chapin certainly showed no inclination to right the wrong he had done, and for the time being, Morris was content to let matters drift.Within a month the school broke up for the three weeks’ Christmas recess. Tony did not make the long trip south for a visit home, but instead went with Jimmie to the Lawrences’ country-place on Long Island, where the boys spent a happy holiday, riding and shooting, and being plied with good things by Jimmie’s indulgent parents. Tony made a good impression on Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, and this visit to his friend’s home, served to deepen and strengthen the happy intimacy between the two boys. Early in January they were back at Deal for the long winter term, which Tony was promised would be exceedingly dull. He rather welcomed the relief from football practice, however, and sensibly made up his mind to make the term count in his form work. For so far, Tony’s reputation as a scholar had scarcely kept pace with his popularity as a genial companion and a good athlete.CHAPTER VIILOVEL’S WOODS“Ough, school again!” exclaimed Jimmie Lawrence, with a grunt, as he jumped off the platform of the little way-train at Monday Port one bright cold afternoon the following January. “I say, Tony,” he continued, linking his arm in that of his companion, and fishing in his pockets with his disengaged hand for his luggage checks, “this term it is school and no mistake! An unspeakable odor of gumshoe pervades the premises; Pussie Gray hurls math. lessons at your head a yard long, and the masters generally shriek exhortations at you as though you were deaf as well as dumb.”“Nonsense, Jimmo! I am right glad to get back.” And Tony drew in a deep breath of the cold pure air, and his eyes glistened as he looked out across the snow-clad landscape—the white town clinging to its hills, the frozen pond, the troubled blue waters of the bay. “I’ve never seen any snow to speak of, you know; think of the sliding down Deal Hill! Mind, old boy, we’re to pack over to Lovel’s Woods this afternoon and see to a cave.”“Gemini crickets! Deering, you’ll get enough of the Woods before the winter’s over. Me for theform-room and a heart to heart talk with my loving schoolmates.”“Be an old woman if you like,” interrupted Kit Wilson, who joined them at this moment. “Tony and I will find the cave, and you’ve got to pony up the first supply of grub.”“Oh, very well,” said Jimmie, with a grand air, as the three boys climbed into a fly. “If you will direct the coachman of this equipage to stop at the Pie-house, I will give Mrs. Wadmer acarte blancheorder for the proper supplies; and we’ll have a feed to-morrow afternoon. At present, I’m perished with cold.”By this time the driver had applied the whip to his poor horse, and the dilapidated fly was crawling up the cobblestones of Montgomery street. Once the top of the hill was gained, it moved along more rapidly, and soon Monday Port was left behind, the icy shores of Deal Water had been skirted, and the long hill that led up to the school was being climbed. The school “barge,” filled with a shouting, laughing crowd of small boys, was lumbering along ahead of them, and a dozen or so more cabs such as our friends had chartered dotted the white road. They passed a few of these, and noisy greetings were exchanged.“There’s a trifling pleasure in seeing the kids once more,” said Jimmie, settling back after they had passed the barge, and assuming ablaséexpression. “It would be rather jolly to be a prefect and boss ‘em all about.... Whoa-up! here’s the Pie-house and there’s Mother Wadmer in the doorway witha smile of welcome as broad as her pocketbook is deep. Hello, Mrs. Wadmer,” he cried, as the cab drew up before a small frame house by the roadside, on the portico of which stood a tall angular Cæsarean dame, with a calico apron drawn over her head.“How de do, Master Lawrence; howdy, boys. Come right in, and I’ll give you a glass of the best cider you’ve ever tasted. ‘Tis Mister Wadmer’s own brew, and a fine thing to begin the term on.”The three boys piled out of the fly, and in a moment were merrily greeting the crowd of youngsters who already had established themselves about the long deal table in Mrs. Wadmer’s hospitable kitchen. “Hello, Jim!” “Hello, Kit!” “Hello, Tony,” and a dozen other names, nicknames or parts of names, rang out. The boys shook hands, exchanged rapid notes of vacation experiences, gulped down several glasses of cider, and consumed a score or so of luscious tarts.“When did you get back, Tack?” Kit enquired of a large, ungainly, rosy-cheeked boy who came from Maine.“This morning,” answered Turner. “I came down on the boat last night to New York—scrumptious time. Say, Kit, have you heard the latest at school?”“No, we just got in, crawled across the flats from Coventry. What’s up?”“What’s up? why, some meddlesome jackanapes in the Sixth got wise to something irregular last winter and has gone to the Doctor with a doleful tale about the wickedness that’s supposed to go on in the Woods; so the fiat has gone forth: no caves for boys below the Fourth.”“No caves!” shouted a dozen boys. A storm of protests and exclamations arose. “Well,” said Jimmie, as the hubbub ceased, “school will be a jolly old jumping-off place then.”“No caves for boys below the Fourth,” echoed Kit. “Well, I announce my promotion then. Come on, Tony; come on, Jim; let’s get up to school and get the facts.”They stalked out amidst howls of derision, and re-entered their chariot. Jimmie had taken care, however, to direct Mrs. Wadmer to stack it well with such provisions as were in customary requisition in Lovel’s Woods. The worthy landlady of the Pie-house was officially deaf to all rules that emanated from the Head unless they were presented to her in writing. She owed, it may be said in parenthesis, her long career under the shadow of Deal School to the admirable loyalty of many generations of Deal boys.As luck would have it, to Tony’s amusement as he watched Jimmie’s expression, the first person they met in the Old School whither they went at once to report, was Mr. Roylston, who held a roll-call in his hands and wore on his face a look of patient suffering and in his eyes an expression of latent indignation. Our friends, thanks to their digression at the Pie-house, were ten minutes late.“How do you do, Mr. Roylston?” exclaimed Kit, offering his hand, and receiving three of the master’s lifeless fingers. A pencil occupied the other two. “Ah!” he murmured,—Kit afterwards declared, with satisfaction,—“Lawrence, Wilson, Deering—ten minuteslate. I congratulate you on the punctual way in which you begin the new year.”“Oh, sir, we were beguiled by the way,” protested the irrepressible Kit. “The woman beguiled me, sir, and I did eat.”“Faugh!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston. “Spare me your coarse irreverence. You are redolent of the unpleasant odors of the Pie-house. I will give you five marks apiece.”“Oh, sir!”“Please, sir!”“I beg of you, sir. Pray divide ‘em, sir.”“Silence, Wilson; you are impertinent as well as irreverent. If you linger longer with this futile protesting, I shall double your marks. Kindly go at once and unpack your trunks.”“Please, sir; we always do that in the evening, sir; and I hope you will allow us to go to the form-room, sir.”“Don’t ‘sir’ me so. Write out for me before to-morrow’s school fifty lines of the Æneid, and go at once.”“Very good, sir!” And lest they all get a similar dose of “pensum,” as such punishments were called, they hurried off to the Third Form common-room. There they found a crowd of newly-arrived boys, engaged in a vociferous denunciation of the Doctor’s new rule against caves in the Woods. The news had evidently been announced by the prefects.“What a gloomy old piece of rubber the Gumshoe is!” muttered Kit, as they were entering. “Fancy soaking me a pensum two minutes after I’m back atschool. Hey, you fellows!” he cried, “what’s this racket?”A dozen boys started to explain together, so that from their noisy chatter nothing could be gathered, except “Woods,” “caves” and execrations on the Head and the Sixth, with Kit’s lament on the gloomy Mr. Roylston rising above it all like a dismal howl.A Fourth Form boy,—Barney Clayton, by name,—thrust a red head through the open doorway. “Oh, fy!” he yelled, “what a precious howl you kids are letting out! What’s the matter? does the prohibition against caves rile your independent spirits?”“Get out, you red-head!” rose in angry chorus; and one boy shied a dog-eared Latin book at the fiery shock in the doorway. In a second a shower of missiles,—ink-stands, books, chairs, waste-paper basket,—went flying through the doorway and out into the corridor. Barney ducked his head and fled, shouting back derisive taunts. The commotion attracted the attention of Mr. Roylston at his post in the main hall, and he came flying to quell the disturbance. And, alas! he arrived just at a moment to receive full in the face the contents of a waste-paper basket, which Kit had flung. The débris descended upon him in comical fashion. The poor gentleman was speechless with indignation; but the situation was too much for the boys; despite his angry countenance, his blazing black eyes, they greeted his appearance with shouts of laughter.He waited, inarticulate with rage, until the commotion ceased, finally quelling them to a spell-boundsilence by the sheer force of his anger, and a little also, by the righteousness of his cause.“In the whole course of my career as a schoolmaster,” the master said at last, with a nervous jerk to each phrase, but pronouncing each word with the deadly precision of a judge uttering a capital sentence, “I have never been met with such gratuitous insult. Every member of this form will consider himself on bounds until further notice. As for you, Wilson, you shall be reported immediately to the Head, and if my recommendation can effect it, you will receive the caning you deserve.”“We were not throwing at you—we didn’t know you were coming—” began Kit.“Silence! do not add hypocrisy to insolence. You had been told to go to your rooms.... Disperse now at once, and do not show yourselves before supper. You Wilson, Lawrence and Deering, remain behind and clean up this disgusting mess. It is not surprising, I may say, that the Head feels himself unable to trust this form in the Woods this winter.” And with this parting shot, Mr. Roylston turned and walked away, with what dignity he could command.The boys, somewhat subdued by the dispiriting announcement of bounds, marched off gloomily, and our three friends stayed behind and began to clear up the débris.“Well,” said Kit at last, turning a half-merry, half-rueful countenance to his companions, as he seated himself upon a broken chair, “what a gloomy ass it is! But, oh my dears, did you observe his beautiful pea-green, Nile blue, ultramarine phiz as the contentsof the waste-basket descended upon his lean and hairless chops? Oh, my! what a home-coming! what a sweet heart to heart talk we’ve all had together!”“And a jolly good caning you’ll get, Kitty, when Gumshoe has had his talk with the Doctor.”“Jolly good,” replied Kit, rubbing his legs with a wry face. “But in the meantime, mes enfants,” he continued, “since I am to be swished, it shall not be that I suffer unjustly; we are going to make the swishing worth while. We are off to the Woods this minute. We’ll take the stuff over, stow it in the cave, put up a notice, and be back by supper. I’ll be hanged if I’ll pay any attention to Gumshoe’s twaddle about bounds or to the Doctor’s nonsense about caves. Are you with me, Jimmie, old boy?”“Well, rather,” Jimmie replied. “The experience of the last quarter of an hour has quite discouraged me with regard to the peace and quiet and healthy conversation us nice boys ought to have in form common-room.”Tony had kept silent. “Well, are you going to cut for a quitter?” asked Kit, turning upon him with an indignant glare.“Not I,” said Tony quickly.“Then help stow this truck. We’ve an hour and a half till supper, and the Gumshoe will undoubtedly think we havedisperrssedto our rooms.” And he gave an absurd imitation of Mr. Roylston’s manner of speaking.Ten minutes later they were running down the slope of Deal Hill, under the cover of the stone walls; then tearing across the frozen marshes, and clamberingup the steep banks and crags that bounded the west side of Lovel’s Woods. The sun was sinking in the west, and its rich mellow golden light fell athwart the snow-clad woodland, flooding it with glory, save where the great masses of pine and cedar cast broad splotches of shadow. The splendid loveliness of the dying afternoon, the biting cold of the wind, the thrill of doing the forbidden, filled Tony with a delicious sense of happiness and adventure.Each boy had his arms full of cooking utensils, food, boxes—the varied paraphernalia of a cave. It had been an ancient custom at Deal during the winter for boys to have caves in Lovel’s Woods, where they cooked weird messes during the afternoons when there was no skating. This year the Doctor, owing to certain abuses reported by the prefects the year before, had decided to restrict the use of caves to the three upper forms.Kit had a particular cave in mind, far away on the remote side of what was known as the Third Ridge, a cave that he and Jimmie and Teddy Lansing had had together the year before as Second Formers. This desirable spot was a natural formation in the rocky side of the farther of the three ridges of which Lovel’s Woods consisted. It was practically inaccessible from below, and the entrance above, well concealed by a clump of low cedars, was a narrow cleft in the rocks, at the extreme edge of which the initiated might descend to the cave by a series of dangerous steps which the boys had fashioned in the side of the precipitous cliff.Tony and Kit climbed down into the cave, whileJimmie, lying flat on the ledge above, handed down to them the supply of stores. These were safely stowed in a strong box, which had lasted out the previous season, and made secure. When the boys had clambered up again, they discovered that the sun had set and the darkness was gathering swiftly. The clear crescent of the new moon hung in the western sky a band of gold, and the evening star was rising over the ocean.“Twenty minutes to supper: we can just make it,” exclaimed Kit, looking at his watch. “Heave ahead, my hearties, and let’s run for it.”And run they did, at breakneck speed along the mazy paths, through the tangled undergrowth, over the slippery crags, across the frozen marsh. Kit, the imprudent, was impudently singing at the top of his shrill voice the verses of one of the School songs.“Out of the briny east,Out of the frosty north,Over the school-topp’d hill,Whistle the shrill winds forth.“Over the waves a-quiver,Over the salt sedge grass,Over the beaches tawny,The bright wind spirits pass.”And the other two boys took up the ringing refrain,“Grapple them e’er they go,Grapple them e’er they go.”Luck was with them. They reached the school as the great bell in the Chapel struck six. Five minuteslater, after a hasty wash and brush-up in their rooms, they were in the great library, shaking hands with the Doctor and Mrs. Forester and with masters and boys.The three, more closely united than ever by their sense of sharing a dangerous secret, kept together during chapel, and directly after were for making off to Jimmie’s room, when Sandy Maclaren, looking wonderfully handsome and “swagger” in his town clothes, laid a heavy hand on Kit’s shoulder. “Not so fast, boy. The Doctor wants to see you instanter at the Rectory.”Kit heaved a sigh in mock heroics. “Hail, blithe spirits,” he lamented, murdering his quotation, “hail and farewell.”The boys pressed his hands heartily. “Is it a caning, Sandy?” they asked.“Well, I rather think so,” answered Maclaren, with a smile. “You weren’t very keen not to distinguish between Barney Clayton and Mr. Roylston.”“They were both butting in,” protested Kit.“Well, cut along now. And you two report to Bill, he’s looking for you.”Kit found the Doctor in his comfortable study at the Rectory, standing before a glowing log fire, with his swallow-tails spread to the blaze.“Ah, Christopher,” the Head Master exclaimed, shaking hands with the culprit, “I’m glad to see you.”“Thank you, sir. Maclaren said you wanted to see me particularly?”“I do, most particularly. Take off your coat.”Kit backed a little. “But, sir——”“Yes, my boy, I dare say you have full and ample explanations, but I am quite sure they will not impress me. I know that you were but one of many in this fracas, and that it is your misfortune—shall I say?—rather than your fault that your particular missile took unfortunate effect. But we must all suffer at times for our mistakes, perhaps a little unjustly. The moment has struck when you must suffer too. The sooner we get at this business the sooner it will be over.”“Very good, sir,” said Kit, and silently removed his coat. And then the Doctor took a familiar implement of stout old hickory from a corner, and swished him soundly. Those were the happy days when debts against school discipline were so quickly and effectively liquidated.Kit bore no grudge to the Doctor, and comparatively little to Mr. Roylston. “It was worth it,” he confessed to Jimmie and Tony afterwards, “and I rather think this lets me out, conscientiously lets me out, you know, from paying attention to his futile announcement of bounds.”It goes without saying that the Doctor’s prohibition against Lovel’s Woods was about as unpopular a rule as had ever been promulgated. Combined with the fact that the Third Form were bounded for a month, as a consequence of their trouble with Mr. Roylston, the Lower School began the term in a bad mood. The Third Formers were particularly disgruntled with the prefects, who had assumed the responsibility of keeping Lovel’s Woods in order. It appeared that smoking had been indulged in the year before quite extensivelyby some of the younger boys, and gambling was suspected on the part of a few of the older ones. The Doctor’s rule had been more in the nature of a preventive than a punishment.But the effort to keep the rule effective was more of an undertaking than the prefects had realized; for they felt themselves required practically to police the forbidden district, a task, the novelty of which soon wore off. With the older boys caves were not particularly popular. Chapin and Marsh started one together, and moved into it the paraphernalia that they had hitherto kept stored in the cave on the beach by Beaver Creek. All of the prefects, acting on Maclaren’s advice, gave up their caves in order to set an example; with the result that there were hardly more than a dozen in official operation.For the first few weeks of the term the prefects were so zealous in their police duties that few boys cared to run the risk of “skipping” to the Woods. Even our three friends, despite their firm resolution to evade the rule, for the time being felt it the part of wisdom to lie low. Accordingly they avoided the Woods as if it were plague stricken and industriously played hockey every afternoon on Deal Great Pond, which was fully two miles away. But toward the end of January a thaw set in, the skating was spoiled, a heavy snow came, and their usual sports were interrupted; consequently the temptation to visit the cavesub rosagrew stronger than ever. Gradually also the inclement weather dampened the ardor of the prefects and they began to relax their vigilance over the forbidden territory. And we may say in passing thatTony and Jimmie and Kit spent several delightful afternoons in their hiding-place, and the parts of one or two wildly thrilling nights after lights.Despite his nefarious proceedings in contravention of the rules, be it said to his credit, Tony was making good his resolution of “poling” at his books, and felt confident of taking a good stand in the school when the ranks were read at the beginning of February. The football game, so far as his part in it was concerned, as Morris had predicted, seemed forgotten. He avoided Chapin as much as he could, and when they inevitably met he treated him with a courteous indifference which the older boy doubtless understood and was thankful to accept.Carroll, after a vacation spent in New York where he had seen all of the plays and dined at the best restaurants and gone to many more dances than were good for his health, returned to the school more than ever dissatisfied and disgruntled with the life he led in it. The talk with Mr. Morris about Tony, the consciousness that they possessed an important secret in common, served a little to make his relations with his house master easier, but he was still unable to give his friendship in the easy way he longed to give it. Neither, to his deepening chagrin and regret, was he making progress in his friendship with Deering, for Tony was more than ever absorbed in the life of his form, and spent all his free time with Wilson and Lawrence. He seemed unconscious of the affection he had won from Carroll and this, with Carroll’s intense consciousness of how completely his affection was going out, served to make their relations anythingbut free and spontaneous. So far as Tony thought about his room-mate that term it was as of an older fellow with whom he was not very congenial, and of whose laziness and indifferent attitude toward the school he did not approve. He thought Carroll to be wasting his time both at his books and in the school life, in either of which he could have counted immensely. Had Tony been less absorbed in his younger friends, he would probably have found a good deal in Reggie to like and value, as earlier in the year he had begun to feel he should.From his cozy den in the midst of Standerland Hall, surrounded by his well-loved books, his few but carefully chosen pictures, Mr. Morris watched the life throbbing about him with sympathetic insight and keen interest. He was not one of those fortunate schoolmasters who do not allow their profession to engage their affections. Morris, with a surrender that was effectually a sacrifice, for he had gifts and opportunities that might have won him a finer place in the world, gave his life completely to the school. He had loved it as a boy, he had looked back upon it during college with fond recollection and yearning, and after three years or so at a professional school, having taken his examinations for the bar, he had gone back to accept Dr. Forester’s offer of a mastership. For half-a-dozen years he had been there now, and each year the place and the boys got a deeper hold upon his heart and his interest. He was scrupulously fair and evenly kind; therefore deservedly popular; but despite this he had his favorite boys, not usually known as such by the school at large, to whomhe gave a special affection and a deeper interest. From the first day, when Deering, with his sparkling eyes and bright, clear-cut, eager face, had come to him for a seat in the schoolroom, he had felt for him that keen attraction which, as he grew to know the boy’s high spirits, lively sense of honor, and sunshiny nature, had deepened to a real affection. In Carroll also he had always felt a special interest, and had been glad when Tony was put to room with him. He saw Reggie’s growing devotion to Deering, and was sorry that Tony did not respond to a greater extent. Morris felt that Carroll needed the strengthening influence of a strong unselfish friendship with the right sort of boy to help make a man of him. Occasionally Morris had the two boys with others in his rooms for tea or on Saturday nights for a rarebit and a bit of supper, but otherwise occasions did not present themselves for his getting to know them better. He was sorry for this, but saw no very satisfactory way of making them. By the end of January it seemed to him that Reggie was in quite the worst attitude that he had ever been, thoroughly indifferent to the work and life of the school.CHAPTER VIIIA MIDNIGHT LARKThat winter proved to be a hard one, with frequent snows and violent winds, which put an end to the skating within a few weeks after Christmas, and left the majority of the boys with no very satisfactory pastime in the free afternoons. There was sliding down Deal Hill a good part of the time, and to Tony, who never before had experienced the pleasures of a northern winter, this was great fun; but after a time it palled upon his two cronies, Jimmie and Kit, and at their suggestion surreptitious visits to the cave in Lovel’s Woods became more frequent. Perhaps that this was a forbidden pleasure added a keener zest than they otherwise would have taken in it, and that several boys had recently been caught in the Woods and punished severely gave an element of danger to their visits that made them even more fascinating. Aside from the disobedience that these visits involved, they were innocent enough. The boys, having reported at call-over for a walk, would skirt the beaches and enter the Woods from the east, completely out of range of the school and comparatively safe from detection unless they chanced to encounter prefects or masters walking in the Woods themselves. The indefatigable Mr. Gray often bent his steps in thatdirection, but to the school’s intense delight, without noticeable result. The snows were so heavy and the walking consequently so difficult that the vigilance of masters and prefects at last completely relaxed. From that time on the boys who cared for the trouble had a fairly clear field. Our friends were fortunate in having a cave on the extreme eastern edge of the woods, so that the approach from the beach was easy. Once this was gained, they made a fire, cooked sausages, fried pan-cakes of an extremely leathery quality, and made coffee that certainly they would not have drunk in any other place.Tony had told Carroll of their exploits, and had even invited him to pay them a visit and partake of their “feed,” an invitation that was decisively declined. “It is certainly not worth while,” he replied, with a smile, “to run the risk of getting the Doctor quite sour on me for the pleasure of partaking of the results of your culinary skill.”“A great deal better for you,” Tony retorted, “than moping in doors half the time over sickly French novels.”“Possibly; but French novels are not the only alternative to the Woods,” Reggie answered, “and as a matter of fact I have begun to go in for tremendous tramps.”“You must take ‘em mostly at night, then.”“I do frequently,” was the somewhat tart reply, “the night air has always had a fascination for me.”In truth Tony was aware that Reggie had resumed his old custom of disappearing from their rooms afterlights, paying visits, he incuriously supposed, upon some of his friends. The fact gave him little thought.One afternoon the three boys were in their cave. Tony was turning pan-cakes in a skillet, while Jimmie was laboring with a dark mixture that they euphemistically called coffee. Kit sat on the branch of a tree, with his head over the ledge, on the look-out for any wandering prefects.“Hurry up, you frabjous duffers,” he called down, midst a stream of amiable chaffing; “it’s close upon four, and we’ll have to bolt the grub in order to get back to Gumshoe’s five o’clock.”“Why don’t you get down and work a bit, then? Nobody’s coming along this late. Get the plates out, and pour some syrup out of the jug. No work: no eat.”“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” he laughed.... “Shish!” he exclaimed suddenly, and ducked his head below the ledge.The three kept a tense silence for a moment. They heard footsteps crunching in the snow above and passing on. Kit cautiously peeped over the ledge. “By Jove,” he whispered, “it’s Reggie Carroll and Arty Chapin. I thought it was a couple of prefects.”He slid down from the tree, and began to gobble up one of Tony’s pan-cakes. “By the by, Tony, I thought the elegant Reginald Carter Westover Carroll had severed his friendship with that specimen of common Chapin clay.”“So he had,” answered Tony, musingly. “I didn’t know they had taken up with each other again.”“What a queer duck Reggie is,” said Jimmie, as he poured out three cups of coffee. “Have you ever made him out, Tony?”“Not I. We hit it off well enough after the first few days—for a time. But this term I have hardly seen anything of him. I am sorry he is in with Chapin again.”“And I. I’ve always liked Reggie despite his supercilious disdain, but Arty’s a beast, and always was,” said Kit, drinking his coffee at a gulp. “Here, let’s stow these things, and cut around to the north and take a peep as to what that precious pair are up to. Evidently no five o’clock for them.”“What’s the difference where they are going?” said Tony. “I have no mind to spy on them.”“Well, I have a consuming curiosity,” Kit rejoined. “They’re up to mischief, I’ll be bound.”“Light out then,” said Tony, “for Jim and I are going back over the ridges.”“And leave your precious footprints in the snow,” protested Kit. “La! la! stow the stuff, will you then? I’ll report if there’s anything doing.”And despite his companions’ adjurations Kit clambered off over the rocks and started out in the direction indicated by Carroll’s and Chapin’s footsteps in the snow.The boys got safely back without being detected, but Kit was a quarter of an hour late, and created a sad disturbance when he entered in the midst of Mr. Roylston’s Third Latin recitation.“The incorrigible Wilson,” remarked Mr. Roylston, without turning his beady black eyes in his direction,“will kindly take a pensum of one hundred lines for being late and disturbing the class.”“Very well, sir,” said Kit.“Spare me your comments, pray. Continue your recitation, Turner; Book Four, Chapter Fourteen, line twenty. Proceed. Cæsar—”“Oh, yes, sir.... Qui omnibus rebus subito perterriti—” Tack spelled it out painfully, and fell mercilessly upon it, “Who to all quickly having been thoroughly terrified. Et celeritati nostri et discessu suorum.... And with quickness to us both a descent....”Mr. Roylston transfixed the floundering youth with a withering glance, and there was a moment of awful silence. “With quickness to you, I may suggest, Turner,” he said at last in scathing tones, “descent into your seat and a zero in my mark-book.”He turned to Kit. “Wilson, let us see if you can cast light upon the darkness into which Turner has led us.”“I am afraid I can’t, sir.”“No?” murmured the master. “Well, I was not hopeful,” and he quietly recorded a zero in his mark-book. “Now, Deering—”Tony took up the passage, and got through it correctly enough, but not without being harassed by Mr. Roylston’s interruptions and glances of incredulity at his rendering of the Latin. The Latin recitations at Deal under the famous Ebenezer Roylston—he was the editor of an edition of Cicero that was classic in its day—were periods of agony and boredom. But at last this particular recitation came to an end,and immediately afterward, Kit threw his arms about the necks of his two friends, and drew them into a vacant classroom.“Well?”“What’s up?”“Oh, you frabjous kiddos! I tracked ‘em for a mile—’twas a mucker trick, I’ll admit, but I’ve got it in for Chapin. And what do you think, those two blooming jays are playing poker with their crowd in a shanty back of the Third Ridge. If it weren’t for Reggie, I swear I’d peach on Chapin.”“I swear you’d do nothing of the sort,” said Tony.“Well, perhaps not,” assented Kit, temporarily crestfallen. “But I must say that’s a crummy thing of them to do. Fine school spirit, eh!”“Well, we have been skipping bounds pretty regularly this fall, if I remember correctly.”“My dear child,” remarked Kit paternally, “when will you learn wisdom? The Doctor carefully distinguishes between moral offenses and offenses against school discipline. Now, bounds are obviously disciplinary and not moral; hence we are mere wandering angels, while those poker fiends are equally hence of the lower regions.”“Rot!” was the courteous rejoinder. “It is obvious to any but a bonehead like yourself that the Doctor imposed bounds this year for moral reasons, because he had wind that just that sort of thing was going on.”“Ah!” resumed Kit sarcastically. “I perceive the glimmerings of a conscience. You are getting the remorse for your own sins?”“Not particularly. I am only objecting to thecomplacent way in which you shove Carroll and Chapin outside the pale of decency.”“Well, I’m easy, old boy; I certainly won’t be damned for making pan-cakes in Lovel’s Woods; but I can readily see that Reggie might for playing poker there. But it isn’t so much the poker I object to, as his beastly taste in companions.”“Thunder and blazes, Kit, what’s it to you who Reggie goes with?”“Nothing much. But of a kindness warn your room-mate against Arty; he is an awful bounder and always was.”“Well,” answered Tony, “Reggie knows him better than we do; and it is certainly not my business to give him advice. Come on; let’s quit this jaw, and go in to supper.”Disposed as Tony had been openly to defend Carroll against this criticism, he condemned him yet the more severely in his heart. He knew that Reggie realized the defects of Chapin’s character; that he was spoiling his chances of a prefectship the next year by his association with him, and that he was running the risk of public expulsion if it should be discovered that he was playing poker. After a good deal of hesitation he made up his mind to speak to Reggie on the subject. Accordingly he waited that night until after lights, and then slipped over to Reggie’s room, hoping to please him by this suggestion of renewing their nightly talks. But to his disappointment Carroll was not there. Tony turned back into the study, and stood for a moment at the window looking out upon the white campus, flooded now with the light of a full moon.Suddenly he heard the latch of his door turn and some one slip into the room.“Hello, Reggie,” he whispered, “is that you?”“Shish! no—it’s me—Kit,” came the soft reply. “Jimmie is outside—we’re going to the Woods. Get into your clothes and come along.”“Oh, hang the Woods!” exclaimed Tony. “I am sleepy and want to go to bed.”“Don’t be a quitter. Jim’s got a box from home; we’ll have a bully good time, and we can get back by midnight. Where’s your precious room-mate—gone to the shanty?”“I don’t know—I suppose so.”“Well, perhaps we’ll meet him; come on.”The lark proved too strong a temptation, and after a little more persuasion, Tony yielded. He slipped on his trousers and a sweater, his stockings and boots, and a coat, and was ready. The two boys crept silently down the corridor, past the door of Mr. Morris’s room, over the transom of which a bright light was shining, and down the stairs. Once Kit tripped, and they sank down below the head of the stairs, just as Mr. Morris opened his door and stood at it for a moment listening. Then the master closed his door again, and the boys went out into the cold frosty moonlight night, and joined Jimmie, who was waiting for them at the fives-court.Morris, however, was an old hand at his business, and not a clumsy one. He stepped into his bedroom, which was darkened, and going to the window stood there watching. Presently he saw the three dark figures, unrecognizable at the distance, creep along the fives-court,dash across to the cloister that led from Standerland to the Schoolhouse, and then disappear behind the clump of trees at the corner. Confident that he had heard some one leaving his own dormitory, the master then made his rounds, and surely enough found that Deering, Lawrence and Wilson were missing. Curiously enough Tony’s happened to be the last room that he entered, and when he found his bedroom empty, thus being sure that the three he had seen were accounted for, he neglected to look into Carroll’s room, and returned to his study to wait for their return.About ten o’clock as he sat before his fire, meditating the course of his action, a rap sounded on the door, and in response to his invitation, Doctor Forester came in.“Ah, Morris,” said the Head Master, coming forward and standing with his back to the fire, “I am sorry to disturb you at this time of night; but there is mischief afoot, and perhaps you can help me catch the offenders.”Morris looked at the Doctor attentively, but for the moment did not volunteer his information.“This afternoon,” continued the Head, “Maclaren found an old shanty back of the Third Ridge, rigged out with the paraphernalia of a poker game. It has evidently been in use, and from the character of the débris, he thinks, by some of our boys. Maclaren supposes that some of your boys have been getting out at nights, and may be the culprits. Is that possible?”“Yes,” answered Morris, “quite possible. I shouldnot have said so an hour ago, for I keep a close watch upon that sort of thing, or at least I try to; but as a matter of fact three of my boys are missing at this moment.”“Who are they?” asked the Doctor sharply.“Lawrence, Deering and Wilson.”“What! they are the last boys in the School that I should be inclined to suspect of that sort of thing, though I regret to say, Maclaren has some evidence that I fear implicates Deering. Have you any idea that they are gone to the Woods?”“I fear they have, sir. I heard a noise in the hallway a half-hour ago, and slipped out to see what it was. For the moment I supposed I had been mistaken, but a little later from my bedroom window I saw three boys disappear back of the Schoolhouse. I did not know who they were until I had made my rounds, which was just a few minutes ago.”“Well, they must be found. If they are implicated in this affair at the Third Ridge shanty I shall deal with them severely. Fine boys, too! it’s a great shame.... Maclaren and Cummings are waiting in my study; I will go and give them this clue.”“If you like, sir, I will go for you, and go with them.”“I would be obliged if you would. In that case, I will remain here until your return.”Morris put on his great coat and boots and started out, while the Doctor settled himself before the fire with a book. A little later the master with the two prefects whom he had found at the Rectory, set out for Lovel’s Woods.Early in the evening Thorndyke, who was a memberof the crowd that frequented the shanty, had got wind of Maclaren’s discovery through Lawrence Cumming’s indiscreet confidences, and had hastened to the rendezvous—the stone bridge by the Red Farm below Deal Hill—and had warned his companions. They had quietly returned to their dormitories; indeed, while the Head Master and Morris had been talking in the latter’s study, Carroll had softly stolen upstairs, slipped into his room, and quietly got into bed.Our other friends, following Kit’s ardent but injudicious leadership, were making a detour to the north on their way to their cave with an intention of taking a peep at the nefarious doings at the shanty.It was a long walk, and a cold one. Tony and Jimmie had little heart for it, but the irrepressible Kit led them gaily on. They skirted Beaver Pond, threaded their way along the ridges over familiar paths, and at last debouched upon the little clearing in which the abandoned shanty was situated. On every side stretched the thick woods, traversable only by those who knew their devious paths. To the east of the shanty the ridge ended abruptly, there was a sheer descent, and over the tops of the trees on the hillside one could get a splendid view of the distant ocean, the Neck, and Deigr Island beyond the point, with its light faithfully blinking red and white.“No one about,” exclaimed Kit, peering in at a dark window; “what a lark!”“Now that we’re here,” said Jimmie. “I’m for investigating.”“By Jove! the window’s unfastened!” cried Kit, already tugging at the sash. In a moment he had itup, and disappeared over the window-sill. He struck a match inside and his companions could see him moving about. Presently he found a candle, lighted it, and set it on the table. “Come on in,” he called. “Here’s a rummy old pack of cards.” And he kicked the deck of cards across the room.Deering and Lawrence climbed in and joined him in an interested examination of the room. The structure, which contained only this one room, it may be said, had been built some years before by a gentleman of the neighborhood, who had literary tastes, and sought the quiet and seclusion of this spot for their development. Of late it had been disused, however, for a period of six or seven years. There was an old table, a few rickety chairs, and a strong-box, such as the boys used in their caves; aside from these no furniture of any description. The embers of a wood fire glowed on a great hearth at one side of the room. In a cupboard the boys found several soiled packs of cards, a pile of poker chips, and some empty cigarette boxes. “The real dope, I suppose,” Kit commented “is in the strong box, or hid some place outside. I reckon we can’t bust into it. What a silly lot of asses; if the prefects don’t get on to this, I’m a loser. But what a jolly old joint it is, eh?”“Rather,” said Jimmie. “There’s a pile of dishes in the sink yonder—they’ve evidently had a feed here this afternoon. There’s live coals on the hearth. Hmmm—smell the tobacco!”“Makes my mouth water,” was Kit’s prompt reply. “Let’s fire up, and have our feed here, and leave a note thankin’ ‘em for their hospitality. It isn’t likelythat anybody will turn up this time o’ night. Get the bundle, Tony; and you, Jim, lend a hand while we start the fire.”The two began industriously to lay a fresh fire on the great andirons, while Tony made for the window. As he reached it there rose before him what seemed a monstrous head and body. He gave a cry of alarm. “Great heavens! who is it?” he screamed.“Don’t have a fit, Deering; it’s only Maclaren.”Tony immediately recovered his equilibrium. “Only Maclaren!” he repeated, in a voice of despair. “It’s all up, kiddos.” And he turned a white face to his amazed companions in the shanty.“Only Maclaren!” wailed Kit, as he threw his bundle of faggots on the hearth. “You poor fool, there’s Mr. Morris too.”It was a sorry procession that wound its way back to Standerland that cold January night. The Doctor was waiting for them in Mr. Morris’s study, grown a little impatient at the long delay. The clock had struck eleven before he heard the footsteps on the stairs.Mr. Morris had rather deprecated explanations on the way back, preferring to let the Head deal with the case himself; nor were the boys much inclined to talk. Upon their arrival at Standerland, Mr. Morris gave a succinct account of their capture, while the Doctor listened, a cloud gathering upon his brow.“Well,” he said sternly, as Morris finished, “what were you doing in Lovel’s Woods at this time of night? Lawrence, you may answer for the three.”“We skipped out just for the lark, sir.”“You have been in the habit of paying these visits to the Woods?”“Yes, sir—once in a while, sir,” Jimmie answered, in rather a doleful tone.“What have you done there?”“Simply fooled about in our cave, sir.”“Do you call that shanty your cave?”“No, sir—our cave is on the east side on the Third Ridge.”“Well, what were you doing at the shanty?”“We were investigating it, sir; we had never been there before.”“None of you?”“None, sir.”“Is that true of you, Wilson?”“I?” exclaimed Kit. “No, sir; that is, sir, I have been there once before, but only on the outside and looked in at the windows.”“And you, Deering?”“No, sir, I have never been there before.”Dr. Forester had turned on Tony like a flash. “How then do you account for the fact that a letter addressed to you was found there this afternoon?”“A letter addressed to me found there!” exclaimed Tony, in surprise. “I can’t account for it. I do not know how it got there.”“Do you know of other boys being there?”“I believe other boys have been there; yes, sir.”“Do you know what boys have been there?”“I really can’t say, sir.”Tony was growing restless and ill at ease under this severe cross-examination. It suddenly dawned uponhim, that the Doctor did not appear to accept his replies as he gave them.... In his quick passionate southern way he fired with resentment. His face flushed, he stammered in giving his replies, and once or twice inadvertently contradicted himself. Jimmie and Kit looked at him in amazement; for a moment the suspicion crossed their minds that Tony had perhaps after all been going to the shanty with Carroll. Even Morris, who had been serenely confident that the boys would clear themselves of the charge of gambling, showed a troubled countenance as the cross-examination went on.“Come, come,” said the Doctor, “I would like you to suggest some explanation as to how a letter addressed to you was found in that shanty this afternoon.”“I don’t account for it,” Tony replied. “I know nothing about it. I know nothing about the shanty; I never saw it until to-night.”“That statement,” commented the Doctor mercilessly, “conflicts with what you implied a few moments ago. You allowed me to infer that you do know what boys go there.”“Suppose I do,” exclaimed Tony passionately. “Suppose I do—I shan’t tell anything about it. I have never been there, and I have nothing to do with it.”“Well, sir, there is still another bit of evidence that inevitably suggests to me the suspicion that you must know more than you admit. The strong-box in that shanty was rifled this afternoon by the Head Prefect under my direction. In it were found severalpacks of playing cards, a quantity of poker chips, and a memorandum-book.”“Well, sir?”“Do you know anything about that memorandum-book?”“I do not.”The Doctor drew it from his pocket as he spoke, and opened it. “I find here various entries, evidently sums of money owing to certain persons. I find here the entry ‘A. D. to R. C.—$5.’ Between these pages is a check on the First National Bank of New Orleans drawn by you in your own favor and endorsed on the back. Do you recollect such a check?”Tony racked his memory, and recalled at last that a week or so before he had given Reggie such a check in payment of a small loan. “I made out such a check; yes, sir.”“To whom did you pay it?”“I decline to tell you, sir.”“What did you pay it for?”“In payment of the sum of five dollars which I had borrowed.”“The boy to whom you paid this will corroborate your statement?”“Possibly, sir—I don’t know. I certainly shan’t ask him to. I am accustomed to tell the truth.”“You decline then to explain to me how this check came to be found in this memorandum-book in the strong-box of that shanty?”“I know nothing about it to explain. I paid the check to a friend. I don’t know how it came to be in the shanty.”“Have you ever played poker in this school?”“No, sir; I have not.”“Could this check have had anything to do with a poker game?”“I don’t know—not so far as I am concerned.”“What do you mean by ‘so far as I am concerned’?”“I mean that I have never played cards for money, or given that check in payment for a gambling debt. As to whether other boys have gambled in the shanty or elsewhere, I do not know. I have nothing to say.”“You have broken bounds repeatedly this term?”“Yes, sir.”“That will do for to-night. You three boys may go to bed now. Report to me to-morrow morning at the Rectory after Chapel. You will not attend recitations or take any part in the school activities until this matter is settled.”The three culprits silently took up their caps and went off to their rooms; Jimmie and Kit, distressed and alarmed for themselves, but even more for Tony; Deering was sullen and angry.Doctor Forester sank back for a moment in his chair and looked helplessly at his master and his prefects. “I don’t think for a moment that that boy is not telling the truth, Morris. But there is the letter, the check, and the memorandum-book. What do you make of it?”“I would stake my life on his honor,” exclaimed Morris generously. “For a moment I doubted him when he was confronted with your evidence; but there is an explanation for it, I am sure. Perhaps we willfind it out; perhaps not. But whether we do or not, I would take Deering’s word.”“Doubtless you are right. His grandfather was the same sort of hot-headed chivalrous youth, always in trouble, always refusing to clear himself if there were a shadow of doubt as to involving some one else. Nevertheless, this business is to be probed to the bottom, and I shall be inclined to expel the offenders without mercy. Come, boys, get to bed now; come to see me in the morning. You too, Morris. Good-night. I don’t know when a case of discipline has given me so much distress.”When they were gone, Morris crossed over to Deering’s room, and tapped on the door. Receiving no reply, he opened it and walked in. As he found no one in the study, he went into the bedroom, and there he discovered Tony lying on the bed, shaken by a storm of sobs. Carroll was sitting by his side, with his arms around him, trying to get some explanation of his distress.Reggie looked up at the master. “What is the trouble, Mr. Morris? I can’t get a word from Tony.”Morris explained in a few sentences what had happened.“But, sir—he gave his word?”“I know, I know,” exclaimed the master. “I believe him absolutely, but I am afraid there is a strong evidence against him that he will have to explain to the Head.”“But the Doctor must know that he is telling the truth. I never knew him to misjudge a boy.”“Even so—but whether he believes him or not,the Head is forced to probe the matter. He cannot accept Tony’s refusal to speak, and you must admit, Reggie, the letter, the check and the memorandum are pretty strong evidence.”Carroll paled, but he met the master’s gaze firmly. “I can explain that, sir. The memorandum was made out to a boy who has the same initials as Tony. I left the check which Tony had paid me in the memorandum-book by mistake.”“You—Reginald!”“Yes, yes—I have been playing poker there all this term, or at least for a good part of it. Is it too late to go and tell the Doctor?”“No, I think not; I believe he would like to know to-night.”Without a word Carroll rose up and left them.Morris sat down then on the edge of the bed by Deering’s side, and tried to calm him, making him understand at last what Reggie had done. Then he persuaded him to undress; and waited until he had got into bed; then, with a quiet good-night, he turned out the lights and left him alone.The Doctor’s study contained a door which gave directly upon the campus, so that the boys had easy access to him without the formality of going to the front door of the Rectory and sending their names in by a servant. When the Doctor was busy and did not wish to be disturbed, he placed a little sign in the window to that effect. There was no such sign as Reggie stood in the snow outside, at the foot of the few steps that led to the study door. The window-shades were up and Carroll could see the Doctorstanding before the fire—a characteristic attitude—his brows knit in perplexity. The boy’s heart went to his throat, for like every Deal boy the Doctor’s good opinion was what secretly he coveted intensely. But there was only a moment’s hesitation before he went up boldly and tapped at the door.The Head Master was surprised to see him at that hour of the night, and waited a little gravely for his explanation.Carroll made his confession in a few words, stating the case against himself baldly and without a word of palliation. “I have to say, sir,” he concluded, “that I have only come to you to save Deering, who has had absolutely nothing to do with the affair, and who told you the entire truth. I could not sleep, sir, if I thought you doubted his honor. Why, sir——”“Yes, Reginald, I agree with all that you can say about Deering. I have persistently believed in the boy despite the seemingly strong evidence against him. I am glad you have set me right there. As for yourself, you know that you have behaved badly, and I feel your conduct deeply. But I think you are atoning for it now in the sacrifice you are making for your friend. I do not want to know the names of your companions in this gambling episode, but I want to feel that I may count on you from this moment to make an effort to have it stopped.... Make no promises, but give me reason to keep my trust in you from now on.”He extended his hand. “Good-night now; tell Deering to come to me after Chapel to-morrow morning.”“Good-night, sir,” said Carroll with a thick voice, as he grasped the Doctor’s hand.

