CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIIA GATING AND A GAMEFor the next few days Thornton’s thrashing was the principal theme of the school talk. The story was told, though no one knew whence it originated. Tony and Kit dismissed it with a laugh or an exclamation, but Finch, interrogated on all hands, gave a correct version. Thornton and his friends kept themselves in the background for a week or so, but nursed their grudge with the dogged determination of ill-will, and when occasion offered continued to torture Finch on the sly, but not so brutally.The chief satisfaction that Tony got out of the incident, after the pleasure of thrashing a bully, was his talk with the Head on the subject. “I hear,” said Doctor Forester, as he stopped Deering after Chapel one morning, “that there have been some lively doings in Standerland of late, in the absence of the masters.”Tony, not yet sure of the Doctor’s attitude, blushed and stammered something that was quite unintelligible. The Head eyed him keenly. “For once,” he said, laying his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder, “I am not disposed to object to a somewhat vigorous method of taking the law into your own hands. I fancy you will have been successful in putting an end to thebrutal hazing to which young Finch has been subjected.”“Thank you, sir,” said Tony. “We were a bit rough and pretty generally out of order, but we hoped the end justified the means.”The Doctor smiled and went on.Tony found Kit at the lobby outside the schoolroom, and repeated the conversation in great glee.“Great man, the Doctor!” remarked Kit, judiciously. “Now I guess we’ll let the Gumshoe whistle for his lines. What a relief it is occasionally to meet with broad-mindedness on the part of those who are charged with our education. Same with the Gumshoe’s gating,” he added, in illogical parenthesis.The opportunity to test Mr. Roylston’s whistling powers came sooner than they expected. The day before the Boxford game, Jack Stenton called off the football practice, and had the school in to a mass-meeting in the Gymnasium. The boys sang the school songs with their traditional vigor, and listened with the utmost good nature and appreciation to speeches that in many cases had been delivered a dozen times before. The Doctor remarked that it was difficult to be original on such occasions, as though he was making the remark for the first time; but at the risk of repeating himself he did not mind saying that they had supreme confidence in the prowess of the team and that the school was confident of a victory on the morrow. Stenton gave, in his matter of fact way, impressing the boys deeply, a careful estimate of the abilities of the different players and whatmight be expected of them in the game, and offered a judicial estimate that the score would be two touch-downs to none in favor of Deal. Billy Wendell, the captain, stammered, in the traditional captain’s manner, that the team wanted the school behind them, and that—that was about all he had to say. Other members of the faculty made remarks, some of which were witty, some merely facetious, but all received with wild applause. Then they sang some more, cheered for the team, for the school, for Jack Stenton, for Billy Wendell, and the meeting was concluded by the Head declaring a half-holiday for the team, and removing Monday Port bounds for the afternoon in behalf of the two upper forms. Many of the boys had friends coming on the afternoon trains, and counted on this largess as a general permission to go in and meet them.Kit’s mother was coming, with a couple of girls. Rooms for them had been taken at the Deal Inn on the Port Road near the school. Immediately after the mass-meeting Kit called to Tony, and asked him to go in with him to the depôt and meet the five o’clock train.“Are we really going to break the Gumshoe’s gating?” asked Tony.“We certainly are,” responded Kit cheerfully. “To heck with the Gumshoe; bounds are off for the afternoon anyway. It’ll be a good way to get the matter officially to the Head. By gum!” he exclaimed, glancing toward the Schoolhouse, “Gumshoe’s got call-over.”Surely enough Mr. Roylston was standing on theSchoolhouse steps, with a long line of boys in single file beneath him, waiting to report.“Shall we tell him?” asked Kit.“Guess we’ll have to,” answered Tony. “Let’s butt in to the middle of the line for once, and get it over.” Ordinarily, it may be remarked, Fifth Formers did not report, unless they were going into Monday Port. They made for the line, and Kit grabbed a Third Form boy by the arm.“Say, Bunting, do you mind letting us in here? We’re in a big hurry.”The small boy flushed with pleasure at the request from such popular and distinguished persons as Wilson and Deering, and readily made way. Mr. Roylston, who seldom failed to see anything that was going on around him, stopped for a moment and looked at them with an expression of stern disapproval. The boys thought that he was about to order them to the end of the line, but for once he disappointed them, and after a significant compression of his lips, went on with the call-over. There was a general titter along the line.Soon it was Kit’s turn, and he was at Mr Roylston’s side. The master held a paper in his hand, on which was printed the school list. It was the duty of the master of the day to note on such a slip opposite each boy’s name the plans that he reported for the afternoon.“Wilson and Deering, sir,” said Kit.Mr. Roylston faced him. “Now that they have usurped the places of a score or so of boys who were in line before them, what do the Messrs. Wilson and Deering propose to do in such a hurry?”“We are going to town, sir, to meet my mother who is arriving on the five o’clock train.”“Ah, indeed!” said Mr. Roylston. “I am very sorry to put Mrs. Wilson to any inconvenience, but I fear I must do so. As you both are gated for the month, it is impossible for me to acquiesce in your ingenuous proposal.”“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Kit, “but the Head has declared bounds off for the afternoon.”“Undoubtedly,” commented Mr. Roylston, “but I have had the unpleasant duty of gating you for a month. Next!”Wilson and Deering were swept on by the crowd. Without further ado, they cut across the field, climbed the stone wall and started across the meadows for the town.In Monday Port they loafed about until five o’clock, when they went to the depôt and met Mrs. Wilson. She was accompanied by two very pretty and attractive girls, Betty, Kit’s sister, and Barbara Worthington, her great friend and a boyish flame of Kit’s. The party had a merry time on the drive out the Port Road and a pleasant tea on the old-fashioned gallery of the Inn, in the golden light of the Indian summer afternoon. Absorbed in the unusual pleasure attendant upon the presence of girls at Deal, they quite forgot the predicament they were in with Mr. Roylston.The master in charge had a better memory, and was waiting for them at the entrance of the cloister that led into the refectory, where the school was gathering for supper. He was very angry.“I will trouble you,” he said, “to come with me at once to the Head. You have been flagrantly disobedient.”The boys followed him without a word across the quadrangle to the Rectory.“A very annoying case, Doctor Forester,” Mr. Roylston began when they were closeted with the Head in his study. “I gated Wilson and Deering for a month, but despite my warning at call-over, they deliberately ignored the gating and went to town this afternoon.”“It was quite necessary, sir,” protested Kit, “that I should meet my mother, who arrived at five o’clock. Besides, sir, we think that Mr. Roylston’s gating was unjust, and we asked him to refer the matter to you, sir, and he refused.”“That was not necessary,” said the Doctor, “except under exceptional circumstances. However, I may say that it is my general understanding that when bounds are raised the day before the Boxford game, that for the afternoon ordinary penalties and restrictions are suspended. Why were they gated, sir?”“For brutal conduct, Doctor Forester, to their younger schoolmates.”“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Head, with something like a smile flitting across his face. “You behaved brutally toward smaller boys?” He faced the culprits.Tony smiled in spite of himself. “Why, yes, sir, I suppose we did; we planned to.”“I am sorry to hear it,” said the Head. “But, Mr. Roylston, for once let us compromise and temperjustice with mercy. Only recently these two young brutes did a very effective and commendable service to the school,—they thrashed two bullies who had been making the life of a small boy quite miserable. Let us forgive them their brutality in the one case for the sake of their brutality in the other, where it was not undeserved. I am disposed to ask you to dispense the gating and the penalties for violating it.”Mr. Roylston compressed his lips. “I—is it just, sir?”The Doctor smiled in his odd way. “I am disposed to insist on your being merciful, Mr. Roylston. I will guarantee that there will be no more brutality nor disobedience. Let us threaten them with dire penalties, if they are reported for brutality again. Good-day, boys.”As they went out, they heard the Doctor say in suave and cheerful tones, “Stay and have a bit of supper with me, Roylston.” “Thank you, no;” answered the master, “I have duties immediately. Good-evening, sir.”