CHAPTER VIAFTERMATHThe outcome of the game for several days cast a deep gloom over the school. No one apparently had seen Chapin’s dastardly play, so that the cause of the defeat was very generally ascribed to Tony’s fumbling. The Boxford boys had driven off in great glee, Deal joining good-spiritedly in their cheers; but the bells remained silent; the bon-fires were not lighted, and the school settled down to a doleful Saturday night. Little groups of boys gathered here and there after supper, and discussed the incidents of the day. Sandy Maclaren and Stenton were universally blamed for having risked the experiment of playing a green boy in a big game, but with boys’ native generosity they showed no animosity toward Deering. He had lost the game—the consciousness of that, they realized, was bitter enough punishment for him. Even his own form mates thought it natural that he should prefer to keep to himself that evening, and showed little sympathy for Jimmie Lawrence’s anxiety on his behalf. Jimmie had tried again and again to get into Tony’s room, but could get no response to his repeated knockings.Had he known all that was going on in Tony’s mind and heart, he would have understood. For shutin his bedroom, flat upon his face on the bed, Deering was struggling with the keenest temptation he had ever faced. He realized acutely the opprobrium, the unjust opprobrium, that he would meet with, perhaps not crediting his schoolmates for as much generosity as they had; and though he would not have feared to face the boys had the fault been his own, he could not trust himself yet to meet them, see their disappointment in him, receive their tolerant sympathy, when he knew that a word from him might free himself from ignominy and cast the blame where it belonged. And as he lay there, great waves of hate for Chapin swept over him. He clenched his fists and drove them into the pillows, longing that his fingers were about Chapin’s throat and that he might choke out of him a confession of his dastardly betrayal. To his overwrought mind his future in the school looked dark and unattractive. The two months that he had spent there had been so bright and happy; he had made such warm friends and won for himself, it seemed, such a promising place in the regard of the school; and now, he felt, all must change, and his fool’s paradise go tumbling down. To have been given his chance, and failed through the willful meanness of another, and failing, to have cost his school the victory! For a moment he felt that he would pack his trunk, go down and tell Stenton the truth, and then take the first train out of Monday Port and leave the school to settle the wrangle how it would.And then he remembered his grandfather’s parting words, as the old general had stood in the portico of the white-pillar’d house on the far-away bayou,“Never repay a meanness by a meanness, my boy; and you will make a good sort of Christian.” And now, would not telling, truth though it were, be repaying a meanness by a meanness? Yes; but with the acknowledgment, wrung from his conscience, he burst into tears, tears of helpless disappointment and chagrin. Telling on another, especially in his own defense, Tony had always instinctively felt the most exquisite form of meanness.After a time he slipped from the bed, and fell on his knees by the bedside, obeying an unconscious need, in response to the suggestion of an unbroken habit of putting his boyish trust in an unseen power that knew and understood. “Oh, God,” he cried, “don’t let me be mean.” And after a time, though as a matter of fact he prayed very little more while he knelt there, he rose up, removed his soiled football clothes, washed and dressed, and slipped out quietly upon the campus. He avoided meeting the wandering boys, took himself to the beach, and with wind whistling and waves roaring in his ears, in tune with his mood, he walked the four miles out to the extreme point of Strathsey Neck. It was a grim walk, but not an unhappy one, for he had won his battle and had definitely made up his mind to be silent about the game as he had been silent about the hazing.*********But Tony was not the only person who had witnessed the game that day and knew who in reality was responsible for the defeat. Mr. Morris, who chanced to be standing on the side near the Boxfordgoal-line, had seen with perfect distinctness all that took place during that exciting moment of the game. And though several of the boys standing near him had exclaimed, “It looks as if Chapin had knocked the ball out of Deering’s arms himself,” with his accustomed reserve, he held his peace and made no comment. The incredibility of such an act on Chapin’s part had speedily driven from the boys’ minds the momentary impression. Morris, observing at the time of the game that Reggie Carroll was standing near him, had moved over to join him. But at that instant time had been called, and immediately the field was a scene of indescribable confusion. The house master pondered over the matter during the evening, but could not make up his mind as to the proper course of action.Just before lights that night he strolled into Carroll’s and Deering’s study, where he found Reggie as usual at his ease in a Morris chair with a novel in his hands. Carroll affected French novels, largely because he could plead the excuse when he was caught reading them that it was for the sake of his languages.“Come in, do, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed Carroll, with a trace less than his wonted coolness. The master entered, closing the door behind him. “Where is Deering?” he asked, as he seated himself on the couch, and taking up a paper-cutter from the table, began to play with it.“He has just come back from a long walk, and turned in, sir. Would you like to speak with him?”“No, no, thank you,” Morris answered. “But I will sit for a moment, if you like, and talk with you. That was an unfortunate game to-day, was it not?” And as Morris asked the question he looked at Reggie closely.“Very,” the boy answered, laconically.“Particularly for our friend Deering,” persisted the master.“Yes, I wish they had not played him; it was a poor experiment.”“Had you supposed him a careless player?”Carroll looked up languidly, but there was a keen glance in his eyes, and a note of significance in his voice, as he answered, “No, sir, I don’t think him a careless player, Mr. Morris.”“And yet he fumbled at a most inopportune time,” suggested Morris, musingly.Carroll flung his book a little impatiently on the table, and looked the older man frankly in the eyes. “Mr. Morris,” he exclaimed, with every trace of indifference gone, “I am going to tell you in strict confidence what I know about the game. It is scarcely a decent thing for me to tell it, but then I saw it.”“Yes, yes,” Morris murmured, encouragingly.“I saw Arthur Chapin knock the ball out of Tony’s arms just as they crossed the line and the Boxford quarter tackled him. I believe he did it on purpose. Now, I know,” he went on quickly, “that it is a terrible accusation to make against a fellow even in confidence to you; but that’s what happened, and I don’t know what I ought to do about it. It’s incredible, but I saw it.” And springing from his chair, Reggie began to pace excitedly up and down the room.“Yes,” said Mr. Morris, quietly, “it is incredible, but I saw it too.”“What!” exclaimed Reggie. “You saw it, Mr. Morris?”“Yes, just as you describe it. It is due to the fact that I supposed you also had seen it that I came in to talk it over with you to-night. I am afraid Chapin is capable of that sort of thing.”“Well, then——”—Reggie stopped—”Well, then,” he repeated, “I suppose it is up to us to tell the Head.”Morris appeared to be lost in thought. “Of course,” he said, after a moment, “that is the right course to think of; but I am not sure, my dear fellow, that I think it best for us to do that just yet. I want to wait a bit, I think, and see what Deering might wish us to do. You can be sure he knows it.”“Oh, yes, I am sure he knows,—he couldn’t help knowing.”“Well, personally I can’t see what good will come by going to the Head right away. I am quite sure that if it is brought officially to Dr. Forester’s notice that he will feel obliged to make it known to the school, both as a punishment to Chapin and in justice to Deering.”“But ought that not to be done?” asked Carroll.“Well, in one sense, yes; but do you know, Reggie,—though it may seem unwise in me, I have an extraordinary faith in Deering’s judgment about this matter. I want to know how he takes it before we do anything.”“I don’t thinkhe willwant us to do anything. But, sir, think of what his not telling will mean to him; think of the way the school will treat him for a while!”“Yes, but only for a while. There are possibilitiesin the situation, Reginald, that I think we were wiser not to spoil by acting upon snap judgments.”Carroll reflected. “Right, O wise man!” he exclaimed in a moment. “Shall we sound Tony, then?”“Rather not, I should say. Let us see the line that Tony takes himself. A few days will not make any difference, and we can set things straight, you know.”“But, Mr. Morris, the school is going to lose the credit of victory.”“Ah! it must do that in any case.Oneof our men fumbled, you know, whether accidentally or not; it makes no difference in the result of the game:—Boxford won. What’s really at stake, my boy, is the character of those two fellows, and that’s everything—everything, Reggie!”“By Jove, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed the boy impetuously, “if anyone will ever make me believe that, you and Deering will.” And he shook the master’s hand more heartily than he had ever done before.Deering appeared the next day at his usual place in school, and faced the ordeal bravely enough. It was an ordeal despite a general effort on the part of a majority of the boys to avoid discussion of the game in his presence. Here and there, to be sure, he met with the veiled glance of contempt or unfriendliness. Hardest of all, however, he found it to receive Sandy Maclaren’s and Mr. Stenton’s kindly sympathy. The Great Sandy, as the boys affectionately called him, from his pinnacle as the Head of the School, was a hero to Tony. Sandy’s confidence and friendliness had been one of the chief factors in what he regardedas his success. The friendliness was still there, but Tony sadly feared the confidence was shattered.Stenton took him by the arm as the boys were pouring out of morning Chapel the next day, where they had heard a sermon in which the Doctor had obviously taken his illustrations from the defeat of the day before. Stenton drew Tony along with him toward the Old School.“I want to apologize to you, Deering,” he began, “for the way I spoke to you yesterday afternoon. I was horribly upset by the unexpectedness of things, and simply lost my temper. I know you did your best, and I know too that no one is proof against accident in football or anything else.”Tony bit his lip and set his teeth. “Thanks, Mr. Stenton,” he said briefly. “I appreciate your speaking to me in this way.”“It was poor interference, anyway,” went on the master, “Chapin might have saved the day if he had been a bit faster. He had no wind yesterday.”Tony kept silent, and there was an awkward pause in the conversation, during which they came to the steps of the Old School. “Well,” said Stenton, turning off, “I only wanted to tell you that I am sorry I spoke irritably. I want you to have your chance next year again, and show that you are the player I think you are.”“Thank you very much, Mr. Stenton,” said Tony again, and turned away.That night after Chapel Tony had his first talk with Carroll since the game. It was desultory enough, until Reggie spoke out frankly and expressed hissympathy. Then Deering was immediately alert, his face flushed quickly, and he spoke with rather a tone of irritation. “Don’t let’s talk about the game, Reggie. It was a bad business, and I have made up my mind that the less said about it the better. Matters can’t be changed, and all I can hope to do is to make good next year. Stenton has as much as promised that I shall have the chance. I want to forget yesterday’s game as quickly as possible.”“Right!” said Carroll. “I promise you, you shall hear no more of it from me.”A little later, after Tony had gone to bed, Carroll went in to see Mr. Morris, and repeated the substance of this conversation.“It’s as I thought,” he said in conclusion, “we shall hear no more of it from Tony. Do you still think, sir, that we should hold our tongues?”“For the present, yes,” answered Morris. “If you don’t mind, Reggie, I want to manage this myself. In the course of time, I shall see Chapin, if he takes no action to clear Deering. It will be infinitely better if he confesses of his own accord. The truth will be known some time, and in the meanwhile I don’t think Deering will really suffer in popular estimation. The boys like him, and they will forgive what they think is his carelessness. If the confession comes from Chapin both boys will get some good out of it. I feel sure that the Doctor would approve of this, though I feel equally sure that if the matter were brought to his attention now he would feel obliged to act as Head Master at once.”“Very good, sir: I shall say no more about it, until you give me leave.”Morris was right. Tony did not suffer very greatly, and in the course of a few weeks the game was practically forgotten. Chapin certainly showed no inclination to right the wrong he had done, and for the time being, Morris was content to let matters drift.Within a month the school broke up for the three weeks’ Christmas recess. Tony did not make the long trip south for a visit home, but instead went with Jimmie to the Lawrences’ country-place on Long Island, where the boys spent a happy holiday, riding and shooting, and being plied with good things by Jimmie’s indulgent parents. Tony made a good impression on Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, and this visit to his friend’s home, served to deepen and strengthen the happy intimacy between the two boys. Early in January they were back at Deal for the long winter term, which Tony was promised would be exceedingly dull. He rather welcomed the relief from football practice, however, and sensibly made up his mind to make the term count in his form work. For so far, Tony’s reputation as a scholar had scarcely kept pace with his popularity as a genial companion and a good athlete.

AFTERMATH

The outcome of the game for several days cast a deep gloom over the school. No one apparently had seen Chapin’s dastardly play, so that the cause of the defeat was very generally ascribed to Tony’s fumbling. The Boxford boys had driven off in great glee, Deal joining good-spiritedly in their cheers; but the bells remained silent; the bon-fires were not lighted, and the school settled down to a doleful Saturday night. Little groups of boys gathered here and there after supper, and discussed the incidents of the day. Sandy Maclaren and Stenton were universally blamed for having risked the experiment of playing a green boy in a big game, but with boys’ native generosity they showed no animosity toward Deering. He had lost the game—the consciousness of that, they realized, was bitter enough punishment for him. Even his own form mates thought it natural that he should prefer to keep to himself that evening, and showed little sympathy for Jimmie Lawrence’s anxiety on his behalf. Jimmie had tried again and again to get into Tony’s room, but could get no response to his repeated knockings.

Had he known all that was going on in Tony’s mind and heart, he would have understood. For shutin his bedroom, flat upon his face on the bed, Deering was struggling with the keenest temptation he had ever faced. He realized acutely the opprobrium, the unjust opprobrium, that he would meet with, perhaps not crediting his schoolmates for as much generosity as they had; and though he would not have feared to face the boys had the fault been his own, he could not trust himself yet to meet them, see their disappointment in him, receive their tolerant sympathy, when he knew that a word from him might free himself from ignominy and cast the blame where it belonged. And as he lay there, great waves of hate for Chapin swept over him. He clenched his fists and drove them into the pillows, longing that his fingers were about Chapin’s throat and that he might choke out of him a confession of his dastardly betrayal. To his overwrought mind his future in the school looked dark and unattractive. The two months that he had spent there had been so bright and happy; he had made such warm friends and won for himself, it seemed, such a promising place in the regard of the school; and now, he felt, all must change, and his fool’s paradise go tumbling down. To have been given his chance, and failed through the willful meanness of another, and failing, to have cost his school the victory! For a moment he felt that he would pack his trunk, go down and tell Stenton the truth, and then take the first train out of Monday Port and leave the school to settle the wrangle how it would.