“One for the Gumshoe,” said Tony blithely, as they turned onto the campus.Kit was serious. “I have always said,” he remarked sententiously, “that the Gumshoe Ebenezer was an odious ass; but I have always had, until this moment, a sneaking conviction that in so saying I was doing him an injustice. Henceforth my conscience is absolved. Ass he is; ass he shall be.”“Amen,” said Tony. “Fact is, Gumshoe’s had it in for Finch. Mysterious beast, ain’t he! We score to-day, kiddo, but the Gumshoe is not annihilated.”“No, I dare say not. The possibilities of his getting back at us are pretty nigh endless. But say, Tonio, old sport, isn’t Bab Worthington a queen?”“Quite the queen, Kitty; but Betty Wilson is no mere handmaid.”“Oh, bother Betty; she’s a good sort. But let’s hurry, so we can get down early. I am half sorry I asked the crowd. Think I’d rather have—”They both began to run then toward the dining-room, where the school was already at supper.That evening “the crowd,” as our friends called themselves in their modest schoolboy way, including Kit, Tony, Jimmie Lawrence, Teddy Lansing and Tack Turner, went to the Inn and spent a merry evening under Mrs. Wilson’s indulgent chaperonage. There were other parties there, including the parents and sisters and cousins and an occasional aunt of various boys; a gathering of the clans loyal to Deal; a score or so of Old Boys, mostly from Kingsbridge, back for the game, who had overflowed from the crowded school into the Inn. In the proud consciousness of their undoubted superiority as college men, the Old Boys somewhat cast their younger brethren in the shade, and treated them with patronizing airs, asking them occasional questions in a patriarchal manner.Tony alone amongst his companions seemed to shine that evening. There flashed into prominence, to their first observation, in his manner, his appearance even, something of that charm which was more and more making him a favorite, and which, though his schoolfellows never analyzed it, was to be cordially recognized later on. It would have been hard to sayin just what Tony’s charm lay, perhaps it was that a certain serious sweetness of disposition, the finer traits of his character, for the most part unnoticed in the helter-skelter rough-and-readiness of school life, were emerging. Women, who are always quicker than men to estimate a personality, to be conscious of its finer as well as its more obvious strains, felt this at once in Tony. He was a success with Mrs. Wilson and the girls. His own friends, intimate with him in all the openness and yet sometimes quite misleading circumstances of everyday existence, who ordinarily thought of him merely as a boon companion, a genial playmate, gifted with a nice sense of honor but ready for a lark and a risk with the most reckless, were a little surprised at the evident impression he made not only on Mrs. Wilson, but on Betty and Barbara Worthington. His friends saw in him that night a facility despite his modesty, a social poise untempered by self-consciousness, that more distinctly than ever before singled him out as their natural leader. Kit indeed, felt several miserable pangs of jealousy, as he noted Barbara’s quick response to Tony’s gayety, and her unconcealed desire to remain part of the group of which Tony was in some sense the center rather than wander off with him for the too obvious pleasure of a tête-à-tête. But Kit himself was too whole-souled, too merry of nature, to sulk, and save for an occasional growl to which no one paid attention, before the evening was over, he was enjoying Tony as he had never enjoyed him before, wondering at the quick development of this social side of his character which had been unobserved.As for Tony he was quite unconscious of anything save that he was enjoying himself immensely; that Betty Wilson was an extremely attractive girl, a thoroughly “good sort,” as Kit had said; and that he wished there were more frequent occasions when the girls came to Deal. He was not sentimental, so that he did not imagine that he had fallen in love.The day of the game was a perfect one for football, cool and gray, with no wind blowing. The teams were in fine condition, and the Boxford boys, who had come over in the old-time coach across the hills, looked tremendously big and strong. Tony was still playing end, the position to which he had been so unexpectedly assigned in his Third Form year, and in which, through no fault of his own, he had been the means of losing the game. To be sure in the following year, when the circumstances of that defeat had been made rather generally clear, he had redeemed himself by good playing and they had won, but he felt a keen desire this year to blot out forever, if it might be, the bitter memory of that first Boxford game. He wanted, quite selfishly he told himself,—and perhaps he was thinking a little of Betty—to win a game as definitely as he had lost one.As the team stepped out onto the field that afternoon, resplendent in their red sweaters with the big black D across the breast, and he sniffed the cool air and heard the chorus of Deal cheers ring down the lines, he lifted his head like a good hunter keen for the chase, and a thrill of determination went through him like a shiver. They must win!Billy Wendell had the ball under his arm as theycame onto the field. Immediately he tossed it to Kit, prominent to the spectators for his shock of yellow hair and his bright red cheeks despite the fact that this was his first appearance on the school team. Kit tossed it to Barney Clayton, who muffed it, and then made a quick dive and fell on it very much as a kitten plays with a ball of yarn.... So for fifteen minutes or so the preliminary practice went on, until the boys were well warmed up for the strenuous work of the game.Then came the shrill note of the referee’s whistle; the two captains met in the center of the field; the Boxford boy called and won the toss, and the two teams trotted out to their places for the kick-off. There were roars from the two grand-stands, the antiphonal ringing-out of the Deal and Boxford cheers; another blast from the referee’s whistle, and Kit, who was playing center, gave the ball a kick that sent it sailing down the field to within five yards of the Boxford goal posts. A Boxford back caught it, but Tony downed him in his tracks.Then the teams lined up, the Boxford quarter signaled to his full back for a line plunge, and in less time than it takes to write it, the great hulk of a six-foot boy went tearing through the Deal line. Deal received a shock as great as it was unexpected. They had foreseen no such smashing attack, and before they could rally to the defense, they had been forced for down after down over the smooth brown field until the play was well in their own territory....We do not mean to describe the game in detail, for is it not written in the chronicles of the boys of Deal? Wendell rallied his team just in time to preventBoxford from scoring in the first half, when the ball had been worried to within twenty yards of his goal. Then followed an exchange of punts, which, as Edward Clavering, Deal’s full back, could kick farther than his opponent, gave Deal a slight advantage. When they got the ball at last in the middle of the field, they made a few gains by end runs. They were swifter, more ingenious, better kickers than the Boxford boys, but the team from over the hills had the advantage in weight and strength.During the intermission between the halves Stenton did his best to hearten his boys, but it was a poor best, for he felt pretty certain that they were bound to be scored against heavily in the next half. They could not stand the smashing of the line—already Clayton and one or two others had been taken out.The second half saw a repetition of the tactics of the first. Boxford persistently hit the line, and within five minutes of the play had scored the inevitable touchdown. The enthusiasm of their supporters was only a trifle dampened when they failed to kick the goal. After that Deal worried them a good deal with trick plays, and once after gaining a considerable distance by an exceptionally long punt and a fumble, they seemed within striking distance of the goal. Clavering tried for a field goal, but to the sharp distress of his supporters the ball went wide of the mark. Boxford took the ball on their twenty-five yard line, and renewed their demoralizing attack. Despite the Deal boys’ desperate efforts, the ball was forced back into their territory, straight down the field by smashing center plays toward their goal. Poor Kithad been carried off, bruised and lame, but not seriously hurt; the veteran Clavering had succumbed, and Deal was left to finish the game with a team that was half composed of substitutes. It was a question now, it seemed, of simply keeping down the score.Boxford fumbled, and again they escaped danger for the moment. But soon the ball had been worried again dangerously near their goal. Twenty-five, twenty, fifteen yards—Tony measured the distance with grim despair. Suddenly, as the Boxford quarter snapped back the ball, something unexpected happened. Signals got twisted,—at any rate, there was a fumble and a scrimmage, and twenty boys were scrambling in a heap, when the attention of the spectators was arrested by the shrill cry of the Boxford quarter, for Tony Deering, with the ball tucked under his arm, had emerged from the mass of players, and was speeding like a frightened deer down the field toward the Boxford goal.The quarter made a desperate effort to intercept him, but Tony dodged as quickly as lightning flashes, and raced on with a clear field. The two teams, recovered, were rushing after him.... One could have heard a whisper from one side of the field to the other so tense was the excitement. The silence was absolute save for the pattering of the swift feet upon the turf.... Then the cheers broke forth, for Tony had planted the ball midway behind the goal posts. For five minutes there was pandemonium on the side lines, restrained for a moment, only to break forth afresh as Clavering kicked the goal. The game was won, for almost immediately after the kick-off, the whistle blew, and the referee called “Time.”i158TONY DODGED ... AND RACED ON WITH A CLEAR FIELDCHAPTER XIIITHE NIGHT OF THE BONFIREIf Tony had enjoyed the sensation of expanding under appreciation the night before the game, it reached fatigue point the night after. It falls to few boys, even for so short a time, to be the hero of his school; but it is one of the pleasantest experiences that can befall him. It gives the hero a feeling of kinship with the mighty conquerors of the past; a sense, intense if fleeting, of being one with Alexander, with Cæsar, with Napoleon. And though Deering bore his honors modestly, for this once he enjoyed them to the full; with the full-bloodedness of youth, he luxuriated in a sense of satisfaction with the world in general and with himself in particular. He was not ordinarily self-important, but it would have been an inhuman boy who remained indifferent to the incense of praise he received after that Boxford game. To have turned what seemed certain defeat into unexpected victory was a piece of good luck for which he was grateful, as well as he was grateful for the undoubted fact that he could run faster than most boys of his age.Immediately after the game a score of boys, rushing across the lines, had laid bodily hold of him, hoisted him on their shoulders; and with similar groups, who had performed like service for other members of theteam, they marched off the field, singing the school song at the top of their hoarse voices, in dreadful tune but with an enthusiasm that atoned for all defects. Jack Stenton was in the midst of them, and he literally hugged Tony when the boys put him down at the entrance to the Gymnasium locker-room. “I’m glad it fell to you, young ‘un,” he said; “it was a great run that will be remembered as long as boys play football at Deal.”After his shower Tony dressed, joined Kit and Jimmie Lawrence, and wandered about the campus with them, enjoying to the fullest the sensation of universal proprietorship. At half-past six, they went again to the Inn to dine with Mrs. Wilson and the girls.Kit had a black eye and a swollen nose that hurt considerably, but which he would not have foregone for the world; they made him feel as well as look a martyr to the cause. The girls were beaming, quite unaffectedly proud to be the guests of such heroes. Kit’s bruises seemed to affect Miss Worthington rather as ornaments than otherwise, to lend a fascination not afforded by his natural good looks, for she acquiesced this time in the pairing off on the way to the school after the dinner, for the celebration, that afforded him an opportunity for the much desired tête-à-tête. Mrs. Wilson appropriated Jimmie, so that Tony and Betty were left to walk together.Alone with him, Betty ceased to beam; in fact, became shy and unwontedly silent. Tony liked the shyness, thought her sweeter so. He felt a pronounced sentimental thrill as he gave her his hand to help her across an insignificant ditch.“It must be wonderful,” she said at last to break the awkward silence, “it must be wonderful to win a game.”“It is,” Tony laughed ingenuously. “Do you know, Miss Wilson, I feel half ashamed of myself. I so hoped something like that might happen. I suppose a fellow ought to think of the game and the school, and I reckon most of ‘em do; but two years ago, I was the means of our losing the Boxford game, and I tell you it took me a long time to get over the feeling that gave me.”“I know,” said Betty. “Kit has told me about that.”“Well, it was a long time ago; but I never did really get over it.”“But it wasn’t your fault,” protested Betty.“Oh, yes, in a sense it was; if I had stuck to the ball tighter, I reckon it wouldn’t have happened. But that sort of made me feel that I wanted a special chance to-day.”“Well, you got it,” said the girl, with a smile. “Of course, one cannot help wanting to do things one’s self. I suppose we are all a little bit selfish.”They chatted on then more at ease, until they reached the great field behind the Chapel where the celebration was to take place.Every light in the school building was blazing, and a line of Chinese lanterns had been strung to fine effect up and down the driveway and along the terraces. In the center of the playing-field back of the school an enormous bonfire had been constructed, of drygoods boxes, barrels, fence rails, and variousother combustibles, including an untenanted chicken-house that an amateur farmer of the Second Form had contributed in a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Around the bonfire were gathered three hundred boys of the school, a score or so of the masters and many of the Old Boys and friends who had stayed over. On the outskirts of the crowd there was a complement of sundry enthusiastic country urchins, who for the night had buried the proverbial hatchet usually in play between them and the school, and were rejoicing lustily in the honor that had fallen upon the entire community.As Mrs. Wilson’s party arrived, Billy Wendell applied a match to a mass of kerosene-soaked excelsior, and the flames started up the pile with an avidity, it seemed, that was impelled by sympathy with the mounting spirits of the boys. A dozen rockets were fired off simultaneously, three hundred Roman candles were exploded, and a score of red fires were lighted in various parts of the field. There was a sudden blaze of splendid light.Soon the magnificent bonfire dominated the interest. The boys circled about it, hand in hand, shouting, cheering, singing. The school bells rang out joyously on the frosty night; the strains of the school songs echoed and re-echoed, until was caught up in full chorus by those hundreds of happy voices, the triumphal song,—“Palms of victory, palms of glory.”Finally they hoisted Billy Wendell, the captain, up on the wooden rostrum that was brought out onsuch occasions; and after more wild and intense cheering when the cheer leaders had sunk back almost exhausted by their efforts, they gave him a chance to speak. “Fellows,” said Billy, with not more than the usual oratorical grace but with an effect that many a trained orator might have envied, “Fellows, I guess we’re all glad we won. I can’t make a speech; and anyway there’s some one else here to whom our victory to-day really is due. And I move we have Tony Deering up here, and tell him what we think of him.”Frantic howls as Billy leaped down, and a dozen boys hustled Tony with rough-and-ready good will up to the rostrum, paying absolutely no attention to his protests. Tony’s presence of mind quite deserted him as he faced the encircling crowd of eager, flame-brightened faces,—also the feeling that there was anything heroic in being a hero. As they cheered and cheered him to the echo, he had a moment in which to gather his wits. “Fellows,” he said at last, when the crowd had become quiet, “I’m mighty grateful for the way in which you’ve treated me. But I don’t deserve it. The ball popped into my arms in the scrimmage, and I just ran. Any other fellow would have done the same. What really won,” he added, “was that the team had made a good defense against a whirlwind attack at critical moments. And that’s the reason that when we got a chance to score, it meant a victory. Ned Clavering scored the winning point by kicking the goal.”With that he jumped down, struggled through the crowd, and slipped unobserved to the outskirts ofthe circle. Other boys were being elevated to the rostrum, so that attention was diverted from him. For himself, his heart was full, and for the moment he wanted to be alone.He could not hear the speeches from where he stood, but the scene was before him like the stage at a play. Suddenly he noticed, standing quite near him, apart from the jubilant crowd, the lonely, pathetic little figure of the despised Finch. The boy was gazing at Tony intently, with an expression of pathetic admiration, the self-forgetting admiration sometimes experienced when we behold a noble or a fine action in which we have had no part, of which we are incapable. There was longing in the boy’s pale watery little eyes, and his mouth was twisted out of shape, as though it were not fashioned to express the unwonted emotions that stirred his soul. As Tony glanced at him, with a flash of intuition, it seemed to him that he thoroughly understood the half-starved soul of Jacob Finch, his pathetic and terrible loneliness, his unreasoned terrors of life, his ardent unsatisfied longings for the boyish friendliness and companionship about him in which he had no part.... Involuntarily Tony moved toward him, and obeying an impulse quite devoid of that repulsion that Finch usually stirred in him, he threw his arm carelessly over the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a great sight, kid; ain’t it?” he said.Finch was trembling as if he had a chill. His eyes glanced for a moment into Tony’s intensely, then shifted, and he answered in a queer hoarse tone, “I ‘spose so. I dunno.” And then he added, fiercely,“But I’m glad—I’mglad youmade that run.” The next instant, as if his own speech had frightened him, he shook Tony’s arm from his shoulder, and slipped away into the shadows. Tony saw him no more that night.