And then he remembered his grandfather’s parting words, as the old general had stood in the portico of the white-pillar’d house on the far-away bayou,“Never repay a meanness by a meanness, my boy; and you will make a good sort of Christian.” And now, would not telling, truth though it were, be repaying a meanness by a meanness? Yes; but with the acknowledgment, wrung from his conscience, he burst into tears, tears of helpless disappointment and chagrin. Telling on another, especially in his own defense, Tony had always instinctively felt the most exquisite form of meanness.

After a time he slipped from the bed, and fell on his knees by the bedside, obeying an unconscious need, in response to the suggestion of an unbroken habit of putting his boyish trust in an unseen power that knew and understood. “Oh, God,” he cried, “don’t let me be mean.” And after a time, though as a matter of fact he prayed very little more while he knelt there, he rose up, removed his soiled football clothes, washed and dressed, and slipped out quietly upon the campus. He avoided meeting the wandering boys, took himself to the beach, and with wind whistling and waves roaring in his ears, in tune with his mood, he walked the four miles out to the extreme point of Strathsey Neck. It was a grim walk, but not an unhappy one, for he had won his battle and had definitely made up his mind to be silent about the game as he had been silent about the hazing.

*********

But Tony was not the only person who had witnessed the game that day and knew who in reality was responsible for the defeat. Mr. Morris, who chanced to be standing on the side near the Boxfordgoal-line, had seen with perfect distinctness all that took place during that exciting moment of the game. And though several of the boys standing near him had exclaimed, “It looks as if Chapin had knocked the ball out of Deering’s arms himself,” with his accustomed reserve, he held his peace and made no comment. The incredibility of such an act on Chapin’s part had speedily driven from the boys’ minds the momentary impression. Morris, observing at the time of the game that Reggie Carroll was standing near him, had moved over to join him. But at that instant time had been called, and immediately the field was a scene of indescribable confusion. The house master pondered over the matter during the evening, but could not make up his mind as to the proper course of action.

Just before lights that night he strolled into Carroll’s and Deering’s study, where he found Reggie as usual at his ease in a Morris chair with a novel in his hands. Carroll affected French novels, largely because he could plead the excuse when he was caught reading them that it was for the sake of his languages.

“Come in, do, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed Carroll, with a trace less than his wonted coolness. The master entered, closing the door behind him. “Where is Deering?” he asked, as he seated himself on the couch, and taking up a paper-cutter from the table, began to play with it.

“He has just come back from a long walk, and turned in, sir. Would you like to speak with him?”

“No, no, thank you,” Morris answered. “But I will sit for a moment, if you like, and talk with you. That was an unfortunate game to-day, was it not?” And as Morris asked the question he looked at Reggie closely.

“Very,” the boy answered, laconically.

“Particularly for our friend Deering,” persisted the master.

“Yes, I wish they had not played him; it was a poor experiment.”

“Had you supposed him a careless player?”

Carroll looked up languidly, but there was a keen glance in his eyes, and a note of significance in his voice, as he answered, “No, sir, I don’t think him a careless player, Mr. Morris.”

“And yet he fumbled at a most inopportune time,” suggested Morris, musingly.

Carroll flung his book a little impatiently on the table, and looked the older man frankly in the eyes. “Mr. Morris,” he exclaimed, with every trace of indifference gone, “I am going to tell you in strict confidence what I know about the game. It is scarcely a decent thing for me to tell it, but then I saw it.”

“Yes, yes,” Morris murmured, encouragingly.

“I saw Arthur Chapin knock the ball out of Tony’s arms just as they crossed the line and the Boxford quarter tackled him. I believe he did it on purpose. Now, I know,” he went on quickly, “that it is a terrible accusation to make against a fellow even in confidence to you; but that’s what happened, and I don’t know what I ought to do about it. It’s incredible, but I saw it.” And springing from his chair, Reggie began to pace excitedly up and down the room.

“Yes,” said Mr. Morris, quietly, “it is incredible, but I saw it too.”

“What!” exclaimed Reggie. “You saw it, Mr. Morris?”

“Yes, just as you describe it. It is due to the fact that I supposed you also had seen it that I came in to talk it over with you to-night. I am afraid Chapin is capable of that sort of thing.”

“Well, then——”—Reggie stopped—”Well, then,” he repeated, “I suppose it is up to us to tell the Head.”

Morris appeared to be lost in thought. “Of course,” he said, after a moment, “that is the right course to think of; but I am not sure, my dear fellow, that I think it best for us to do that just yet. I want to wait a bit, I think, and see what Deering might wish us to do. You can be sure he knows it.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure he knows,—he couldn’t help knowing.”

“Well, personally I can’t see what good will come by going to the Head right away. I am quite sure that if it is brought officially to Dr. Forester’s notice that he will feel obliged to make it known to the school, both as a punishment to Chapin and in justice to Deering.”

“But ought that not to be done?” asked Carroll.

“Well, in one sense, yes; but do you know, Reggie,—though it may seem unwise in me, I have an extraordinary faith in Deering’s judgment about this matter. I want to know how he takes it before we do anything.”

“I don’t thinkhe willwant us to do anything. But, sir, think of what his not telling will mean to him; think of the way the school will treat him for a while!”

“Yes, but only for a while. There are possibilitiesin the situation, Reginald, that I think we were wiser not to spoil by acting upon snap judgments.”

Carroll reflected. “Right, O wise man!” he exclaimed in a moment. “Shall we sound Tony, then?”

“Rather not, I should say. Let us see the line that Tony takes himself. A few days will not make any difference, and we can set things straight, you know.”

“But, Mr. Morris, the school is going to lose the credit of victory.”

“Ah! it must do that in any case.Oneof our men fumbled, you know, whether accidentally or not; it makes no difference in the result of the game:—Boxford won. What’s really at stake, my boy, is the character of those two fellows, and that’s everything—everything, Reggie!”

“By Jove, Mr. Morris,” exclaimed the boy impetuously, “if anyone will ever make me believe that, you and Deering will.” And he shook the master’s hand more heartily than he had ever done before.

Deering appeared the next day at his usual place in school, and faced the ordeal bravely enough. It was an ordeal despite a general effort on the part of a majority of the boys to avoid discussion of the game in his presence. Here and there, to be sure, he met with the veiled glance of contempt or unfriendliness. Hardest of all, however, he found it to receive Sandy Maclaren’s and Mr. Stenton’s kindly sympathy. The Great Sandy, as the boys affectionately called him, from his pinnacle as the Head of the School, was a hero to Tony. Sandy’s confidence and friendliness had been one of the chief factors in what he regardedas his success. The friendliness was still there, but Tony sadly feared the confidence was shattered.

Stenton took him by the arm as the boys were pouring out of morning Chapel the next day, where they had heard a sermon in which the Doctor had obviously taken his illustrations from the defeat of the day before. Stenton drew Tony along with him toward the Old School.

“I want to apologize to you, Deering,” he began, “for the way I spoke to you yesterday afternoon. I was horribly upset by the unexpectedness of things, and simply lost my temper. I know you did your best, and I know too that no one is proof against accident in football or anything else.”

Tony bit his lip and set his teeth. “Thanks, Mr. Stenton,” he said briefly. “I appreciate your speaking to me in this way.”

“It was poor interference, anyway,” went on the master, “Chapin might have saved the day if he had been a bit faster. He had no wind yesterday.”

Tony kept silent, and there was an awkward pause in the conversation, during which they came to the steps of the Old School. “Well,” said Stenton, turning off, “I only wanted to tell you that I am sorry I spoke irritably. I want you to have your chance next year again, and show that you are the player I think you are.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Stenton,” said Tony again, and turned away.

That night after Chapel Tony had his first talk with Carroll since the game. It was desultory enough, until Reggie spoke out frankly and expressed hissympathy. Then Deering was immediately alert, his face flushed quickly, and he spoke with rather a tone of irritation. “Don’t let’s talk about the game, Reggie. It was a bad business, and I have made up my mind that the less said about it the better. Matters can’t be changed, and all I can hope to do is to make good next year. Stenton has as much as promised that I shall have the chance. I want to forget yesterday’s game as quickly as possible.”

“Right!” said Carroll. “I promise you, you shall hear no more of it from me.”

A little later, after Tony had gone to bed, Carroll went in to see Mr. Morris, and repeated the substance of this conversation.

“It’s as I thought,” he said in conclusion, “we shall hear no more of it from Tony. Do you still think, sir, that we should hold our tongues?”

“For the present, yes,” answered Morris. “If you don’t mind, Reggie, I want to manage this myself. In the course of time, I shall see Chapin, if he takes no action to clear Deering. It will be infinitely better if he confesses of his own accord. The truth will be known some time, and in the meanwhile I don’t think Deering will really suffer in popular estimation. The boys like him, and they will forgive what they think is his carelessness. If the confession comes from Chapin both boys will get some good out of it. I feel sure that the Doctor would approve of this, though I feel equally sure that if the matter were brought to his attention now he would feel obliged to act as Head Master at once.”

“Very good, sir: I shall say no more about it, until you give me leave.”

Morris was right. Tony did not suffer very greatly, and in the course of a few weeks the game was practically forgotten. Chapin certainly showed no inclination to right the wrong he had done, and for the time being, Morris was content to let matters drift.

Within a month the school broke up for the three weeks’ Christmas recess. Tony did not make the long trip south for a visit home, but instead went with Jimmie to the Lawrences’ country-place on Long Island, where the boys spent a happy holiday, riding and shooting, and being plied with good things by Jimmie’s indulgent parents. Tony made a good impression on Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, and this visit to his friend’s home, served to deepen and strengthen the happy intimacy between the two boys. Early in January they were back at Deal for the long winter term, which Tony was promised would be exceedingly dull. He rather welcomed the relief from football practice, however, and sensibly made up his mind to make the term count in his form work. For so far, Tony’s reputation as a scholar had scarcely kept pace with his popularity as a genial companion and a good athlete.

CHAPTER VIILOVEL’S WOODS“Ough, school again!” exclaimed Jimmie Lawrence, with a grunt, as he jumped off the platform of the little way-train at Monday Port one bright cold afternoon the following January. “I say, Tony,” he continued, linking his arm in that of his companion, and fishing in his pockets with his disengaged hand for his luggage checks, “this term it is school and no mistake! An unspeakable odor of gumshoe pervades the premises; Pussie Gray hurls math. lessons at your head a yard long, and the masters generally shriek exhortations at you as though you were deaf as well as dumb.”“Nonsense, Jimmo! I am right glad to get back.” And Tony drew in a deep breath of the cold pure air, and his eyes glistened as he looked out across the snow-clad landscape—the white town clinging to its hills, the frozen pond, the troubled blue waters of the bay. “I’ve never seen any snow to speak of, you know; think of the sliding down Deal Hill! Mind, old boy, we’re to pack over to Lovel’s Woods this afternoon and see to a cave.”“Gemini crickets! Deering, you’ll get enough of the Woods before the winter’s over. Me for theform-room and a heart to heart talk with my loving schoolmates.”“Be an old woman if you like,” interrupted Kit Wilson, who joined them at this moment. “Tony and I will find the cave, and you’ve got to pony up the first supply of grub.”“Oh, very well,” said Jimmie, with a grand air, as the three boys climbed into a fly. “If you will direct the coachman of this equipage to stop at the Pie-house, I will give Mrs. Wadmer acarte blancheorder for the proper supplies; and we’ll have a feed to-morrow afternoon. At present, I’m perished with cold.”By this time the driver had applied the whip to his poor horse, and the dilapidated fly was crawling up the cobblestones of Montgomery street. Once the top of the hill was gained, it moved along more rapidly, and soon Monday Port was left behind, the icy shores of Deal Water had been skirted, and the long hill that led up to the school was being climbed. The school “barge,” filled with a shouting, laughing crowd of small boys, was lumbering along ahead of them, and a dozen or so more cabs such as our friends had chartered dotted the white road. They passed a few of these, and noisy greetings were exchanged.“There’s a trifling pleasure in seeing the kids once more,” said Jimmie, settling back after they had passed the barge, and assuming ablaséexpression. “It would be rather jolly to be a prefect and boss ‘em all about.... Whoa-up! here’s the Pie-house and there’s Mother Wadmer in the doorway witha smile of welcome as broad as her pocketbook is deep. Hello, Mrs. Wadmer,” he cried, as the cab drew up before a small frame house by the roadside, on the portico of which stood a tall angular Cæsarean dame, with a calico apron drawn over her head.“How de do, Master Lawrence; howdy, boys. Come right in, and I’ll give you a glass of the best cider you’ve ever tasted. ‘Tis Mister Wadmer’s own brew, and a fine thing to begin the term on.”The three boys piled out of the fly, and in a moment were merrily greeting the crowd of youngsters who already had established themselves about the long deal table in Mrs. Wadmer’s hospitable kitchen. “Hello, Jim!” “Hello, Kit!” “Hello, Tony,” and a dozen other names, nicknames or parts of names, rang out. The boys shook hands, exchanged rapid notes of vacation experiences, gulped down several glasses of cider, and consumed a score or so of luscious tarts.“When did you get back, Tack?” Kit enquired of a large, ungainly, rosy-cheeked boy who came from Maine.“This morning,” answered Turner. “I came down on the boat last night to New York—scrumptious time. Say, Kit, have you heard the latest at school?”“No, we just got in, crawled across the flats from Coventry. What’s up?”“What’s up? why, some meddlesome jackanapes in the Sixth got wise to something irregular last winter and has gone to the Doctor with a doleful tale about the wickedness that’s supposed to go on in the Woods; so the fiat has gone forth: no caves for boys below the Fourth.”“No caves!” shouted a dozen boys. A storm of protests and exclamations arose. “Well,” said Jimmie, as the hubbub ceased, “school will be a jolly old jumping-off place then.”“No caves for boys below the Fourth,” echoed Kit. “Well, I announce my promotion then. Come on, Tony; come on, Jim; let’s get up to school and get the facts.”They stalked out amidst howls of derision, and re-entered their chariot. Jimmie had taken care, however, to direct Mrs. Wadmer to stack it well with such provisions as were in customary requisition in Lovel’s Woods. The worthy landlady of the Pie-house was officially deaf to all rules that emanated from the Head unless they were presented to her in writing. She owed, it may be said in parenthesis, her long career under the shadow of Deal School to the admirable loyalty of many generations of Deal boys.As luck would have it, to Tony’s amusement as he watched Jimmie’s expression, the first person they met in the Old School whither they went at once to report, was Mr. Roylston, who held a roll-call in his hands and wore on his face a look of patient suffering and in his eyes an expression of latent indignation. Our friends, thanks to their digression at the Pie-house, were ten minutes late.“How do you do, Mr. Roylston?” exclaimed Kit, offering his hand, and receiving three of the master’s lifeless fingers. A pencil occupied the other two. “Ah!” he murmured,—Kit afterwards declared, with satisfaction,—“Lawrence, Wilson, Deering—ten minuteslate. I congratulate you on the punctual way in which you begin the new year.”“Oh, sir, we were beguiled by the way,” protested the irrepressible Kit. “The woman beguiled me, sir, and I did eat.”“Faugh!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston. “Spare me your coarse irreverence. You are redolent of the unpleasant odors of the Pie-house. I will give you five marks apiece.”“Oh, sir!”“Please, sir!”“I beg of you, sir. Pray divide ‘em, sir.”“Silence, Wilson; you are impertinent as well as irreverent. If you linger longer with this futile protesting, I shall double your marks. Kindly go at once and unpack your trunks.”“Please, sir; we always do that in the evening, sir; and I hope you will allow us to go to the form-room, sir.”“Don’t ‘sir’ me so. Write out for me before to-morrow’s school fifty lines of the Æneid, and go at once.”“Very good, sir!” And lest they all get a similar dose of “pensum,” as such punishments were called, they hurried off to the Third Form common-room. There they found a crowd of newly-arrived boys, engaged in a vociferous denunciation of the Doctor’s new rule against caves in the Woods. The news had evidently been announced by the prefects.“What a gloomy old piece of rubber the Gumshoe is!” muttered Kit, as they were entering. “Fancy soaking me a pensum two minutes after I’m back atschool. Hey, you fellows!” he cried, “what’s this racket?”A dozen boys started to explain together, so that from their noisy chatter nothing could be gathered, except “Woods,” “caves” and execrations on the Head and the Sixth, with Kit’s lament on the gloomy Mr. Roylston rising above it all like a dismal howl.A Fourth Form boy,—Barney Clayton, by name,—thrust a red head through the open doorway. “Oh, fy!” he yelled, “what a precious howl you kids are letting out! What’s the matter? does the prohibition against caves rile your independent spirits?”“Get out, you red-head!” rose in angry chorus; and one boy shied a dog-eared Latin book at the fiery shock in the doorway. In a second a shower of missiles,—ink-stands, books, chairs, waste-paper basket,—went flying through the doorway and out into the corridor. Barney ducked his head and fled, shouting back derisive taunts. The commotion attracted the attention of Mr. Roylston at his post in the main hall, and he came flying to quell the disturbance. And, alas! he arrived just at a moment to receive full in the face the contents of a waste-paper basket, which Kit had flung. The débris descended upon him in comical fashion. The poor gentleman was speechless with indignation; but the situation was too much for the boys; despite his angry countenance, his blazing black eyes, they greeted his appearance with shouts of laughter.He waited, inarticulate with rage, until the commotion ceased, finally quelling them to a spell-boundsilence by the sheer force of his anger, and a little also, by the righteousness of his cause.“In the whole course of my career as a schoolmaster,” the master said at last, with a nervous jerk to each phrase, but pronouncing each word with the deadly precision of a judge uttering a capital sentence, “I have never been met with such gratuitous insult. Every member of this form will consider himself on bounds until further notice. As for you, Wilson, you shall be reported immediately to the Head, and if my recommendation can effect it, you will receive the caning you deserve.”“We were not throwing at you—we didn’t know you were coming—” began Kit.“Silence! do not add hypocrisy to insolence. You had been told to go to your rooms.... Disperse now at once, and do not show yourselves before supper. You Wilson, Lawrence and Deering, remain behind and clean up this disgusting mess. It is not surprising, I may say, that the Head feels himself unable to trust this form in the Woods this winter.” And with this parting shot, Mr. Roylston turned and walked away, with what dignity he could command.The boys, somewhat subdued by the dispiriting announcement of bounds, marched off gloomily, and our three friends stayed behind and began to clear up the débris.“Well,” said Kit at last, turning a half-merry, half-rueful countenance to his companions, as he seated himself upon a broken chair, “what a gloomy ass it is! But, oh my dears, did you observe his beautiful pea-green, Nile blue, ultramarine phiz as the contentsof the waste-basket descended upon his lean and hairless chops? Oh, my! what a home-coming! what a sweet heart to heart talk we’ve all had together!”“And a jolly good caning you’ll get, Kitty, when Gumshoe has had his talk with the Doctor.”“Jolly good,” replied Kit, rubbing his legs with a wry face. “But in the meantime, mes enfants,” he continued, “since I am to be swished, it shall not be that I suffer unjustly; we are going to make the swishing worth while. We are off to the Woods this minute. We’ll take the stuff over, stow it in the cave, put up a notice, and be back by supper. I’ll be hanged if I’ll pay any attention to Gumshoe’s twaddle about bounds or to the Doctor’s nonsense about caves. Are you with me, Jimmie, old boy?”“Well, rather,” Jimmie replied. “The experience of the last quarter of an hour has quite discouraged me with regard to the peace and quiet and healthy conversation us nice boys ought to have in form common-room.”Tony had kept silent. “Well, are you going to cut for a quitter?” asked Kit, turning upon him with an indignant glare.“Not I,” said Tony quickly.“Then help stow this truck. We’ve an hour and a half till supper, and the Gumshoe will undoubtedly think we havedisperrssedto our rooms.” And he gave an absurd imitation of Mr. Roylston’s manner of speaking.Ten minutes later they were running down the slope of Deal Hill, under the cover of the stone walls; then tearing across the frozen marshes, and clamberingup the steep banks and crags that bounded the west side of Lovel’s Woods. The sun was sinking in the west, and its rich mellow golden light fell athwart the snow-clad woodland, flooding it with glory, save where the great masses of pine and cedar cast broad splotches of shadow. The splendid loveliness of the dying afternoon, the biting cold of the wind, the thrill of doing the forbidden, filled Tony with a delicious sense of happiness and adventure.Each boy had his arms full of cooking utensils, food, boxes—the varied paraphernalia of a cave. It had been an ancient custom at Deal during the winter for boys to have caves in Lovel’s Woods, where they cooked weird messes during the afternoons when there was no skating. This year the Doctor, owing to certain abuses reported by the prefects the year before, had decided to restrict the use of caves to the three upper forms.Kit had a particular cave in mind, far away on the remote side of what was known as the Third Ridge, a cave that he and Jimmie and Teddy Lansing had had together the year before as Second Formers. This desirable spot was a natural formation in the rocky side of the farther of the three ridges of which Lovel’s Woods consisted. It was practically inaccessible from below, and the entrance above, well concealed by a clump of low cedars, was a narrow cleft in the rocks, at the extreme edge of which the initiated might descend to the cave by a series of dangerous steps which the boys had fashioned in the side of the precipitous cliff.Tony and Kit climbed down into the cave, whileJimmie, lying flat on the ledge above, handed down to them the supply of stores. These were safely stowed in a strong box, which had lasted out the previous season, and made secure. When the boys had clambered up again, they discovered that the sun had set and the darkness was gathering swiftly. The clear crescent of the new moon hung in the western sky a band of gold, and the evening star was rising over the ocean.“Twenty minutes to supper: we can just make it,” exclaimed Kit, looking at his watch. “Heave ahead, my hearties, and let’s run for it.”And run they did, at breakneck speed along the mazy paths, through the tangled undergrowth, over the slippery crags, across the frozen marsh. Kit, the imprudent, was impudently singing at the top of his shrill voice the verses of one of the School songs.“Out of the briny east,Out of the frosty north,Over the school-topp’d hill,Whistle the shrill winds forth.“Over the waves a-quiver,Over the salt sedge grass,Over the beaches tawny,The bright wind spirits pass.”And the other two boys took up the ringing refrain,“Grapple them e’er they go,Grapple them e’er they go.”Luck was with them. They reached the school as the great bell in the Chapel struck six. Five minuteslater, after a hasty wash and brush-up in their rooms, they were in the great library, shaking hands with the Doctor and Mrs. Forester and with masters and boys.The three, more closely united than ever by their sense of sharing a dangerous secret, kept together during chapel, and directly after were for making off to Jimmie’s room, when Sandy Maclaren, looking wonderfully handsome and “swagger” in his town clothes, laid a heavy hand on Kit’s shoulder. “Not so fast, boy. The Doctor wants to see you instanter at the Rectory.”Kit heaved a sigh in mock heroics. “Hail, blithe spirits,” he lamented, murdering his quotation, “hail and farewell.”The boys pressed his hands heartily. “Is it a caning, Sandy?” they asked.“Well, I rather think so,” answered Maclaren, with a smile. “You weren’t very keen not to distinguish between Barney Clayton and Mr. Roylston.”“They were both butting in,” protested Kit.“Well, cut along now. And you two report to Bill, he’s looking for you.”Kit found the Doctor in his comfortable study at the Rectory, standing before a glowing log fire, with his swallow-tails spread to the blaze.“Ah, Christopher,” the Head Master exclaimed, shaking hands with the culprit, “I’m glad to see you.”“Thank you, sir. Maclaren said you wanted to see me particularly?”“I do, most particularly. Take off your coat.”Kit backed a little. “But, sir——”“Yes, my boy, I dare say you have full and ample explanations, but I am quite sure they will not impress me. I know that you were but one of many in this fracas, and that it is your misfortune—shall I say?—rather than your fault that your particular missile took unfortunate effect. But we must all suffer at times for our mistakes, perhaps a little unjustly. The moment has struck when you must suffer too. The sooner we get at this business the sooner it will be over.”“Very good, sir,” said Kit, and silently removed his coat. And then the Doctor took a familiar implement of stout old hickory from a corner, and swished him soundly. Those were the happy days when debts against school discipline were so quickly and effectively liquidated.Kit bore no grudge to the Doctor, and comparatively little to Mr. Roylston. “It was worth it,” he confessed to Jimmie and Tony afterwards, “and I rather think this lets me out, conscientiously lets me out, you know, from paying attention to his futile announcement of bounds.”It goes without saying that the Doctor’s prohibition against Lovel’s Woods was about as unpopular a rule as had ever been promulgated. Combined with the fact that the Third Form were bounded for a month, as a consequence of their trouble with Mr. Roylston, the Lower School began the term in a bad mood. The Third Formers were particularly disgruntled with the prefects, who had assumed the responsibility of keeping Lovel’s Woods in order. It appeared that smoking had been indulged in the year before quite extensivelyby some of the younger boys, and gambling was suspected on the part of a few of the older ones. The Doctor’s rule had been more in the nature of a preventive than a punishment.But the effort to keep the rule effective was more of an undertaking than the prefects had realized; for they felt themselves required practically to police the forbidden district, a task, the novelty of which soon wore off. With the older boys caves were not particularly popular. Chapin and Marsh started one together, and moved into it the paraphernalia that they had hitherto kept stored in the cave on the beach by Beaver Creek. All of the prefects, acting on Maclaren’s advice, gave up their caves in order to set an example; with the result that there were hardly more than a dozen in official operation.For the first few weeks of the term the prefects were so zealous in their police duties that few boys cared to run the risk of “skipping” to the Woods. Even our three friends, despite their firm resolution to evade the rule, for the time being felt it the part of wisdom to lie low. Accordingly they avoided the Woods as if it were plague stricken and industriously played hockey every afternoon on Deal Great Pond, which was fully two miles away. But toward the end of January a thaw set in, the skating was spoiled, a heavy snow came, and their usual sports were interrupted; consequently the temptation to visit the cavesub rosagrew stronger than ever. Gradually also the inclement weather dampened the ardor of the prefects and they began to relax their vigilance over the forbidden territory. And we may say in passing thatTony and Jimmie and Kit spent several delightful afternoons in their hiding-place, and the parts of one or two wildly thrilling nights after lights.Despite his nefarious proceedings in contravention of the rules, be it said to his credit, Tony was making good his resolution of “poling” at his books, and felt confident of taking a good stand in the school when the ranks were read at the beginning of February. The football game, so far as his part in it was concerned, as Morris had predicted, seemed forgotten. He avoided Chapin as much as he could, and when they inevitably met he treated him with a courteous indifference which the older boy doubtless understood and was thankful to accept.Carroll, after a vacation spent in New York where he had seen all of the plays and dined at the best restaurants and gone to many more dances than were good for his health, returned to the school more than ever dissatisfied and disgruntled with the life he led in it. The talk with Mr. Morris about Tony, the consciousness that they possessed an important secret in common, served a little to make his relations with his house master easier, but he was still unable to give his friendship in the easy way he longed to give it. Neither, to his deepening chagrin and regret, was he making progress in his friendship with Deering, for Tony was more than ever absorbed in the life of his form, and spent all his free time with Wilson and Lawrence. He seemed unconscious of the affection he had won from Carroll and this, with Carroll’s intense consciousness of how completely his affection was going out, served to make their relations anythingbut free and spontaneous. So far as Tony thought about his room-mate that term it was as of an older fellow with whom he was not very congenial, and of whose laziness and indifferent attitude toward the school he did not approve. He thought Carroll to be wasting his time both at his books and in the school life, in either of which he could have counted immensely. Had Tony been less absorbed in his younger friends, he would probably have found a good deal in Reggie to like and value, as earlier in the year he had begun to feel he should.From his cozy den in the midst of Standerland Hall, surrounded by his well-loved books, his few but carefully chosen pictures, Mr. Morris watched the life throbbing about him with sympathetic insight and keen interest. He was not one of those fortunate schoolmasters who do not allow their profession to engage their affections. Morris, with a surrender that was effectually a sacrifice, for he had gifts and opportunities that might have won him a finer place in the world, gave his life completely to the school. He had loved it as a boy, he had looked back upon it during college with fond recollection and yearning, and after three years or so at a professional school, having taken his examinations for the bar, he had gone back to accept Dr. Forester’s offer of a mastership. For half-a-dozen years he had been there now, and each year the place and the boys got a deeper hold upon his heart and his interest. He was scrupulously fair and evenly kind; therefore deservedly popular; but despite this he had his favorite boys, not usually known as such by the school at large, to whomhe gave a special affection and a deeper interest. From the first day, when Deering, with his sparkling eyes and bright, clear-cut, eager face, had come to him for a seat in the schoolroom, he had felt for him that keen attraction which, as he grew to know the boy’s high spirits, lively sense of honor, and sunshiny nature, had deepened to a real affection. In Carroll also he had always felt a special interest, and had been glad when Tony was put to room with him. He saw Reggie’s growing devotion to Deering, and was sorry that Tony did not respond to a greater extent. Morris felt that Carroll needed the strengthening influence of a strong unselfish friendship with the right sort of boy to help make a man of him. Occasionally Morris had the two boys with others in his rooms for tea or on Saturday nights for a rarebit and a bit of supper, but otherwise occasions did not present themselves for his getting to know them better. He was sorry for this, but saw no very satisfactory way of making them. By the end of January it seemed to him that Reggie was in quite the worst attitude that he had ever been, thoroughly indifferent to the work and life of the school.