“Poor kid!” he thought, and his eyes filled with tears. He had seen unhappiness before, in his own home, and the memory of it was bitter. Here at school he had forgotten it all; the world had seemed a bright and a happy place, and he was happy in it. Poor Finch brought back to him intensely the realization that life was not altogether as free from care, as full of affection and kindness and joy, as this gay scene and jubilant celebration would indicate. There was bitterness in the thought, and yet, in a way, he was not sorry it had come. It seemed to him now that for the last few days he had been absolutely absorbed in himself, in fact that he had been living self-absorbed for a long time; that despite his generous words from the rostrum, what he had really been glad of in the victory was, that it had been so largely due to him.Suddenly he gave the tree against which he was standing a vigorous kick. What a fool he was! to be silly with delight at winning a football game when just across the hall from him there lived such livid boyish misery!At length he resought his companions, and when at last the celebration was over, and the great blazing pile of the bonfire had collapsed, he walked back again with Kit’s party to the Inn. Both Betty and he were quieter now than before. She was shy again,and this time he could think of nothing to say. Their commonplaces about the celebration fell flat.“You are going to-morrow?” he asked abruptly, as they turned into the grounds of the Inn.“Yes,” she answered, “quite early. Bab and I are at school too, you know?”“Yes, I know. I wish I could see you sometimes....”“Well, can’t you?... You’ll be coming home with Kit some holiday.”“Perhaps I will. I hope so.” He was silent for a moment, then with a strange shyness, he said, “Will you—will you give me those violets?”Betty was silent. She hesitated for a moment, then unpinned the violets from her dress, and gave them to him. Their hands met in the dark, and fluttered in a little clasp for the moment. Then Tony slipped the violets into his pocket. They were at the Inn steps, and to the surprise of all, he declined to come in, but bade them good-bye there.Instead of going back to the school, he struck across the meadows to the beach. It had cleared at nightfall, and the stars were shining in a deep blue sky, and a lovely young crescent moon, cloud-clung, hung in the west. Tony walked up the beach alone, thinking, feeling intensely. The silent somber beauty of the night, the great stars, the lazy splash of the little foam-flecked waves upon the sands, the cool frosty dark, appealed to him deeply. He could scarcely have told of what he was thinking: of various things—the day’s events, the celebration, Betty and the violets she had given him, Finch and his hungry eyes,life. The world seemed beautiful to him, but strange and sad.... Years afterward he was to recall that night, and remember that it had marked a definite moment in the process of his coming to himself.At the end of the beach he met Mr. Morris, who was also walking alone. “Hello,” exclaimed the master, “what are you doing here? The conqueror is tired of plaudits, eh?”“What bringsyou, magister?... I wanted to be alone I guess.”“And I,” said Morris, with a smile. “Sometimes a day of excitement reacts on me like this. I need to round it off with a walk by myself. Let’s go back together though, if you have had enough of yourself as I have.”“Quite enough,” said Tony, as he turned with the older man back toward the school.For a while they said nothing, but eventually the master, by tactful questions, led the boy to talk of himself. There followed one of those long quiet conversations that come so rarely, but mean so much to boy and master when they come. When they reached the school all of the lights were out save for a glow at the spot where the bonfire had been. They shook hands and parted at the door of Morris’s study.The schoolmaster, when he was alone, instead of lighting his lamp, stood for a long while before the glowing embers of the fire on his hearth, absorbed in his thoughts. He had had a bad day, a stupid day after the excitement of the game, for there had come upon him one of those unaccountable and unreasonable moods of depression wherein it seemed tohim that he was wasting his life in the obscurity of a petty profession, wasting the talents, abilities, ambitions, that in college days had promised a brilliant career. He knew it was but a mood, but he had not been able to shake it off. Other fellows, classmates of his at school and college, had been back, with their good-natured, ill-chosen greetings that drove the iron deeper into his soul: “Old Morris—holding the fort—still on the old camp-ground, eh?” and the like.As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he lived....CHAPTER XIVTHE SPECTACLEGames and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in before the Christmas holidays.The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring. And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books.As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters, but as the keen-eyed mistressat Betty’s school soon detected the nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between. At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But, it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or opportunity for love affairs.During the winter he became interested in the Dealonian, a semi-secret society, that held frequent debates and discussions before the school, and regarded itself as being an institution of great importance. For exercise and sport he went in for hockey, where his fleetness counted as much toward success as it did in football. The Deal boys had capital hockey grounds, one on Deal Water which lay at the foot of the hill between the school and Monday Port; and the other on Beaver Pond, under the lee of Lovel’s Woods which though smaller usually froze earlier.It was customary for the Dealonian to elect a Fifth Former as its president at the beginning of the winter term. This office was supposed, and usually did, register the boys’ somewhat premature choice for a head prefect for the school for the following year. Deering was elected president of the Dealonian by a unanimous vote, after very little campaigning on the part of his friends. He was generally popular, and his exploit in the Boxford game had brought him more prominently before the school than ever before.In the opinion of his particular friends he was also developing qualities of leadership, which made him the logical candidate of their group for general honors. Tony valued the position of president highly. And in the fine fervor of his good resolutions he determined that through it he would do a lot for the school. The Dealonian held frequent meetings at which the entire school were invited, and at which topics of general interest were discussed by the boys themselves. It was indeed through these meetings that the public opinion of the school was largely formed and guided by the older boys.The walk with Mr. Morris on the beach the night of the Boxford game had solidified in Tony’s mind a good many resolutions. And, though it is not usually the case that the generous ideals and ambitions of boys find particular expression, since the flash of intuition into Finch’s starved life had been in part the occasion of his forming good resolutions at all, it was not unnatural that he should have settled upon Finch as a concrete opportunity for putting them into effect. The talk with Mr. Morris, though Finch’s name had not actually been mentioned, had also brought the matter before Tony’s mind, for Morris had been the first to suggest to him the possibility of his being of use in that direction. To be sure, the sympathy with Finch had been intuitive and had not stayed with him as vividly as it had impressed him on the night of the bonfire, but then it had flashed so intensely that it was not soon altogether to expire. It glowed in the depths of his consciousness like sparks amongst the embers of a dying fire, capableof blazing forth again if fresh fuel should be added. Tony proposed to add the fuel.He made a point, for instance, of dropping in at Finch’s room in Standerland two or three times a week and chatting with the boy the odd quarters of an hour that he otherwise would have spent in genial loafing with his cronies. And though he certainly would not have kept on going there for the sake of anything that Finch could contribute to the joy of life for him, when the awkwardness of deliberately performing a kindness had somewhat worn off, he found a certain amount of compensating satisfaction in noting the light of pleasure that came into Jake’s pale blue eyes, and in the relaxation of the corners of his mouth from bitter rigidity into friendly appreciation and welcome. Gradually too Finch’s shyness wore off a little when he was alone with Tony; and though it can hardly be said that even in his most un-selfconscious moments he ever seemed a full-blooded care-free boy, he thawed into a semblance of humanity. He reminded Tony often of a dog that has been treated cruelly in its puppyhood, which never recovers fearlessness but shrinks even under a friendly hand.And like a dog Jacob Finch began to idolize Anthony Deering. This was the first time in all his barren life that a fellow boy had treated him with kindness, who had not showed in his manner the repulsion the unhappy little chap had the misfortune to stir in his kind. Tony’s image loomed large in his thoughts. The intense worship he paid him secretly did much to atone for the slights of others, to blot outother boys from his consciousness. He cringed and shrank still under jibes and jokes, trembled with unreasoned fear before masters, quivered with fright when he found himself alone in a crowd of boys; but he did his work faithfully and with the success that comes from persistence even when a keen intelligence is lacking. More and more, however, his inner life was absorbed in his devotion to Deering.From his seat in the chapel he could just see the wavy, copper-colored top of Tony’s head. By straining a little he could frequently see his face,—bright, sensitive, mobile, smiling often that smile of a singular and rare sweetness that made Tony beautiful to others beside Finch. To Jake he was as perfect, as spotless, as wonderful, as a god. The fervor of his adoration was akin to the enthusiasm of adevotéefor his idol. All this of course he hid, not altogether but mostly, from Deering; never voiced, though he could not help looking his devotion. He would spend hours during a day standing about in various places on the mere chance that he would get a glimpse of Tony; haunted the woods above Beaver Pond in the hockey season, where he would lie, flat and shivering, upon a projecting rock, and follow with weak, straining eyes the skaters on the ice below, his eager gaze seeking always for one bright slim form. And when he had found it, he was as happy as he often had been.Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration hehad for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend.Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have theirprotégéin Number Five study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them.Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world, he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the best for him.Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine, issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title ofThe Spectacle. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager, printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to required work for the masters he had written yards of shortstories, poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de Coverly papers fromThe Spectatorthat Stenton had inflicted on the Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them. Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay and practical joking of the Lower School.One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.“By Jove, Jim, that’s a joy!” was his room-mate’s gratifying criticism. “That’s a blame sight better than the sawdust that Jack is trying to stuff down our throats in English.”“Well, I have me doubts as to that,” Jimmie responded, “but I appreciate the compliment even if it makes the critic out to be an ignoramus.”“Words of one syllable, my dear,” protested Tony, “when you try to get ideas into my cranium.Critic or not, that’s darn good writing. Give us another.”Jimmie smiled, closed his mathematics books with the air of one who makes a sacrifice in a noble cause, and for half an hour bent again to laborious composition. The result was a clever little skit on Ducky Thornton entitled “The Human Sofa Cushion.” The wit was broader, and it struck Tony as quite irresistibly funny.“By Jove, kiddo, we’ll start aSpectatorof our own, eh? Hit off the masters and some of our loving schoolmates, and let ‘em circulate. It’ll be heaps of fun.”Lawrence laughed at the vision of the possibilities that came to him. “I think it will,” he said. “We’ll write ‘em out in your clear hand, and pass ‘em on to the crowd.”And soThe Spectaclecame into existence. Jimmie did most of the composition, and Tony invariably copied it out, for Jimmie’s handwriting left much to be desired, as is the case we have been told with other authors. Now and then there was an original contribution from Tony, and occasionally one from Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing or Tack Turner, all more crude and broad, but few absolutely devoid of real humor. In the course of a few months they had composed quite a gallery of pen-portraits, wherein were caricatured, seldom unkindly, the faults and foibles of most of the faculty and many of the boys.The Spectaclehad a popular if restricted circulation.It fell to Tony at length to do the paper on Mr. Roylston. None of the articles were labeled by correct names, but there was scarcely ever any doubt in themind of the reader who had served as the model of the portrait. The paper on Mr. Roylston, paraphrasing his nickname, was entitled “Soft-toed Samuel.” Tony had caricatured broadly, but before being written out in his neat fine hand, the style had been softened, smoothed and improved, occasional lapses in orthography had been corrected, and the defects of punctuation supplied,—in fact the crude strokes of the amateur had been retouched by the hand of an artist. The artist was Jimmie.It was a great success with thehabituésof Number Five study. Tony was so pleased with it himself, that he took it in late of an evening to Finch’s room with the idea of cheering up his charge who had seemed even unwontedly seedy that day.“Here, Jake,” he exclaimed, as he burst in at the door, “here’s the latestSpectacle. Have a try at it.”Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting. “Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a flash, pushed him gently back.“There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.”Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?”“No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleepit off; it’s the only way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.”“Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.”“Leave theSpectacle, will you?”“All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning. Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re sick?”“Yes—he’s been in.”“Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.”When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery till sleep came at last and released him.The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as Mr. Roylston held it, usually wasstudyand not the loafing, letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations, and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling broadly in the schoolroom. The master, solong the traditionalbête noirand subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr. Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him to be amusing.Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless grasp.“I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply. “It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in reading amusing letters.”“It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch.“It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,” replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing whatever upon Xenophon’sAnabasisor the Greek Grammar.”He glanced at the title as he spoke. “Soft-toed Samuel” conveyed little to him, enough however to inform him that he had been correct in his surmise that it was tabooed matter.“But—but, it—it isn’t mine,” protested Finch.“No?” commented Mr. Roylston, with an accent of indifference. “I shall return it to its owner in good time, if you choose to inform me who he is.” He glanced casually over the writing.“Don’t—don’t you dare to read that!” cried Finch, his face livid, as for the moment anger got the better of fear. “I’ll—I’ll—” he half rose from his seat, his fists clenched in helpless rage.Mr. Roylston turned upon him with a glare. “Youwill do what?” he asked in tones that almost robbed Finch of his senses. “Get to work,” he added, after looking at him steadily for a moment; and then turned away, leaving his victim morally and spiritually prostrate.Poor Finch sank back in his seat, bent his head, and fastened his unseeing eyes on the pages of theAnabasis. The incident, though observed and heard by the whole schoolroom, seemed not to have created a ripple of excitement. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the room. As the master turned from Finch, he observed a hundred heads bent diligently over their books, and a slight grim smile of satisfaction crossed his face. He felt that he had reason to be proud of his discipline. He seated himself at the desk, and his eyes fell idly upon the first page of the manuscript. “Soft-toed Samuel,” he read, and a curl of contempt trembled along his thin lips. And then:“There is no place of general resort in the school which is immune from the presence of Soft-toed Sam; sometimes he is seen thrusting his head even into the locker-rooms below stairs and listening with eager and suspicious ear to the slang and careless conversation that is apt to take place there. And woe to the boy whose tongue is not restrained on such occasions! there will be a day of reckoning. Sometimes he munches a bit of cake at the Pie-house, making pretense of joviality; but whilst he seems attentive to nothing but his goody and the Pie-lady, he overhears the remarks of every boy in the place, and makes a note of them in his little book. Sometimes he comes into the general assembly of all the boys on a Sunday evening, as one who comes to hear and to improve, but who leaves to carp. His face is too well-known, too often seen by every boy in the school. The stealthy tread of Soft-toed Samuel is ever on the trail of the lazy, the indifferent and the wicked, and where he does not find matter for condemnation providedhim by nature, he creates it out of nothing. The Head has....”Mr. Roylston turned the pages, and glanced at the conclusion.