LOVEL’S WOODS

“Ough, school again!” exclaimed Jimmie Lawrence, with a grunt, as he jumped off the platform of the little way-train at Monday Port one bright cold afternoon the following January. “I say, Tony,” he continued, linking his arm in that of his companion, and fishing in his pockets with his disengaged hand for his luggage checks, “this term it is school and no mistake! An unspeakable odor of gumshoe pervades the premises; Pussie Gray hurls math. lessons at your head a yard long, and the masters generally shriek exhortations at you as though you were deaf as well as dumb.”

“Nonsense, Jimmo! I am right glad to get back.” And Tony drew in a deep breath of the cold pure air, and his eyes glistened as he looked out across the snow-clad landscape—the white town clinging to its hills, the frozen pond, the troubled blue waters of the bay. “I’ve never seen any snow to speak of, you know; think of the sliding down Deal Hill! Mind, old boy, we’re to pack over to Lovel’s Woods this afternoon and see to a cave.”

“Gemini crickets! Deering, you’ll get enough of the Woods before the winter’s over. Me for theform-room and a heart to heart talk with my loving schoolmates.”

“Be an old woman if you like,” interrupted Kit Wilson, who joined them at this moment. “Tony and I will find the cave, and you’ve got to pony up the first supply of grub.”

“Oh, very well,” said Jimmie, with a grand air, as the three boys climbed into a fly. “If you will direct the coachman of this equipage to stop at the Pie-house, I will give Mrs. Wadmer acarte blancheorder for the proper supplies; and we’ll have a feed to-morrow afternoon. At present, I’m perished with cold.”

By this time the driver had applied the whip to his poor horse, and the dilapidated fly was crawling up the cobblestones of Montgomery street. Once the top of the hill was gained, it moved along more rapidly, and soon Monday Port was left behind, the icy shores of Deal Water had been skirted, and the long hill that led up to the school was being climbed. The school “barge,” filled with a shouting, laughing crowd of small boys, was lumbering along ahead of them, and a dozen or so more cabs such as our friends had chartered dotted the white road. They passed a few of these, and noisy greetings were exchanged.

“There’s a trifling pleasure in seeing the kids once more,” said Jimmie, settling back after they had passed the barge, and assuming ablaséexpression. “It would be rather jolly to be a prefect and boss ‘em all about.... Whoa-up! here’s the Pie-house and there’s Mother Wadmer in the doorway witha smile of welcome as broad as her pocketbook is deep. Hello, Mrs. Wadmer,” he cried, as the cab drew up before a small frame house by the roadside, on the portico of which stood a tall angular Cæsarean dame, with a calico apron drawn over her head.

“How de do, Master Lawrence; howdy, boys. Come right in, and I’ll give you a glass of the best cider you’ve ever tasted. ‘Tis Mister Wadmer’s own brew, and a fine thing to begin the term on.”

The three boys piled out of the fly, and in a moment were merrily greeting the crowd of youngsters who already had established themselves about the long deal table in Mrs. Wadmer’s hospitable kitchen. “Hello, Jim!” “Hello, Kit!” “Hello, Tony,” and a dozen other names, nicknames or parts of names, rang out. The boys shook hands, exchanged rapid notes of vacation experiences, gulped down several glasses of cider, and consumed a score or so of luscious tarts.

“When did you get back, Tack?” Kit enquired of a large, ungainly, rosy-cheeked boy who came from Maine.

“This morning,” answered Turner. “I came down on the boat last night to New York—scrumptious time. Say, Kit, have you heard the latest at school?”

“No, we just got in, crawled across the flats from Coventry. What’s up?”

“What’s up? why, some meddlesome jackanapes in the Sixth got wise to something irregular last winter and has gone to the Doctor with a doleful tale about the wickedness that’s supposed to go on in the Woods; so the fiat has gone forth: no caves for boys below the Fourth.”

“No caves!” shouted a dozen boys. A storm of protests and exclamations arose. “Well,” said Jimmie, as the hubbub ceased, “school will be a jolly old jumping-off place then.”

“No caves for boys below the Fourth,” echoed Kit. “Well, I announce my promotion then. Come on, Tony; come on, Jim; let’s get up to school and get the facts.”

They stalked out amidst howls of derision, and re-entered their chariot. Jimmie had taken care, however, to direct Mrs. Wadmer to stack it well with such provisions as were in customary requisition in Lovel’s Woods. The worthy landlady of the Pie-house was officially deaf to all rules that emanated from the Head unless they were presented to her in writing. She owed, it may be said in parenthesis, her long career under the shadow of Deal School to the admirable loyalty of many generations of Deal boys.

As luck would have it, to Tony’s amusement as he watched Jimmie’s expression, the first person they met in the Old School whither they went at once to report, was Mr. Roylston, who held a roll-call in his hands and wore on his face a look of patient suffering and in his eyes an expression of latent indignation. Our friends, thanks to their digression at the Pie-house, were ten minutes late.

“How do you do, Mr. Roylston?” exclaimed Kit, offering his hand, and receiving three of the master’s lifeless fingers. A pencil occupied the other two. “Ah!” he murmured,—Kit afterwards declared, with satisfaction,—“Lawrence, Wilson, Deering—ten minuteslate. I congratulate you on the punctual way in which you begin the new year.”

“Oh, sir, we were beguiled by the way,” protested the irrepressible Kit. “The woman beguiled me, sir, and I did eat.”

“Faugh!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston. “Spare me your coarse irreverence. You are redolent of the unpleasant odors of the Pie-house. I will give you five marks apiece.”

“Oh, sir!”

“Please, sir!”

“I beg of you, sir. Pray divide ‘em, sir.”

“Silence, Wilson; you are impertinent as well as irreverent. If you linger longer with this futile protesting, I shall double your marks. Kindly go at once and unpack your trunks.”

“Please, sir; we always do that in the evening, sir; and I hope you will allow us to go to the form-room, sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me so. Write out for me before to-morrow’s school fifty lines of the Æneid, and go at once.”

“Very good, sir!” And lest they all get a similar dose of “pensum,” as such punishments were called, they hurried off to the Third Form common-room. There they found a crowd of newly-arrived boys, engaged in a vociferous denunciation of the Doctor’s new rule against caves in the Woods. The news had evidently been announced by the prefects.

“What a gloomy old piece of rubber the Gumshoe is!” muttered Kit, as they were entering. “Fancy soaking me a pensum two minutes after I’m back atschool. Hey, you fellows!” he cried, “what’s this racket?”

A dozen boys started to explain together, so that from their noisy chatter nothing could be gathered, except “Woods,” “caves” and execrations on the Head and the Sixth, with Kit’s lament on the gloomy Mr. Roylston rising above it all like a dismal howl.

A Fourth Form boy,—Barney Clayton, by name,—thrust a red head through the open doorway. “Oh, fy!” he yelled, “what a precious howl you kids are letting out! What’s the matter? does the prohibition against caves rile your independent spirits?”

“Get out, you red-head!” rose in angry chorus; and one boy shied a dog-eared Latin book at the fiery shock in the doorway. In a second a shower of missiles,—ink-stands, books, chairs, waste-paper basket,—went flying through the doorway and out into the corridor. Barney ducked his head and fled, shouting back derisive taunts. The commotion attracted the attention of Mr. Roylston at his post in the main hall, and he came flying to quell the disturbance. And, alas! he arrived just at a moment to receive full in the face the contents of a waste-paper basket, which Kit had flung. The débris descended upon him in comical fashion. The poor gentleman was speechless with indignation; but the situation was too much for the boys; despite his angry countenance, his blazing black eyes, they greeted his appearance with shouts of laughter.

He waited, inarticulate with rage, until the commotion ceased, finally quelling them to a spell-boundsilence by the sheer force of his anger, and a little also, by the righteousness of his cause.

“In the whole course of my career as a schoolmaster,” the master said at last, with a nervous jerk to each phrase, but pronouncing each word with the deadly precision of a judge uttering a capital sentence, “I have never been met with such gratuitous insult. Every member of this form will consider himself on bounds until further notice. As for you, Wilson, you shall be reported immediately to the Head, and if my recommendation can effect it, you will receive the caning you deserve.”

“We were not throwing at you—we didn’t know you were coming—” began Kit.

“Silence! do not add hypocrisy to insolence. You had been told to go to your rooms.... Disperse now at once, and do not show yourselves before supper. You Wilson, Lawrence and Deering, remain behind and clean up this disgusting mess. It is not surprising, I may say, that the Head feels himself unable to trust this form in the Woods this winter.” And with this parting shot, Mr. Roylston turned and walked away, with what dignity he could command.

The boys, somewhat subdued by the dispiriting announcement of bounds, marched off gloomily, and our three friends stayed behind and began to clear up the débris.

“Well,” said Kit at last, turning a half-merry, half-rueful countenance to his companions, as he seated himself upon a broken chair, “what a gloomy ass it is! But, oh my dears, did you observe his beautiful pea-green, Nile blue, ultramarine phiz as the contentsof the waste-basket descended upon his lean and hairless chops? Oh, my! what a home-coming! what a sweet heart to heart talk we’ve all had together!”

“And a jolly good caning you’ll get, Kitty, when Gumshoe has had his talk with the Doctor.”

“Jolly good,” replied Kit, rubbing his legs with a wry face. “But in the meantime, mes enfants,” he continued, “since I am to be swished, it shall not be that I suffer unjustly; we are going to make the swishing worth while. We are off to the Woods this minute. We’ll take the stuff over, stow it in the cave, put up a notice, and be back by supper. I’ll be hanged if I’ll pay any attention to Gumshoe’s twaddle about bounds or to the Doctor’s nonsense about caves. Are you with me, Jimmie, old boy?”

“Well, rather,” Jimmie replied. “The experience of the last quarter of an hour has quite discouraged me with regard to the peace and quiet and healthy conversation us nice boys ought to have in form common-room.”

Tony had kept silent. “Well, are you going to cut for a quitter?” asked Kit, turning upon him with an indignant glare.

“Not I,” said Tony quickly.