“Thus he lives in the school as a critic of and a bane to mankind rather than as one of the species.”It was enough. The handwriting, of course, he recognized. He folded the paper neatly and placed it in his pocket.Poor Finch meanwhile was undergoing excruciating agonies. Not a line of the Greek penetrated his consciousness, even the familiarἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαῦναιwas to him as the inscription on a Babylonian tablet. His own careless folly and stupidity had brought about a catastrophe, a frightful situation, in which he could see his hero was apt to suffer more grievously than himself. But in reality that was not possible. Finch was suffering vicariously with an intensity that Tony could never realize, that in such connection he could never share.And at the end of the period he fearfully approached the master’s desk. As though divining the petition trembling on his lips, Mr. Roylston bade him sternly go out with his form, adding sharply, “I shall return the paper myself when I have had the opportunity of enjoying its promising humor.”At recess Finch found Deering eating his bit of luncheon in the Fifth Form common room. He drew him aside.“Well, Jake, headache gone?” began Tony. “Whatdid you think of the Soft-toed Sammy? Why, what’s the matter?”Finch was white as a sheet. “Oh, Deering,” he gasped, “an awful thing has happened. I—I was reading it—like a fool—in First Study—and—and—Mr. Roylston swiped it.”Tony paused in the midst of taking a bite from his bun, and looked at Jake in consternation.“Gumshoe swiped it?”“Yes, Deering.... I’m sorry.... You don’t know ... I wish I was dead.” He leaned against the lintel of the doorway and hid his face in his hands.Tony pulled himself together with an effort. “I guess you’ve done me,” he began. Then, as he saw Finch wince under his words, he went over quickly to his side, and put his hand on his shoulder. “There, cheer up; I was a beast to say that. It’s all my own fault. It was a darn fool stunt to write such things.”After a time he calmed the unhappy lad, and got from him the details of the incident. At last he went off to report the matter to Jimmie.Lawrence naturally was inclined to say harsh things of Finch, but he too realized that they themselves were to blame for the predicament.“Hate to deprive you of the honor, old chap,” he said, “but honesty forbids me deny the authorship and responsibility forThe Spectacle. The horse is on me.”“The horse!” exclaimed Tony. “It will be a ton of bricks. But it’s rot, Jimmie, to say you’re responsible. I’ll be hanged if I think sticking an adjective here and there, sprinkling commas about,and tinkering with a few mixed tenses, makes you the author. ‘Tis true it’s but a beastly paraphrase on Addison,—but ‘twas my best and, so to speak, my own.”They waited somewhat anxiously that day for the dreaded summons to Mr. Roylston’s outraged presence, but it did not come. That night on his way to Standerland from a meeting of the Dealonian, Tony found a sealed packet in his letter-box in the Old School. It was directed to him in Mr. Roylston’s minute slanting chirography. He tore it open, and found that it contained the confiscated copy ofThe Spectacleand a note from the master therein caricatured.“I return to you under cover,” it ran, without address, “the manuscript for which, since it is in your handwriting, I presume you are responsible. It was confiscated from Finch in First Study this morning. I have read it enough to suggest that the wisest course will be for you to destroy this piece of scurrility at once, also any copies of it that may exist. I have only to say that the offense is so deep and gratuitous an insult that it is not punishable by any of the ordinary methods at our command. Vain as the supposition sometimes seems, we proceed at Deal School on the assumption that we have to treat with gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen.“E. Roylston.”As he read this note, Tony by turns went hot and cold. The last sentence stung him to the quick. He was intensely angry, but as the first impulse of rage passed away, he realized with a bitter sense of humiliation that the master had a perfect right to his resentment; that for once he, Tony Deering, was absolutely, hopelessly in the wrong. Alas! while he had beenfondly supposing that he was beginning to live more unselfishly, beginning to do more for others than he had ever done before, he had wantonly wounded and grossly insulted, as a result of indulging in his propensity to make fun, a fellow member of the school. With the shame and repentance warm in his heart, he hurried over to Howard House where Mr. Roylston roomed, and knocked at his door.The master looked up from his desk, as Tony entered, and his face hardened into a severe expression as he waited for his visitor to speak.“Sir,” exclaimed Tony, impulsively, “I’ve come to beg your pardon.... I know I have done an inexcusable thing, but I am sorry——.”Mr. Roylston laid his pen down and looked fixedly at the boy, but the muscles of his face did not relax. “Don’t you think, Deering,” he interrupted coolly, “that your apology comes with a bad grace after the offense is accidentally discovered? Apparently the despicable character of your method of poking fun seems only to occur to you when you are in danger of incurring the just penalty of such conduct.”Tony bit his lips, but he felt he deserved what the master chose to say. He would not spoil his apology by showing resentment. “I dare say it seems to you that way, sir. But I can only say that at first I simply saw the amusing side of it, and that it was not until I thought how it must have seemed to you that I realized it was an unkind caricature.”Mr. Roylston perceptibly sniffed at the wordcaricature. “Gratuitous insult, it were better termed,” he ejaculated.“Well, sir, I can’t undo it ... I only wish I could. I apologize to you, sir, ... unreservedly.”Mr. Roylston appeared to choose his words with even more than his usual care. “I accept the apology, of course, technically. But naturally it does not atone for the offense.”“No,” said Tony, “I know it does not.”For a moment there was silence. “You are curious to know what I propose to do?” asked Mr. Roylston, with a note of sarcasm.“No—no, sir,” replied Tony ingenuously. “I don’t think that matters, sir. I only hope you believe what I say, that I am truly sorry for what has occurred.”He had worded his sentence unfortunately, for the master took it as a quibble. “Yes,” he replied tartly, “I can well believe that you are sorry for what hasoccurred.”“I don’t mean——” began Tony.“That will do,” said Mr. Roylston dryly. “I have gathered enough of your meaning for the once. No—I do not mean to punish you.” A bitter smile flickered over his face. “As I sought to explain in my note, which I had every intention should put a period to the incident, our punishments in this school are not adapted to the case. One has but two alternatives in such affairs,—to expel or to ignore persons capable of such conduct. I have concluded to ignore. I bid you good evening.”Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it quickly, and with a slight inclination of his head, turned and left the room.“He means to rub it in by slow degrees, by his peculiar and unspeakable methods of torture,” was Jimmie’s comment when Tony had told him of the interview later. “You were an ass not to let me share the responsibility. The Gumshoe accept an apology! why, he hasn’t the charity of a mosquito. As Kit would say,” he added thoughtfully, “he is ‘a gloomy ass.’ Well, I reckon, Tonio, old sport, we’ll have to chuckThe Spectacle.”“Hang it, of course, we will. It was a poor fool sheet, Jim; rather a sad business for two good little schoolboys like us to be taken up with.”“And like most wicked things, amusing,” remarked Reggie from the depths of an armchair where he had been an interested hearer of the conversation. “Like most forbidden things, diverting.”“What a crude philosopher you sometimes are, Reggie,” said Lawrence. “One looks to you for illuminating comment—not for the obvious platitude.”“True, my poet,” drawled Carroll, “but there are moments when one inadvertently sinks below one’s normal level. But adieu to some diverting moments!”“Thanks! Adieu, too, to my Addisonian English! I wish we could as easily bid adieu to the consequences.”“I fancy it will be a long time before you say farewell to those, my young friends.”“Hm, he evidently doesn’t mean to take it to the Head,” said Tony.“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet,“the time is not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in the hour of your pride. Beware.”“Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work.

CHAPTER XIIA GATING AND A GAMEFor the next few days Thornton’s thrashing was the principal theme of the school talk. The story was told, though no one knew whence it originated. Tony and Kit dismissed it with a laugh or an exclamation, but Finch, interrogated on all hands, gave a correct version. Thornton and his friends kept themselves in the background for a week or so, but nursed their grudge with the dogged determination of ill-will, and when occasion offered continued to torture Finch on the sly, but not so brutally.The chief satisfaction that Tony got out of the incident, after the pleasure of thrashing a bully, was his talk with the Head on the subject. “I hear,” said Doctor Forester, as he stopped Deering after Chapel one morning, “that there have been some lively doings in Standerland of late, in the absence of the masters.”Tony, not yet sure of the Doctor’s attitude, blushed and stammered something that was quite unintelligible. The Head eyed him keenly. “For once,” he said, laying his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder, “I am not disposed to object to a somewhat vigorous method of taking the law into your own hands. I fancy you will have been successful in putting an end to thebrutal hazing to which young Finch has been subjected.”“Thank you, sir,” said Tony. “We were a bit rough and pretty generally out of order, but we hoped the end justified the means.”The Doctor smiled and went on.Tony found Kit at the lobby outside the schoolroom, and repeated the conversation in great glee.“Great man, the Doctor!” remarked Kit, judiciously. “Now I guess we’ll let the Gumshoe whistle for his lines. What a relief it is occasionally to meet with broad-mindedness on the part of those who are charged with our education. Same with the Gumshoe’s gating,” he added, in illogical parenthesis.The opportunity to test Mr. Roylston’s whistling powers came sooner than they expected. The day before the Boxford game, Jack Stenton called off the football practice, and had the school in to a mass-meeting in the Gymnasium. The boys sang the school songs with their traditional vigor, and listened with the utmost good nature and appreciation to speeches that in many cases had been delivered a dozen times before. The Doctor remarked that it was difficult to be original on such occasions, as though he was making the remark for the first time; but at the risk of repeating himself he did not mind saying that they had supreme confidence in the prowess of the team and that the school was confident of a victory on the morrow. Stenton gave, in his matter of fact way, impressing the boys deeply, a careful estimate of the abilities of the different players and whatmight be expected of them in the game, and offered a judicial estimate that the score would be two touch-downs to none in favor of Deal. Billy Wendell, the captain, stammered, in the traditional captain’s manner, that the team wanted the school behind them, and that—that was about all he had to say. Other members of the faculty made remarks, some of which were witty, some merely facetious, but all received with wild applause. Then they sang some more, cheered for the team, for the school, for Jack Stenton, for Billy Wendell, and the meeting was concluded by the Head declaring a half-holiday for the team, and removing Monday Port bounds for the afternoon in behalf of the two upper forms. Many of the boys had friends coming on the afternoon trains, and counted on this largess as a general permission to go in and meet them.Kit’s mother was coming, with a couple of girls. Rooms for them had been taken at the Deal Inn on the Port Road near the school. Immediately after the mass-meeting Kit called to Tony, and asked him to go in with him to the depôt and meet the five o’clock train.“Are we really going to break the Gumshoe’s gating?” asked Tony.“We certainly are,” responded Kit cheerfully. “To heck with the Gumshoe; bounds are off for the afternoon anyway. It’ll be a good way to get the matter officially to the Head. By gum!” he exclaimed, glancing toward the Schoolhouse, “Gumshoe’s got call-over.”Surely enough Mr. Roylston was standing on theSchoolhouse steps, with a long line of boys in single file beneath him, waiting to report.“Shall we tell him?” asked Kit.“Guess we’ll have to,” answered Tony. “Let’s butt in to the middle of the line for once, and get it over.” Ordinarily, it may be remarked, Fifth Formers did not report, unless they were going into Monday Port. They made for the line, and Kit grabbed a Third Form boy by the arm.“Say, Bunting, do you mind letting us in here? We’re in a big hurry.”The small boy flushed with pleasure at the request from such popular and distinguished persons as Wilson and Deering, and readily made way. Mr. Roylston, who seldom failed to see anything that was going on around him, stopped for a moment and looked at them with an expression of stern disapproval. The boys thought that he was about to order them to the end of the line, but for once he disappointed them, and after a significant compression of his lips, went on with the call-over. There was a general titter along the line.Soon it was Kit’s turn, and he was at Mr Roylston’s side. The master held a paper in his hand, on which was printed the school list. It was the duty of the master of the day to note on such a slip opposite each boy’s name the plans that he reported for the afternoon.“Wilson and Deering, sir,” said Kit.Mr. Roylston faced him. “Now that they have usurped the places of a score or so of boys who were in line before them, what do the Messrs. Wilson and Deering propose to do in such a hurry?”“We are going to town, sir, to meet my mother who is arriving on the five o’clock train.”“Ah, indeed!” said Mr. Roylston. “I am very sorry to put Mrs. Wilson to any inconvenience, but I fear I must do so. As you both are gated for the month, it is impossible for me to acquiesce in your ingenuous proposal.”“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Kit, “but the Head has declared bounds off for the afternoon.”“Undoubtedly,” commented Mr. Roylston, “but I have had the unpleasant duty of gating you for a month. Next!”Wilson and Deering were swept on by the crowd. Without further ado, they cut across the field, climbed the stone wall and started across the meadows for the town.In Monday Port they loafed about until five o’clock, when they went to the depôt and met Mrs. Wilson. She was accompanied by two very pretty and attractive girls, Betty, Kit’s sister, and Barbara Worthington, her great friend and a boyish flame of Kit’s. The party had a merry time on the drive out the Port Road and a pleasant tea on the old-fashioned gallery of the Inn, in the golden light of the Indian summer afternoon. Absorbed in the unusual pleasure attendant upon the presence of girls at Deal, they quite forgot the predicament they were in with Mr. Roylston.The master in charge had a better memory, and was waiting for them at the entrance of the cloister that led into the refectory, where the school was gathering for supper. He was very angry.“I will trouble you,” he said, “to come with me at once to the Head. You have been flagrantly disobedient.”The boys followed him without a word across the quadrangle to the Rectory.“A very annoying case, Doctor Forester,” Mr. Roylston began when they were closeted with the Head in his study. “I gated Wilson and Deering for a month, but despite my warning at call-over, they deliberately ignored the gating and went to town this afternoon.”“It was quite necessary, sir,” protested Kit, “that I should meet my mother, who arrived at five o’clock. Besides, sir, we think that Mr. Roylston’s gating was unjust, and we asked him to refer the matter to you, sir, and he refused.”“That was not necessary,” said the Doctor, “except under exceptional circumstances. However, I may say that it is my general understanding that when bounds are raised the day before the Boxford game, that for the afternoon ordinary penalties and restrictions are suspended. Why were they gated, sir?”“For brutal conduct, Doctor Forester, to their younger schoolmates.”“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Head, with something like a smile flitting across his face. “You behaved brutally toward smaller boys?” He faced the culprits.Tony smiled in spite of himself. “Why, yes, sir, I suppose we did; we planned to.”“I am sorry to hear it,” said the Head. “But, Mr. Roylston, for once let us compromise and temperjustice with mercy. Only recently these two young brutes did a very effective and commendable service to the school,—they thrashed two bullies who had been making the life of a small boy quite miserable. Let us forgive them their brutality in the one case for the sake of their brutality in the other, where it was not undeserved. I am disposed to ask you to dispense the gating and the penalties for violating it.”Mr. Roylston compressed his lips. “I—is it just, sir?”The Doctor smiled in his odd way. “I am disposed to insist on your being merciful, Mr. Roylston. I will guarantee that there will be no more brutality nor disobedience. Let us threaten them with dire penalties, if they are reported for brutality again. Good-day, boys.”As they went out, they heard the Doctor say in suave and cheerful tones, “Stay and have a bit of supper with me, Roylston.” “Thank you, no;” answered the master, “I have duties immediately. Good-evening, sir.”“One for the Gumshoe,” said Tony blithely, as they turned onto the campus.Kit was serious. “I have always said,” he remarked sententiously, “that the Gumshoe Ebenezer was an odious ass; but I have always had, until this moment, a sneaking conviction that in so saying I was doing him an injustice. Henceforth my conscience is absolved. Ass he is; ass he shall be.”“Amen,” said Tony. “Fact is, Gumshoe’s had it in for Finch. Mysterious beast, ain’t he! We score to-day, kiddo, but the Gumshoe is not annihilated.”“No, I dare say not. The possibilities of his getting back at us are pretty nigh endless. But say, Tonio, old sport, isn’t Bab Worthington a queen?”