“Then help stow this truck. We’ve an hour and a half till supper, and the Gumshoe will undoubtedly think we havedisperrssedto our rooms.” And he gave an absurd imitation of Mr. Roylston’s manner of speaking.

Ten minutes later they were running down the slope of Deal Hill, under the cover of the stone walls; then tearing across the frozen marshes, and clamberingup the steep banks and crags that bounded the west side of Lovel’s Woods. The sun was sinking in the west, and its rich mellow golden light fell athwart the snow-clad woodland, flooding it with glory, save where the great masses of pine and cedar cast broad splotches of shadow. The splendid loveliness of the dying afternoon, the biting cold of the wind, the thrill of doing the forbidden, filled Tony with a delicious sense of happiness and adventure.

Each boy had his arms full of cooking utensils, food, boxes—the varied paraphernalia of a cave. It had been an ancient custom at Deal during the winter for boys to have caves in Lovel’s Woods, where they cooked weird messes during the afternoons when there was no skating. This year the Doctor, owing to certain abuses reported by the prefects the year before, had decided to restrict the use of caves to the three upper forms.

Kit had a particular cave in mind, far away on the remote side of what was known as the Third Ridge, a cave that he and Jimmie and Teddy Lansing had had together the year before as Second Formers. This desirable spot was a natural formation in the rocky side of the farther of the three ridges of which Lovel’s Woods consisted. It was practically inaccessible from below, and the entrance above, well concealed by a clump of low cedars, was a narrow cleft in the rocks, at the extreme edge of which the initiated might descend to the cave by a series of dangerous steps which the boys had fashioned in the side of the precipitous cliff.

Tony and Kit climbed down into the cave, whileJimmie, lying flat on the ledge above, handed down to them the supply of stores. These were safely stowed in a strong box, which had lasted out the previous season, and made secure. When the boys had clambered up again, they discovered that the sun had set and the darkness was gathering swiftly. The clear crescent of the new moon hung in the western sky a band of gold, and the evening star was rising over the ocean.

“Twenty minutes to supper: we can just make it,” exclaimed Kit, looking at his watch. “Heave ahead, my hearties, and let’s run for it.”

And run they did, at breakneck speed along the mazy paths, through the tangled undergrowth, over the slippery crags, across the frozen marsh. Kit, the imprudent, was impudently singing at the top of his shrill voice the verses of one of the School songs.

“Out of the briny east,Out of the frosty north,

Over the school-topp’d hill,Whistle the shrill winds forth.

“Over the waves a-quiver,Over the salt sedge grass,

Over the beaches tawny,The bright wind spirits pass.”

And the other two boys took up the ringing refrain,

“Grapple them e’er they go,Grapple them e’er they go.”

Luck was with them. They reached the school as the great bell in the Chapel struck six. Five minuteslater, after a hasty wash and brush-up in their rooms, they were in the great library, shaking hands with the Doctor and Mrs. Forester and with masters and boys.

The three, more closely united than ever by their sense of sharing a dangerous secret, kept together during chapel, and directly after were for making off to Jimmie’s room, when Sandy Maclaren, looking wonderfully handsome and “swagger” in his town clothes, laid a heavy hand on Kit’s shoulder. “Not so fast, boy. The Doctor wants to see you instanter at the Rectory.”

Kit heaved a sigh in mock heroics. “Hail, blithe spirits,” he lamented, murdering his quotation, “hail and farewell.”

The boys pressed his hands heartily. “Is it a caning, Sandy?” they asked.

“Well, I rather think so,” answered Maclaren, with a smile. “You weren’t very keen not to distinguish between Barney Clayton and Mr. Roylston.”

“They were both butting in,” protested Kit.

“Well, cut along now. And you two report to Bill, he’s looking for you.”

Kit found the Doctor in his comfortable study at the Rectory, standing before a glowing log fire, with his swallow-tails spread to the blaze.

“Ah, Christopher,” the Head Master exclaimed, shaking hands with the culprit, “I’m glad to see you.”

“Thank you, sir. Maclaren said you wanted to see me particularly?”

“I do, most particularly. Take off your coat.”

Kit backed a little. “But, sir——”

“Yes, my boy, I dare say you have full and ample explanations, but I am quite sure they will not impress me. I know that you were but one of many in this fracas, and that it is your misfortune—shall I say?—rather than your fault that your particular missile took unfortunate effect. But we must all suffer at times for our mistakes, perhaps a little unjustly. The moment has struck when you must suffer too. The sooner we get at this business the sooner it will be over.”

“Very good, sir,” said Kit, and silently removed his coat. And then the Doctor took a familiar implement of stout old hickory from a corner, and swished him soundly. Those were the happy days when debts against school discipline were so quickly and effectively liquidated.

Kit bore no grudge to the Doctor, and comparatively little to Mr. Roylston. “It was worth it,” he confessed to Jimmie and Tony afterwards, “and I rather think this lets me out, conscientiously lets me out, you know, from paying attention to his futile announcement of bounds.”

It goes without saying that the Doctor’s prohibition against Lovel’s Woods was about as unpopular a rule as had ever been promulgated. Combined with the fact that the Third Form were bounded for a month, as a consequence of their trouble with Mr. Roylston, the Lower School began the term in a bad mood. The Third Formers were particularly disgruntled with the prefects, who had assumed the responsibility of keeping Lovel’s Woods in order. It appeared that smoking had been indulged in the year before quite extensivelyby some of the younger boys, and gambling was suspected on the part of a few of the older ones. The Doctor’s rule had been more in the nature of a preventive than a punishment.

But the effort to keep the rule effective was more of an undertaking than the prefects had realized; for they felt themselves required practically to police the forbidden district, a task, the novelty of which soon wore off. With the older boys caves were not particularly popular. Chapin and Marsh started one together, and moved into it the paraphernalia that they had hitherto kept stored in the cave on the beach by Beaver Creek. All of the prefects, acting on Maclaren’s advice, gave up their caves in order to set an example; with the result that there were hardly more than a dozen in official operation.

For the first few weeks of the term the prefects were so zealous in their police duties that few boys cared to run the risk of “skipping” to the Woods. Even our three friends, despite their firm resolution to evade the rule, for the time being felt it the part of wisdom to lie low. Accordingly they avoided the Woods as if it were plague stricken and industriously played hockey every afternoon on Deal Great Pond, which was fully two miles away. But toward the end of January a thaw set in, the skating was spoiled, a heavy snow came, and their usual sports were interrupted; consequently the temptation to visit the cavesub rosagrew stronger than ever. Gradually also the inclement weather dampened the ardor of the prefects and they began to relax their vigilance over the forbidden territory. And we may say in passing thatTony and Jimmie and Kit spent several delightful afternoons in their hiding-place, and the parts of one or two wildly thrilling nights after lights.

Despite his nefarious proceedings in contravention of the rules, be it said to his credit, Tony was making good his resolution of “poling” at his books, and felt confident of taking a good stand in the school when the ranks were read at the beginning of February. The football game, so far as his part in it was concerned, as Morris had predicted, seemed forgotten. He avoided Chapin as much as he could, and when they inevitably met he treated him with a courteous indifference which the older boy doubtless understood and was thankful to accept.

Carroll, after a vacation spent in New York where he had seen all of the plays and dined at the best restaurants and gone to many more dances than were good for his health, returned to the school more than ever dissatisfied and disgruntled with the life he led in it. The talk with Mr. Morris about Tony, the consciousness that they possessed an important secret in common, served a little to make his relations with his house master easier, but he was still unable to give his friendship in the easy way he longed to give it. Neither, to his deepening chagrin and regret, was he making progress in his friendship with Deering, for Tony was more than ever absorbed in the life of his form, and spent all his free time with Wilson and Lawrence. He seemed unconscious of the affection he had won from Carroll and this, with Carroll’s intense consciousness of how completely his affection was going out, served to make their relations anythingbut free and spontaneous. So far as Tony thought about his room-mate that term it was as of an older fellow with whom he was not very congenial, and of whose laziness and indifferent attitude toward the school he did not approve. He thought Carroll to be wasting his time both at his books and in the school life, in either of which he could have counted immensely. Had Tony been less absorbed in his younger friends, he would probably have found a good deal in Reggie to like and value, as earlier in the year he had begun to feel he should.

From his cozy den in the midst of Standerland Hall, surrounded by his well-loved books, his few but carefully chosen pictures, Mr. Morris watched the life throbbing about him with sympathetic insight and keen interest. He was not one of those fortunate schoolmasters who do not allow their profession to engage their affections. Morris, with a surrender that was effectually a sacrifice, for he had gifts and opportunities that might have won him a finer place in the world, gave his life completely to the school. He had loved it as a boy, he had looked back upon it during college with fond recollection and yearning, and after three years or so at a professional school, having taken his examinations for the bar, he had gone back to accept Dr. Forester’s offer of a mastership. For half-a-dozen years he had been there now, and each year the place and the boys got a deeper hold upon his heart and his interest. He was scrupulously fair and evenly kind; therefore deservedly popular; but despite this he had his favorite boys, not usually known as such by the school at large, to whomhe gave a special affection and a deeper interest. From the first day, when Deering, with his sparkling eyes and bright, clear-cut, eager face, had come to him for a seat in the schoolroom, he had felt for him that keen attraction which, as he grew to know the boy’s high spirits, lively sense of honor, and sunshiny nature, had deepened to a real affection. In Carroll also he had always felt a special interest, and had been glad when Tony was put to room with him. He saw Reggie’s growing devotion to Deering, and was sorry that Tony did not respond to a greater extent. Morris felt that Carroll needed the strengthening influence of a strong unselfish friendship with the right sort of boy to help make a man of him. Occasionally Morris had the two boys with others in his rooms for tea or on Saturday nights for a rarebit and a bit of supper, but otherwise occasions did not present themselves for his getting to know them better. He was sorry for this, but saw no very satisfactory way of making them. By the end of January it seemed to him that Reggie was in quite the worst attitude that he had ever been, thoroughly indifferent to the work and life of the school.

CHAPTER VIIIA MIDNIGHT LARKThat winter proved to be a hard one, with frequent snows and violent winds, which put an end to the skating within a few weeks after Christmas, and left the majority of the boys with no very satisfactory pastime in the free afternoons. There was sliding down Deal Hill a good part of the time, and to Tony, who never before had experienced the pleasures of a northern winter, this was great fun; but after a time it palled upon his two cronies, Jimmie and Kit, and at their suggestion surreptitious visits to the cave in Lovel’s Woods became more frequent. Perhaps that this was a forbidden pleasure added a keener zest than they otherwise would have taken in it, and that several boys had recently been caught in the Woods and punished severely gave an element of danger to their visits that made them even more fascinating. Aside from the disobedience that these visits involved, they were innocent enough. The boys, having reported at call-over for a walk, would skirt the beaches and enter the Woods from the east, completely out of range of the school and comparatively safe from detection unless they chanced to encounter prefects or masters walking in the Woods themselves. The indefatigable Mr. Gray often bent his steps in thatdirection, but to the school’s intense delight, without noticeable result. The snows were so heavy and the walking consequently so difficult that the vigilance of masters and prefects at last completely relaxed. From that time on the boys who cared for the trouble had a fairly clear field. Our friends were fortunate in having a cave on the extreme eastern edge of the woods, so that the approach from the beach was easy. Once this was gained, they made a fire, cooked sausages, fried pan-cakes of an extremely leathery quality, and made coffee that certainly they would not have drunk in any other place.Tony had told Carroll of their exploits, and had even invited him to pay them a visit and partake of their “feed,” an invitation that was decisively declined. “It is certainly not worth while,” he replied, with a smile, “to run the risk of getting the Doctor quite sour on me for the pleasure of partaking of the results of your culinary skill.”“A great deal better for you,” Tony retorted, “than moping in doors half the time over sickly French novels.”“Possibly; but French novels are not the only alternative to the Woods,” Reggie answered, “and as a matter of fact I have begun to go in for tremendous tramps.”“You must take ‘em mostly at night, then.”“I do frequently,” was the somewhat tart reply, “the night air has always had a fascination for me.”In truth Tony was aware that Reggie had resumed his old custom of disappearing from their rooms afterlights, paying visits, he incuriously supposed, upon some of his friends. The fact gave him little thought.One afternoon the three boys were in their cave. Tony was turning pan-cakes in a skillet, while Jimmie was laboring with a dark mixture that they euphemistically called coffee. Kit sat on the branch of a tree, with his head over the ledge, on the look-out for any wandering prefects.“Hurry up, you frabjous duffers,” he called down, midst a stream of amiable chaffing; “it’s close upon four, and we’ll have to bolt the grub in order to get back to Gumshoe’s five o’clock.”“Why don’t you get down and work a bit, then? Nobody’s coming along this late. Get the plates out, and pour some syrup out of the jug. No work: no eat.”“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” he laughed.... “Shish!” he exclaimed suddenly, and ducked his head below the ledge.The three kept a tense silence for a moment. They heard footsteps crunching in the snow above and passing on. Kit cautiously peeped over the ledge. “By Jove,” he whispered, “it’s Reggie Carroll and Arty Chapin. I thought it was a couple of prefects.”He slid down from the tree, and began to gobble up one of Tony’s pan-cakes. “By the by, Tony, I thought the elegant Reginald Carter Westover Carroll had severed his friendship with that specimen of common Chapin clay.”“So he had,” answered Tony, musingly. “I didn’t know they had taken up with each other again.”“What a queer duck Reggie is,” said Jimmie, as he poured out three cups of coffee. “Have you ever made him out, Tony?”“Not I. We hit it off well enough after the first few days—for a time. But this term I have hardly seen anything of him. I am sorry he is in with Chapin again.”“And I. I’ve always liked Reggie despite his supercilious disdain, but Arty’s a beast, and always was,” said Kit, drinking his coffee at a gulp. “Here, let’s stow these things, and cut around to the north and take a peep as to what that precious pair are up to. Evidently no five o’clock for them.”“What’s the difference where they are going?” said Tony. “I have no mind to spy on them.”“Well, I have a consuming curiosity,” Kit rejoined. “They’re up to mischief, I’ll be bound.”“Light out then,” said Tony, “for Jim and I are going back over the ridges.”“And leave your precious footprints in the snow,” protested Kit. “La! la! stow the stuff, will you then? I’ll report if there’s anything doing.”And despite his companions’ adjurations Kit clambered off over the rocks and started out in the direction indicated by Carroll’s and Chapin’s footsteps in the snow.The boys got safely back without being detected, but Kit was a quarter of an hour late, and created a sad disturbance when he entered in the midst of Mr. Roylston’s Third Latin recitation.“The incorrigible Wilson,” remarked Mr. Roylston, without turning his beady black eyes in his direction,“will kindly take a pensum of one hundred lines for being late and disturbing the class.”“Very well, sir,” said Kit.“Spare me your comments, pray. Continue your recitation, Turner; Book Four, Chapter Fourteen, line twenty. Proceed. Cæsar—”“Oh, yes, sir.... Qui omnibus rebus subito perterriti—” Tack spelled it out painfully, and fell mercilessly upon it, “Who to all quickly having been thoroughly terrified. Et celeritati nostri et discessu suorum.... And with quickness to us both a descent....”Mr. Roylston transfixed the floundering youth with a withering glance, and there was a moment of awful silence. “With quickness to you, I may suggest, Turner,” he said at last in scathing tones, “descent into your seat and a zero in my mark-book.”He turned to Kit. “Wilson, let us see if you can cast light upon the darkness into which Turner has led us.”“I am afraid I can’t, sir.”“No?” murmured the master. “Well, I was not hopeful,” and he quietly recorded a zero in his mark-book. “Now, Deering—”Tony took up the passage, and got through it correctly enough, but not without being harassed by Mr. Roylston’s interruptions and glances of incredulity at his rendering of the Latin. The Latin recitations at Deal under the famous Ebenezer Roylston—he was the editor of an edition of Cicero that was classic in its day—were periods of agony and boredom. But at last this particular recitation came to an end,and immediately afterward, Kit threw his arms about the necks of his two friends, and drew them into a vacant classroom.“Well?”“What’s up?”“Oh, you frabjous kiddos! I tracked ‘em for a mile—’twas a mucker trick, I’ll admit, but I’ve got it in for Chapin. And what do you think, those two blooming jays are playing poker with their crowd in a shanty back of the Third Ridge. If it weren’t for Reggie, I swear I’d peach on Chapin.”“I swear you’d do nothing of the sort,” said Tony.“Well, perhaps not,” assented Kit, temporarily crestfallen. “But I must say that’s a crummy thing of them to do. Fine school spirit, eh!”“Well, we have been skipping bounds pretty regularly this fall, if I remember correctly.”“My dear child,” remarked Kit paternally, “when will you learn wisdom? The Doctor carefully distinguishes between moral offenses and offenses against school discipline. Now, bounds are obviously disciplinary and not moral; hence we are mere wandering angels, while those poker fiends are equally hence of the lower regions.”“Rot!” was the courteous rejoinder. “It is obvious to any but a bonehead like yourself that the Doctor imposed bounds this year for moral reasons, because he had wind that just that sort of thing was going on.”“Ah!” resumed Kit sarcastically. “I perceive the glimmerings of a conscience. You are getting the remorse for your own sins?”“Not particularly. I am only objecting to thecomplacent way in which you shove Carroll and Chapin outside the pale of decency.”“Well, I’m easy, old boy; I certainly won’t be damned for making pan-cakes in Lovel’s Woods; but I can readily see that Reggie might for playing poker there. But it isn’t so much the poker I object to, as his beastly taste in companions.”“Thunder and blazes, Kit, what’s it to you who Reggie goes with?”“Nothing much. But of a kindness warn your room-mate against Arty; he is an awful bounder and always was.”“Well,” answered Tony, “Reggie knows him better than we do; and it is certainly not my business to give him advice. Come on; let’s quit this jaw, and go in to supper.”Disposed as Tony had been openly to defend Carroll against this criticism, he condemned him yet the more severely in his heart. He knew that Reggie realized the defects of Chapin’s character; that he was spoiling his chances of a prefectship the next year by his association with him, and that he was running the risk of public expulsion if it should be discovered that he was playing poker. After a good deal of hesitation he made up his mind to speak to Reggie on the subject. Accordingly he waited that night until after lights, and then slipped over to Reggie’s room, hoping to please him by this suggestion of renewing their nightly talks. But to his disappointment Carroll was not there. Tony turned back into the study, and stood for a moment at the window looking out upon the white campus, flooded now with the light of a full moon.Suddenly he heard the latch of his door turn and some one slip into the room.“Hello, Reggie,” he whispered, “is that you?”“Shish! no—it’s me—Kit,” came the soft reply. “Jimmie is outside—we’re going to the Woods. Get into your clothes and come along.”“Oh, hang the Woods!” exclaimed Tony. “I am sleepy and want to go to bed.”“Don’t be a quitter. Jim’s got a box from home; we’ll have a bully good time, and we can get back by midnight. Where’s your precious room-mate—gone to the shanty?”“I don’t know—I suppose so.”“Well, perhaps we’ll meet him; come on.”The lark proved too strong a temptation, and after a little more persuasion, Tony yielded. He slipped on his trousers and a sweater, his stockings and boots, and a coat, and was ready. The two boys crept silently down the corridor, past the door of Mr. Morris’s room, over the transom of which a bright light was shining, and down the stairs. Once Kit tripped, and they sank down below the head of the stairs, just as Mr. Morris opened his door and stood at it for a moment listening. Then the master closed his door again, and the boys went out into the cold frosty moonlight night, and joined Jimmie, who was waiting for them at the fives-court.Morris, however, was an old hand at his business, and not a clumsy one. He stepped into his bedroom, which was darkened, and going to the window stood there watching. Presently he saw the three dark figures, unrecognizable at the distance, creep along the fives-court,dash across to the cloister that led from Standerland to the Schoolhouse, and then disappear behind the clump of trees at the corner. Confident that he had heard some one leaving his own dormitory, the master then made his rounds, and surely enough found that Deering, Lawrence and Wilson were missing. Curiously enough Tony’s happened to be the last room that he entered, and when he found his bedroom empty, thus being sure that the three he had seen were accounted for, he neglected to look into Carroll’s room, and returned to his study to wait for their return.About ten o’clock as he sat before his fire, meditating the course of his action, a rap sounded on the door, and in response to his invitation, Doctor Forester came in.“Ah, Morris,” said the Head Master, coming forward and standing with his back to the fire, “I am sorry to disturb you at this time of night; but there is mischief afoot, and perhaps you can help me catch the offenders.”Morris looked at the Doctor attentively, but for the moment did not volunteer his information.“This afternoon,” continued the Head, “Maclaren found an old shanty back of the Third Ridge, rigged out with the paraphernalia of a poker game. It has evidently been in use, and from the character of the débris, he thinks, by some of our boys. Maclaren supposes that some of your boys have been getting out at nights, and may be the culprits. Is that possible?”“Yes,” answered Morris, “quite possible. I shouldnot have said so an hour ago, for I keep a close watch upon that sort of thing, or at least I try to; but as a matter of fact three of my boys are missing at this moment.”“Who are they?” asked the Doctor sharply.“Lawrence, Deering and Wilson.”“What! they are the last boys in the School that I should be inclined to suspect of that sort of thing, though I regret to say, Maclaren has some evidence that I fear implicates Deering. Have you any idea that they are gone to the Woods?”“I fear they have, sir. I heard a noise in the hallway a half-hour ago, and slipped out to see what it was. For the moment I supposed I had been mistaken, but a little later from my bedroom window I saw three boys disappear back of the Schoolhouse. I did not know who they were until I had made my rounds, which was just a few minutes ago.”“Well, they must be found. If they are implicated in this affair at the Third Ridge shanty I shall deal with them severely. Fine boys, too! it’s a great shame.... Maclaren and Cummings are waiting in my study; I will go and give them this clue.”“If you like, sir, I will go for you, and go with them.”“I would be obliged if you would. In that case, I will remain here until your return.”Morris put on his great coat and boots and started out, while the Doctor settled himself before the fire with a book. A little later the master with the two prefects whom he had found at the Rectory, set out for Lovel’s Woods.Early in the evening Thorndyke, who was a memberof the crowd that frequented the shanty, had got wind of Maclaren’s discovery through Lawrence Cumming’s indiscreet confidences, and had hastened to the rendezvous—the stone bridge by the Red Farm below Deal Hill—and had warned his companions. They had quietly returned to their dormitories; indeed, while the Head Master and Morris had been talking in the latter’s study, Carroll had softly stolen upstairs, slipped into his room, and quietly got into bed.Our other friends, following Kit’s ardent but injudicious leadership, were making a detour to the north on their way to their cave with an intention of taking a peep at the nefarious doings at the shanty.It was a long walk, and a cold one. Tony and Jimmie had little heart for it, but the irrepressible Kit led them gaily on. They skirted Beaver Pond, threaded their way along the ridges over familiar paths, and at last debouched upon the little clearing in which the abandoned shanty was situated. On every side stretched the thick woods, traversable only by those who knew their devious paths. To the east of the shanty the ridge ended abruptly, there was a sheer descent, and over the tops of the trees on the hillside one could get a splendid view of the distant ocean, the Neck, and Deigr Island beyond the point, with its light faithfully blinking red and white.“No one about,” exclaimed Kit, peering in at a dark window; “what a lark!”“Now that we’re here,” said Jimmie. “I’m for investigating.”“By Jove! the window’s unfastened!” cried Kit, already tugging at the sash. In a moment he had itup, and disappeared over the window-sill. He struck a match inside and his companions could see him moving about. Presently he found a candle, lighted it, and set it on the table. “Come on in,” he called. “Here’s a rummy old pack of cards.” And he kicked the deck of cards across the room.Deering and Lawrence climbed in and joined him in an interested examination of the room. The structure, which contained only this one room, it may be said, had been built some years before by a gentleman of the neighborhood, who had literary tastes, and sought the quiet and seclusion of this spot for their development. Of late it had been disused, however, for a period of six or seven years. There was an old table, a few rickety chairs, and a strong-box, such as the boys used in their caves; aside from these no furniture of any description. The embers of a wood fire glowed on a great hearth at one side of the room. In a cupboard the boys found several soiled packs of cards, a pile of poker chips, and some empty cigarette boxes. “The real dope, I suppose,” Kit commented “is in the strong box, or hid some place outside. I reckon we can’t bust into it. What a silly lot of asses; if the prefects don’t get on to this, I’m a loser. But what a jolly old joint it is, eh?”“Rather,” said Jimmie. “There’s a pile of dishes in the sink yonder—they’ve evidently had a feed here this afternoon. There’s live coals on the hearth. Hmmm—smell the tobacco!”“Makes my mouth water,” was Kit’s prompt reply. “Let’s fire up, and have our feed here, and leave a note thankin’ ‘em for their hospitality. It isn’t likelythat anybody will turn up this time o’ night. Get the bundle, Tony; and you, Jim, lend a hand while we start the fire.”The two began industriously to lay a fresh fire on the great andirons, while Tony made for the window. As he reached it there rose before him what seemed a monstrous head and body. He gave a cry of alarm. “Great heavens! who is it?” he screamed.“Don’t have a fit, Deering; it’s only Maclaren.”Tony immediately recovered his equilibrium. “Only Maclaren!” he repeated, in a voice of despair. “It’s all up, kiddos.” And he turned a white face to his amazed companions in the shanty.“Only Maclaren!” wailed Kit, as he threw his bundle of faggots on the hearth. “You poor fool, there’s Mr. Morris too.”It was a sorry procession that wound its way back to Standerland that cold January night. The Doctor was waiting for them in Mr. Morris’s study, grown a little impatient at the long delay. The clock had struck eleven before he heard the footsteps on the stairs.Mr. Morris had rather deprecated explanations on the way back, preferring to let the Head deal with the case himself; nor were the boys much inclined to talk. Upon their arrival at Standerland, Mr. Morris gave a succinct account of their capture, while the Doctor listened, a cloud gathering upon his brow.“Well,” he said sternly, as Morris finished, “what were you doing in Lovel’s Woods at this time of night? Lawrence, you may answer for the three.”“We skipped out just for the lark, sir.”“You have been in the habit of paying these visits to the Woods?”“Yes, sir—once in a while, sir,” Jimmie answered, in rather a doleful tone.“What have you done there?”“Simply fooled about in our cave, sir.”“Do you call that shanty your cave?”“No, sir—our cave is on the east side on the Third Ridge.”“Well, what were you doing at the shanty?”“We were investigating it, sir; we had never been there before.”“None of you?”“None, sir.”“Is that true of you, Wilson?”“I?” exclaimed Kit. “No, sir; that is, sir, I have been there once before, but only on the outside and looked in at the windows.”“And you, Deering?”“No, sir, I have never been there before.”Dr. Forester had turned on Tony like a flash. “How then do you account for the fact that a letter addressed to you was found there this afternoon?”“A letter addressed to me found there!” exclaimed Tony, in surprise. “I can’t account for it. I do not know how it got there.”“Do you know of other boys being there?”“I believe other boys have been there; yes, sir.”“Do you know what boys have been there?”“I really can’t say, sir.”Tony was growing restless and ill at ease under this severe cross-examination. It suddenly dawned uponhim, that the Doctor did not appear to accept his replies as he gave them.... In his quick passionate southern way he fired with resentment. His face flushed, he stammered in giving his replies, and once or twice inadvertently contradicted himself. Jimmie and Kit looked at him in amazement; for a moment the suspicion crossed their minds that Tony had perhaps after all been going to the shanty with Carroll. Even Morris, who had been serenely confident that the boys would clear themselves of the charge of gambling, showed a troubled countenance as the cross-examination went on.“Come, come,” said the Doctor, “I would like you to suggest some explanation as to how a letter addressed to you was found in that shanty this afternoon.”“I don’t account for it,” Tony replied. “I know nothing about it. I know nothing about the shanty; I never saw it until to-night.”“That statement,” commented the Doctor mercilessly, “conflicts with what you implied a few moments ago. You allowed me to infer that you do know what boys go there.”“Suppose I do,” exclaimed Tony passionately. “Suppose I do—I shan’t tell anything about it. I have never been there, and I have nothing to do with it.”“Well, sir, there is still another bit of evidence that inevitably suggests to me the suspicion that you must know more than you admit. The strong-box in that shanty was rifled this afternoon by the Head Prefect under my direction. In it were found severalpacks of playing cards, a quantity of poker chips, and a memorandum-book.”“Well, sir?”“Do you know anything about that memorandum-book?”“I do not.”The Doctor drew it from his pocket as he spoke, and opened it. “I find here various entries, evidently sums of money owing to certain persons. I find here the entry ‘A. D. to R. C.—$5.’ Between these pages is a check on the First National Bank of New Orleans drawn by you in your own favor and endorsed on the back. Do you recollect such a check?”Tony racked his memory, and recalled at last that a week or so before he had given Reggie such a check in payment of a small loan. “I made out such a check; yes, sir.”“To whom did you pay it?”“I decline to tell you, sir.”“What did you pay it for?”“In payment of the sum of five dollars which I had borrowed.”“The boy to whom you paid this will corroborate your statement?”“Possibly, sir—I don’t know. I certainly shan’t ask him to. I am accustomed to tell the truth.”“You decline then to explain to me how this check came to be found in this memorandum-book in the strong-box of that shanty?”“I know nothing about it to explain. I paid the check to a friend. I don’t know how it came to be in the shanty.”“Have you ever played poker in this school?”“No, sir; I have not.”“Could this check have had anything to do with a poker game?”“I don’t know—not so far as I am concerned.”“What do you mean by ‘so far as I am concerned’?”“I mean that I have never played cards for money, or given that check in payment for a gambling debt. As to whether other boys have gambled in the shanty or elsewhere, I do not know. I have nothing to say.”“You have broken bounds repeatedly this term?”“Yes, sir.”“That will do for to-night. You three boys may go to bed now. Report to me to-morrow morning at the Rectory after Chapel. You will not attend recitations or take any part in the school activities until this matter is settled.”The three culprits silently took up their caps and went off to their rooms; Jimmie and Kit, distressed and alarmed for themselves, but even more for Tony; Deering was sullen and angry.Doctor Forester sank back for a moment in his chair and looked helplessly at his master and his prefects. “I don’t think for a moment that that boy is not telling the truth, Morris. But there is the letter, the check, and the memorandum-book. What do you make of it?”“I would stake my life on his honor,” exclaimed Morris generously. “For a moment I doubted him when he was confronted with your evidence; but there is an explanation for it, I am sure. Perhaps we willfind it out; perhaps not. But whether we do or not, I would take Deering’s word.”“Doubtless you are right. His grandfather was the same sort of hot-headed chivalrous youth, always in trouble, always refusing to clear himself if there were a shadow of doubt as to involving some one else. Nevertheless, this business is to be probed to the bottom, and I shall be inclined to expel the offenders without mercy. Come, boys, get to bed now; come to see me in the morning. You too, Morris. Good-night. I don’t know when a case of discipline has given me so much distress.”When they were gone, Morris crossed over to Deering’s room, and tapped on the door. Receiving no reply, he opened it and walked in. As he found no one in the study, he went into the bedroom, and there he discovered Tony lying on the bed, shaken by a storm of sobs. Carroll was sitting by his side, with his arms around him, trying to get some explanation of his distress.Reggie looked up at the master. “What is the trouble, Mr. Morris? I can’t get a word from Tony.”Morris explained in a few sentences what had happened.“But, sir—he gave his word?”“I know, I know,” exclaimed the master. “I believe him absolutely, but I am afraid there is a strong evidence against him that he will have to explain to the Head.”“But the Doctor must know that he is telling the truth. I never knew him to misjudge a boy.”“Even so—but whether he believes him or not,the Head is forced to probe the matter. He cannot accept Tony’s refusal to speak, and you must admit, Reggie, the letter, the check and the memorandum are pretty strong evidence.”Carroll paled, but he met the master’s gaze firmly. “I can explain that, sir. The memorandum was made out to a boy who has the same initials as Tony. I left the check which Tony had paid me in the memorandum-book by mistake.”“You—Reginald!”“Yes, yes—I have been playing poker there all this term, or at least for a good part of it. Is it too late to go and tell the Doctor?”“No, I think not; I believe he would like to know to-night.”Without a word Carroll rose up and left them.Morris sat down then on the edge of the bed by Deering’s side, and tried to calm him, making him understand at last what Reggie had done. Then he persuaded him to undress; and waited until he had got into bed; then, with a quiet good-night, he turned out the lights and left him alone.The Doctor’s study contained a door which gave directly upon the campus, so that the boys had easy access to him without the formality of going to the front door of the Rectory and sending their names in by a servant. When the Doctor was busy and did not wish to be disturbed, he placed a little sign in the window to that effect. There was no such sign as Reggie stood in the snow outside, at the foot of the few steps that led to the study door. The window-shades were up and Carroll could see the Doctorstanding before the fire—a characteristic attitude—his brows knit in perplexity. The boy’s heart went to his throat, for like every Deal boy the Doctor’s good opinion was what secretly he coveted intensely. But there was only a moment’s hesitation before he went up boldly and tapped at the door.The Head Master was surprised to see him at that hour of the night, and waited a little gravely for his explanation.Carroll made his confession in a few words, stating the case against himself baldly and without a word of palliation. “I have to say, sir,” he concluded, “that I have only come to you to save Deering, who has had absolutely nothing to do with the affair, and who told you the entire truth. I could not sleep, sir, if I thought you doubted his honor. Why, sir——”“Yes, Reginald, I agree with all that you can say about Deering. I have persistently believed in the boy despite the seemingly strong evidence against him. I am glad you have set me right there. As for yourself, you know that you have behaved badly, and I feel your conduct deeply. But I think you are atoning for it now in the sacrifice you are making for your friend. I do not want to know the names of your companions in this gambling episode, but I want to feel that I may count on you from this moment to make an effort to have it stopped.... Make no promises, but give me reason to keep my trust in you from now on.”He extended his hand. “Good-night now; tell Deering to come to me after Chapel to-morrow morning.”“Good-night, sir,” said Carroll with a thick voice, as he grasped the Doctor’s hand.

A MIDNIGHT LARK

That winter proved to be a hard one, with frequent snows and violent winds, which put an end to the skating within a few weeks after Christmas, and left the majority of the boys with no very satisfactory pastime in the free afternoons. There was sliding down Deal Hill a good part of the time, and to Tony, who never before had experienced the pleasures of a northern winter, this was great fun; but after a time it palled upon his two cronies, Jimmie and Kit, and at their suggestion surreptitious visits to the cave in Lovel’s Woods became more frequent. Perhaps that this was a forbidden pleasure added a keener zest than they otherwise would have taken in it, and that several boys had recently been caught in the Woods and punished severely gave an element of danger to their visits that made them even more fascinating. Aside from the disobedience that these visits involved, they were innocent enough. The boys, having reported at call-over for a walk, would skirt the beaches and enter the Woods from the east, completely out of range of the school and comparatively safe from detection unless they chanced to encounter prefects or masters walking in the Woods themselves. The indefatigable Mr. Gray often bent his steps in thatdirection, but to the school’s intense delight, without noticeable result. The snows were so heavy and the walking consequently so difficult that the vigilance of masters and prefects at last completely relaxed. From that time on the boys who cared for the trouble had a fairly clear field. Our friends were fortunate in having a cave on the extreme eastern edge of the woods, so that the approach from the beach was easy. Once this was gained, they made a fire, cooked sausages, fried pan-cakes of an extremely leathery quality, and made coffee that certainly they would not have drunk in any other place.

Tony had told Carroll of their exploits, and had even invited him to pay them a visit and partake of their “feed,” an invitation that was decisively declined. “It is certainly not worth while,” he replied, with a smile, “to run the risk of getting the Doctor quite sour on me for the pleasure of partaking of the results of your culinary skill.”

“A great deal better for you,” Tony retorted, “than moping in doors half the time over sickly French novels.”

“Possibly; but French novels are not the only alternative to the Woods,” Reggie answered, “and as a matter of fact I have begun to go in for tremendous tramps.”

“You must take ‘em mostly at night, then.”

“I do frequently,” was the somewhat tart reply, “the night air has always had a fascination for me.”

In truth Tony was aware that Reggie had resumed his old custom of disappearing from their rooms afterlights, paying visits, he incuriously supposed, upon some of his friends. The fact gave him little thought.

One afternoon the three boys were in their cave. Tony was turning pan-cakes in a skillet, while Jimmie was laboring with a dark mixture that they euphemistically called coffee. Kit sat on the branch of a tree, with his head over the ledge, on the look-out for any wandering prefects.

“Hurry up, you frabjous duffers,” he called down, midst a stream of amiable chaffing; “it’s close upon four, and we’ll have to bolt the grub in order to get back to Gumshoe’s five o’clock.”

“Why don’t you get down and work a bit, then? Nobody’s coming along this late. Get the plates out, and pour some syrup out of the jug. No work: no eat.”

“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” he laughed.... “Shish!” he exclaimed suddenly, and ducked his head below the ledge.

The three kept a tense silence for a moment. They heard footsteps crunching in the snow above and passing on. Kit cautiously peeped over the ledge. “By Jove,” he whispered, “it’s Reggie Carroll and Arty Chapin. I thought it was a couple of prefects.”

He slid down from the tree, and began to gobble up one of Tony’s pan-cakes. “By the by, Tony, I thought the elegant Reginald Carter Westover Carroll had severed his friendship with that specimen of common Chapin clay.”

“So he had,” answered Tony, musingly. “I didn’t know they had taken up with each other again.”

“What a queer duck Reggie is,” said Jimmie, as he poured out three cups of coffee. “Have you ever made him out, Tony?”

“Not I. We hit it off well enough after the first few days—for a time. But this term I have hardly seen anything of him. I am sorry he is in with Chapin again.”

“And I. I’ve always liked Reggie despite his supercilious disdain, but Arty’s a beast, and always was,” said Kit, drinking his coffee at a gulp. “Here, let’s stow these things, and cut around to the north and take a peep as to what that precious pair are up to. Evidently no five o’clock for them.”

“What’s the difference where they are going?” said Tony. “I have no mind to spy on them.”

“Well, I have a consuming curiosity,” Kit rejoined. “They’re up to mischief, I’ll be bound.”

“Light out then,” said Tony, “for Jim and I are going back over the ridges.”

“And leave your precious footprints in the snow,” protested Kit. “La! la! stow the stuff, will you then? I’ll report if there’s anything doing.”

And despite his companions’ adjurations Kit clambered off over the rocks and started out in the direction indicated by Carroll’s and Chapin’s footsteps in the snow.

The boys got safely back without being detected, but Kit was a quarter of an hour late, and created a sad disturbance when he entered in the midst of Mr. Roylston’s Third Latin recitation.

“The incorrigible Wilson,” remarked Mr. Roylston, without turning his beady black eyes in his direction,“will kindly take a pensum of one hundred lines for being late and disturbing the class.”

“Very well, sir,” said Kit.

“Spare me your comments, pray. Continue your recitation, Turner; Book Four, Chapter Fourteen, line twenty. Proceed. Cæsar—”

“Oh, yes, sir.... Qui omnibus rebus subito perterriti—” Tack spelled it out painfully, and fell mercilessly upon it, “Who to all quickly having been thoroughly terrified. Et celeritati nostri et discessu suorum.... And with quickness to us both a descent....”

Mr. Roylston transfixed the floundering youth with a withering glance, and there was a moment of awful silence. “With quickness to you, I may suggest, Turner,” he said at last in scathing tones, “descent into your seat and a zero in my mark-book.”

He turned to Kit. “Wilson, let us see if you can cast light upon the darkness into which Turner has led us.”

“I am afraid I can’t, sir.”

“No?” murmured the master. “Well, I was not hopeful,” and he quietly recorded a zero in his mark-book. “Now, Deering—”

Tony took up the passage, and got through it correctly enough, but not without being harassed by Mr. Roylston’s interruptions and glances of incredulity at his rendering of the Latin. The Latin recitations at Deal under the famous Ebenezer Roylston—he was the editor of an edition of Cicero that was classic in its day—were periods of agony and boredom. But at last this particular recitation came to an end,and immediately afterward, Kit threw his arms about the necks of his two friends, and drew them into a vacant classroom.

“Well?”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, you frabjous kiddos! I tracked ‘em for a mile—’twas a mucker trick, I’ll admit, but I’ve got it in for Chapin. And what do you think, those two blooming jays are playing poker with their crowd in a shanty back of the Third Ridge. If it weren’t for Reggie, I swear I’d peach on Chapin.”

“I swear you’d do nothing of the sort,” said Tony.

“Well, perhaps not,” assented Kit, temporarily crestfallen. “But I must say that’s a crummy thing of them to do. Fine school spirit, eh!”

“Well, we have been skipping bounds pretty regularly this fall, if I remember correctly.”

“My dear child,” remarked Kit paternally, “when will you learn wisdom? The Doctor carefully distinguishes between moral offenses and offenses against school discipline. Now, bounds are obviously disciplinary and not moral; hence we are mere wandering angels, while those poker fiends are equally hence of the lower regions.”

“Rot!” was the courteous rejoinder. “It is obvious to any but a bonehead like yourself that the Doctor imposed bounds this year for moral reasons, because he had wind that just that sort of thing was going on.”

“Ah!” resumed Kit sarcastically. “I perceive the glimmerings of a conscience. You are getting the remorse for your own sins?”

“Not particularly. I am only objecting to thecomplacent way in which you shove Carroll and Chapin outside the pale of decency.”

“Well, I’m easy, old boy; I certainly won’t be damned for making pan-cakes in Lovel’s Woods; but I can readily see that Reggie might for playing poker there. But it isn’t so much the poker I object to, as his beastly taste in companions.”

“Thunder and blazes, Kit, what’s it to you who Reggie goes with?”

“Nothing much. But of a kindness warn your room-mate against Arty; he is an awful bounder and always was.”

“Well,” answered Tony, “Reggie knows him better than we do; and it is certainly not my business to give him advice. Come on; let’s quit this jaw, and go in to supper.”

Disposed as Tony had been openly to defend Carroll against this criticism, he condemned him yet the more severely in his heart. He knew that Reggie realized the defects of Chapin’s character; that he was spoiling his chances of a prefectship the next year by his association with him, and that he was running the risk of public expulsion if it should be discovered that he was playing poker. After a good deal of hesitation he made up his mind to speak to Reggie on the subject. Accordingly he waited that night until after lights, and then slipped over to Reggie’s room, hoping to please him by this suggestion of renewing their nightly talks. But to his disappointment Carroll was not there. Tony turned back into the study, and stood for a moment at the window looking out upon the white campus, flooded now with the light of a full moon.

Suddenly he heard the latch of his door turn and some one slip into the room.

“Hello, Reggie,” he whispered, “is that you?”

“Shish! no—it’s me—Kit,” came the soft reply. “Jimmie is outside—we’re going to the Woods. Get into your clothes and come along.”

“Oh, hang the Woods!” exclaimed Tony. “I am sleepy and want to go to bed.”

“Don’t be a quitter. Jim’s got a box from home; we’ll have a bully good time, and we can get back by midnight. Where’s your precious room-mate—gone to the shanty?”

“I don’t know—I suppose so.”

“Well, perhaps we’ll meet him; come on.”

The lark proved too strong a temptation, and after a little more persuasion, Tony yielded. He slipped on his trousers and a sweater, his stockings and boots, and a coat, and was ready. The two boys crept silently down the corridor, past the door of Mr. Morris’s room, over the transom of which a bright light was shining, and down the stairs. Once Kit tripped, and they sank down below the head of the stairs, just as Mr. Morris opened his door and stood at it for a moment listening. Then the master closed his door again, and the boys went out into the cold frosty moonlight night, and joined Jimmie, who was waiting for them at the fives-court.

Morris, however, was an old hand at his business, and not a clumsy one. He stepped into his bedroom, which was darkened, and going to the window stood there watching. Presently he saw the three dark figures, unrecognizable at the distance, creep along the fives-court,dash across to the cloister that led from Standerland to the Schoolhouse, and then disappear behind the clump of trees at the corner. Confident that he had heard some one leaving his own dormitory, the master then made his rounds, and surely enough found that Deering, Lawrence and Wilson were missing. Curiously enough Tony’s happened to be the last room that he entered, and when he found his bedroom empty, thus being sure that the three he had seen were accounted for, he neglected to look into Carroll’s room, and returned to his study to wait for their return.

About ten o’clock as he sat before his fire, meditating the course of his action, a rap sounded on the door, and in response to his invitation, Doctor Forester came in.

“Ah, Morris,” said the Head Master, coming forward and standing with his back to the fire, “I am sorry to disturb you at this time of night; but there is mischief afoot, and perhaps you can help me catch the offenders.”

Morris looked at the Doctor attentively, but for the moment did not volunteer his information.

“This afternoon,” continued the Head, “Maclaren found an old shanty back of the Third Ridge, rigged out with the paraphernalia of a poker game. It has evidently been in use, and from the character of the débris, he thinks, by some of our boys. Maclaren supposes that some of your boys have been getting out at nights, and may be the culprits. Is that possible?”

“Yes,” answered Morris, “quite possible. I shouldnot have said so an hour ago, for I keep a close watch upon that sort of thing, or at least I try to; but as a matter of fact three of my boys are missing at this moment.”

“Who are they?” asked the Doctor sharply.

“Lawrence, Deering and Wilson.”

“What! they are the last boys in the School that I should be inclined to suspect of that sort of thing, though I regret to say, Maclaren has some evidence that I fear implicates Deering. Have you any idea that they are gone to the Woods?”

“I fear they have, sir. I heard a noise in the hallway a half-hour ago, and slipped out to see what it was. For the moment I supposed I had been mistaken, but a little later from my bedroom window I saw three boys disappear back of the Schoolhouse. I did not know who they were until I had made my rounds, which was just a few minutes ago.”

“Well, they must be found. If they are implicated in this affair at the Third Ridge shanty I shall deal with them severely. Fine boys, too! it’s a great shame.... Maclaren and Cummings are waiting in my study; I will go and give them this clue.”

“If you like, sir, I will go for you, and go with them.”

“I would be obliged if you would. In that case, I will remain here until your return.”

Morris put on his great coat and boots and started out, while the Doctor settled himself before the fire with a book. A little later the master with the two prefects whom he had found at the Rectory, set out for Lovel’s Woods.

Early in the evening Thorndyke, who was a memberof the crowd that frequented the shanty, had got wind of Maclaren’s discovery through Lawrence Cumming’s indiscreet confidences, and had hastened to the rendezvous—the stone bridge by the Red Farm below Deal Hill—and had warned his companions. They had quietly returned to their dormitories; indeed, while the Head Master and Morris had been talking in the latter’s study, Carroll had softly stolen upstairs, slipped into his room, and quietly got into bed.

Our other friends, following Kit’s ardent but injudicious leadership, were making a detour to the north on their way to their cave with an intention of taking a peep at the nefarious doings at the shanty.

It was a long walk, and a cold one. Tony and Jimmie had little heart for it, but the irrepressible Kit led them gaily on. They skirted Beaver Pond, threaded their way along the ridges over familiar paths, and at last debouched upon the little clearing in which the abandoned shanty was situated. On every side stretched the thick woods, traversable only by those who knew their devious paths. To the east of the shanty the ridge ended abruptly, there was a sheer descent, and over the tops of the trees on the hillside one could get a splendid view of the distant ocean, the Neck, and Deigr Island beyond the point, with its light faithfully blinking red and white.

“No one about,” exclaimed Kit, peering in at a dark window; “what a lark!”

“Now that we’re here,” said Jimmie. “I’m for investigating.”

“By Jove! the window’s unfastened!” cried Kit, already tugging at the sash. In a moment he had itup, and disappeared over the window-sill. He struck a match inside and his companions could see him moving about. Presently he found a candle, lighted it, and set it on the table. “Come on in,” he called. “Here’s a rummy old pack of cards.” And he kicked the deck of cards across the room.

Deering and Lawrence climbed in and joined him in an interested examination of the room. The structure, which contained only this one room, it may be said, had been built some years before by a gentleman of the neighborhood, who had literary tastes, and sought the quiet and seclusion of this spot for their development. Of late it had been disused, however, for a period of six or seven years. There was an old table, a few rickety chairs, and a strong-box, such as the boys used in their caves; aside from these no furniture of any description. The embers of a wood fire glowed on a great hearth at one side of the room. In a cupboard the boys found several soiled packs of cards, a pile of poker chips, and some empty cigarette boxes. “The real dope, I suppose,” Kit commented “is in the strong box, or hid some place outside. I reckon we can’t bust into it. What a silly lot of asses; if the prefects don’t get on to this, I’m a loser. But what a jolly old joint it is, eh?”

“Rather,” said Jimmie. “There’s a pile of dishes in the sink yonder—they’ve evidently had a feed here this afternoon. There’s live coals on the hearth. Hmmm—smell the tobacco!”

“Makes my mouth water,” was Kit’s prompt reply. “Let’s fire up, and have our feed here, and leave a note thankin’ ‘em for their hospitality. It isn’t likelythat anybody will turn up this time o’ night. Get the bundle, Tony; and you, Jim, lend a hand while we start the fire.”

The two began industriously to lay a fresh fire on the great andirons, while Tony made for the window. As he reached it there rose before him what seemed a monstrous head and body. He gave a cry of alarm. “Great heavens! who is it?” he screamed.

“Don’t have a fit, Deering; it’s only Maclaren.”

Tony immediately recovered his equilibrium. “Only Maclaren!” he repeated, in a voice of despair. “It’s all up, kiddos.” And he turned a white face to his amazed companions in the shanty.

“Only Maclaren!” wailed Kit, as he threw his bundle of faggots on the hearth. “You poor fool, there’s Mr. Morris too.”

It was a sorry procession that wound its way back to Standerland that cold January night. The Doctor was waiting for them in Mr. Morris’s study, grown a little impatient at the long delay. The clock had struck eleven before he heard the footsteps on the stairs.

Mr. Morris had rather deprecated explanations on the way back, preferring to let the Head deal with the case himself; nor were the boys much inclined to talk. Upon their arrival at Standerland, Mr. Morris gave a succinct account of their capture, while the Doctor listened, a cloud gathering upon his brow.

“Well,” he said sternly, as Morris finished, “what were you doing in Lovel’s Woods at this time of night? Lawrence, you may answer for the three.”

“We skipped out just for the lark, sir.”

“You have been in the habit of paying these visits to the Woods?”

“Yes, sir—once in a while, sir,” Jimmie answered, in rather a doleful tone.

“What have you done there?”

“Simply fooled about in our cave, sir.”

“Do you call that shanty your cave?”

“No, sir—our cave is on the east side on the Third Ridge.”

“Well, what were you doing at the shanty?”

“We were investigating it, sir; we had never been there before.”

“None of you?”

“None, sir.”

“Is that true of you, Wilson?”

“I?” exclaimed Kit. “No, sir; that is, sir, I have been there once before, but only on the outside and looked in at the windows.”

“And you, Deering?”

“No, sir, I have never been there before.”

Dr. Forester had turned on Tony like a flash. “How then do you account for the fact that a letter addressed to you was found there this afternoon?”

“A letter addressed to me found there!” exclaimed Tony, in surprise. “I can’t account for it. I do not know how it got there.”

“Do you know of other boys being there?”

“I believe other boys have been there; yes, sir.”

“Do you know what boys have been there?”

“I really can’t say, sir.”

Tony was growing restless and ill at ease under this severe cross-examination. It suddenly dawned uponhim, that the Doctor did not appear to accept his replies as he gave them.... In his quick passionate southern way he fired with resentment. His face flushed, he stammered in giving his replies, and once or twice inadvertently contradicted himself. Jimmie and Kit looked at him in amazement; for a moment the suspicion crossed their minds that Tony had perhaps after all been going to the shanty with Carroll. Even Morris, who had been serenely confident that the boys would clear themselves of the charge of gambling, showed a troubled countenance as the cross-examination went on.

“Come, come,” said the Doctor, “I would like you to suggest some explanation as to how a letter addressed to you was found in that shanty this afternoon.”

“I don’t account for it,” Tony replied. “I know nothing about it. I know nothing about the shanty; I never saw it until to-night.”

“That statement,” commented the Doctor mercilessly, “conflicts with what you implied a few moments ago. You allowed me to infer that you do know what boys go there.”

“Suppose I do,” exclaimed Tony passionately. “Suppose I do—I shan’t tell anything about it. I have never been there, and I have nothing to do with it.”

“Well, sir, there is still another bit of evidence that inevitably suggests to me the suspicion that you must know more than you admit. The strong-box in that shanty was rifled this afternoon by the Head Prefect under my direction. In it were found severalpacks of playing cards, a quantity of poker chips, and a memorandum-book.”

“Well, sir?”

“Do you know anything about that memorandum-book?”

“I do not.”

The Doctor drew it from his pocket as he spoke, and opened it. “I find here various entries, evidently sums of money owing to certain persons. I find here the entry ‘A. D. to R. C.—$5.’ Between these pages is a check on the First National Bank of New Orleans drawn by you in your own favor and endorsed on the back. Do you recollect such a check?”

Tony racked his memory, and recalled at last that a week or so before he had given Reggie such a check in payment of a small loan. “I made out such a check; yes, sir.”

“To whom did you pay it?”

“I decline to tell you, sir.”

“What did you pay it for?”

“In payment of the sum of five dollars which I had borrowed.”

“The boy to whom you paid this will corroborate your statement?”

“Possibly, sir—I don’t know. I certainly shan’t ask him to. I am accustomed to tell the truth.”

“You decline then to explain to me how this check came to be found in this memorandum-book in the strong-box of that shanty?”

“I know nothing about it to explain. I paid the check to a friend. I don’t know how it came to be in the shanty.”

“Have you ever played poker in this school?”

“No, sir; I have not.”

“Could this check have had anything to do with a poker game?”

“I don’t know—not so far as I am concerned.”

“What do you mean by ‘so far as I am concerned’?”

“I mean that I have never played cards for money, or given that check in payment for a gambling debt. As to whether other boys have gambled in the shanty or elsewhere, I do not know. I have nothing to say.”

“You have broken bounds repeatedly this term?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That will do for to-night. You three boys may go to bed now. Report to me to-morrow morning at the Rectory after Chapel. You will not attend recitations or take any part in the school activities until this matter is settled.”

The three culprits silently took up their caps and went off to their rooms; Jimmie and Kit, distressed and alarmed for themselves, but even more for Tony; Deering was sullen and angry.

Doctor Forester sank back for a moment in his chair and looked helplessly at his master and his prefects. “I don’t think for a moment that that boy is not telling the truth, Morris. But there is the letter, the check, and the memorandum-book. What do you make of it?”

“I would stake my life on his honor,” exclaimed Morris generously. “For a moment I doubted him when he was confronted with your evidence; but there is an explanation for it, I am sure. Perhaps we willfind it out; perhaps not. But whether we do or not, I would take Deering’s word.”

“Doubtless you are right. His grandfather was the same sort of hot-headed chivalrous youth, always in trouble, always refusing to clear himself if there were a shadow of doubt as to involving some one else. Nevertheless, this business is to be probed to the bottom, and I shall be inclined to expel the offenders without mercy. Come, boys, get to bed now; come to see me in the morning. You too, Morris. Good-night. I don’t know when a case of discipline has given me so much distress.”

When they were gone, Morris crossed over to Deering’s room, and tapped on the door. Receiving no reply, he opened it and walked in. As he found no one in the study, he went into the bedroom, and there he discovered Tony lying on the bed, shaken by a storm of sobs. Carroll was sitting by his side, with his arms around him, trying to get some explanation of his distress.

Reggie looked up at the master. “What is the trouble, Mr. Morris? I can’t get a word from Tony.”

Morris explained in a few sentences what had happened.

“But, sir—he gave his word?”

“I know, I know,” exclaimed the master. “I believe him absolutely, but I am afraid there is a strong evidence against him that he will have to explain to the Head.”

“But the Doctor must know that he is telling the truth. I never knew him to misjudge a boy.”

“Even so—but whether he believes him or not,the Head is forced to probe the matter. He cannot accept Tony’s refusal to speak, and you must admit, Reggie, the letter, the check and the memorandum are pretty strong evidence.”

Carroll paled, but he met the master’s gaze firmly. “I can explain that, sir. The memorandum was made out to a boy who has the same initials as Tony. I left the check which Tony had paid me in the memorandum-book by mistake.”

“You—Reginald!”

“Yes, yes—I have been playing poker there all this term, or at least for a good part of it. Is it too late to go and tell the Doctor?”

“No, I think not; I believe he would like to know to-night.”

Without a word Carroll rose up and left them.

Morris sat down then on the edge of the bed by Deering’s side, and tried to calm him, making him understand at last what Reggie had done. Then he persuaded him to undress; and waited until he had got into bed; then, with a quiet good-night, he turned out the lights and left him alone.

The Doctor’s study contained a door which gave directly upon the campus, so that the boys had easy access to him without the formality of going to the front door of the Rectory and sending their names in by a servant. When the Doctor was busy and did not wish to be disturbed, he placed a little sign in the window to that effect. There was no such sign as Reggie stood in the snow outside, at the foot of the few steps that led to the study door. The window-shades were up and Carroll could see the Doctorstanding before the fire—a characteristic attitude—his brows knit in perplexity. The boy’s heart went to his throat, for like every Deal boy the Doctor’s good opinion was what secretly he coveted intensely. But there was only a moment’s hesitation before he went up boldly and tapped at the door.

The Head Master was surprised to see him at that hour of the night, and waited a little gravely for his explanation.

Carroll made his confession in a few words, stating the case against himself baldly and without a word of palliation. “I have to say, sir,” he concluded, “that I have only come to you to save Deering, who has had absolutely nothing to do with the affair, and who told you the entire truth. I could not sleep, sir, if I thought you doubted his honor. Why, sir——”

“Yes, Reginald, I agree with all that you can say about Deering. I have persistently believed in the boy despite the seemingly strong evidence against him. I am glad you have set me right there. As for yourself, you know that you have behaved badly, and I feel your conduct deeply. But I think you are atoning for it now in the sacrifice you are making for your friend. I do not want to know the names of your companions in this gambling episode, but I want to feel that I may count on you from this moment to make an effort to have it stopped.... Make no promises, but give me reason to keep my trust in you from now on.”

He extended his hand. “Good-night now; tell Deering to come to me after Chapel to-morrow morning.”

“Good-night, sir,” said Carroll with a thick voice, as he grasped the Doctor’s hand.

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