“Quite the queen, Kitty; but Betty Wilson is no mere handmaid.”“Oh, bother Betty; she’s a good sort. But let’s hurry, so we can get down early. I am half sorry I asked the crowd. Think I’d rather have—”They both began to run then toward the dining-room, where the school was already at supper.That evening “the crowd,” as our friends called themselves in their modest schoolboy way, including Kit, Tony, Jimmie Lawrence, Teddy Lansing and Tack Turner, went to the Inn and spent a merry evening under Mrs. Wilson’s indulgent chaperonage. There were other parties there, including the parents and sisters and cousins and an occasional aunt of various boys; a gathering of the clans loyal to Deal; a score or so of Old Boys, mostly from Kingsbridge, back for the game, who had overflowed from the crowded school into the Inn. In the proud consciousness of their undoubted superiority as college men, the Old Boys somewhat cast their younger brethren in the shade, and treated them with patronizing airs, asking them occasional questions in a patriarchal manner.Tony alone amongst his companions seemed to shine that evening. There flashed into prominence, to their first observation, in his manner, his appearance even, something of that charm which was more and more making him a favorite, and which, though his schoolfellows never analyzed it, was to be cordially recognized later on. It would have been hard to sayin just what Tony’s charm lay, perhaps it was that a certain serious sweetness of disposition, the finer traits of his character, for the most part unnoticed in the helter-skelter rough-and-readiness of school life, were emerging. Women, who are always quicker than men to estimate a personality, to be conscious of its finer as well as its more obvious strains, felt this at once in Tony. He was a success with Mrs. Wilson and the girls. His own friends, intimate with him in all the openness and yet sometimes quite misleading circumstances of everyday existence, who ordinarily thought of him merely as a boon companion, a genial playmate, gifted with a nice sense of honor but ready for a lark and a risk with the most reckless, were a little surprised at the evident impression he made not only on Mrs. Wilson, but on Betty and Barbara Worthington. His friends saw in him that night a facility despite his modesty, a social poise untempered by self-consciousness, that more distinctly than ever before singled him out as their natural leader. Kit indeed, felt several miserable pangs of jealousy, as he noted Barbara’s quick response to Tony’s gayety, and her unconcealed desire to remain part of the group of which Tony was in some sense the center rather than wander off with him for the too obvious pleasure of a tête-à-tête. But Kit himself was too whole-souled, too merry of nature, to sulk, and save for an occasional growl to which no one paid attention, before the evening was over, he was enjoying Tony as he had never enjoyed him before, wondering at the quick development of this social side of his character which had been unobserved.As for Tony he was quite unconscious of anything save that he was enjoying himself immensely; that Betty Wilson was an extremely attractive girl, a thoroughly “good sort,” as Kit had said; and that he wished there were more frequent occasions when the girls came to Deal. He was not sentimental, so that he did not imagine that he had fallen in love.The day of the game was a perfect one for football, cool and gray, with no wind blowing. The teams were in fine condition, and the Boxford boys, who had come over in the old-time coach across the hills, looked tremendously big and strong. Tony was still playing end, the position to which he had been so unexpectedly assigned in his Third Form year, and in which, through no fault of his own, he had been the means of losing the game. To be sure in the following year, when the circumstances of that defeat had been made rather generally clear, he had redeemed himself by good playing and they had won, but he felt a keen desire this year to blot out forever, if it might be, the bitter memory of that first Boxford game. He wanted, quite selfishly he told himself,—and perhaps he was thinking a little of Betty—to win a game as definitely as he had lost one.As the team stepped out onto the field that afternoon, resplendent in their red sweaters with the big black D across the breast, and he sniffed the cool air and heard the chorus of Deal cheers ring down the lines, he lifted his head like a good hunter keen for the chase, and a thrill of determination went through him like a shiver. They must win!Billy Wendell had the ball under his arm as theycame onto the field. Immediately he tossed it to Kit, prominent to the spectators for his shock of yellow hair and his bright red cheeks despite the fact that this was his first appearance on the school team. Kit tossed it to Barney Clayton, who muffed it, and then made a quick dive and fell on it very much as a kitten plays with a ball of yarn.... So for fifteen minutes or so the preliminary practice went on, until the boys were well warmed up for the strenuous work of the game.Then came the shrill note of the referee’s whistle; the two captains met in the center of the field; the Boxford boy called and won the toss, and the two teams trotted out to their places for the kick-off. There were roars from the two grand-stands, the antiphonal ringing-out of the Deal and Boxford cheers; another blast from the referee’s whistle, and Kit, who was playing center, gave the ball a kick that sent it sailing down the field to within five yards of the Boxford goal posts. A Boxford back caught it, but Tony downed him in his tracks.Then the teams lined up, the Boxford quarter signaled to his full back for a line plunge, and in less time than it takes to write it, the great hulk of a six-foot boy went tearing through the Deal line. Deal received a shock as great as it was unexpected. They had foreseen no such smashing attack, and before they could rally to the defense, they had been forced for down after down over the smooth brown field until the play was well in their own territory....We do not mean to describe the game in detail, for is it not written in the chronicles of the boys of Deal? Wendell rallied his team just in time to preventBoxford from scoring in the first half, when the ball had been worried to within twenty yards of his goal. Then followed an exchange of punts, which, as Edward Clavering, Deal’s full back, could kick farther than his opponent, gave Deal a slight advantage. When they got the ball at last in the middle of the field, they made a few gains by end runs. They were swifter, more ingenious, better kickers than the Boxford boys, but the team from over the hills had the advantage in weight and strength.During the intermission between the halves Stenton did his best to hearten his boys, but it was a poor best, for he felt pretty certain that they were bound to be scored against heavily in the next half. They could not stand the smashing of the line—already Clayton and one or two others had been taken out.The second half saw a repetition of the tactics of the first. Boxford persistently hit the line, and within five minutes of the play had scored the inevitable touchdown. The enthusiasm of their supporters was only a trifle dampened when they failed to kick the goal. After that Deal worried them a good deal with trick plays, and once after gaining a considerable distance by an exceptionally long punt and a fumble, they seemed within striking distance of the goal. Clavering tried for a field goal, but to the sharp distress of his supporters the ball went wide of the mark. Boxford took the ball on their twenty-five yard line, and renewed their demoralizing attack. Despite the Deal boys’ desperate efforts, the ball was forced back into their territory, straight down the field by smashing center plays toward their goal. Poor Kithad been carried off, bruised and lame, but not seriously hurt; the veteran Clavering had succumbed, and Deal was left to finish the game with a team that was half composed of substitutes. It was a question now, it seemed, of simply keeping down the score.Boxford fumbled, and again they escaped danger for the moment. But soon the ball had been worried again dangerously near their goal. Twenty-five, twenty, fifteen yards—Tony measured the distance with grim despair. Suddenly, as the Boxford quarter snapped back the ball, something unexpected happened. Signals got twisted,—at any rate, there was a fumble and a scrimmage, and twenty boys were scrambling in a heap, when the attention of the spectators was arrested by the shrill cry of the Boxford quarter, for Tony Deering, with the ball tucked under his arm, had emerged from the mass of players, and was speeding like a frightened deer down the field toward the Boxford goal.The quarter made a desperate effort to intercept him, but Tony dodged as quickly as lightning flashes, and raced on with a clear field. The two teams, recovered, were rushing after him.... One could have heard a whisper from one side of the field to the other so tense was the excitement. The silence was absolute save for the pattering of the swift feet upon the turf.... Then the cheers broke forth, for Tony had planted the ball midway behind the goal posts. For five minutes there was pandemonium on the side lines, restrained for a moment, only to break forth afresh as Clavering kicked the goal. The game was won, for almost immediately after the kick-off, the whistle blew, and the referee called “Time.”i158TONY DODGED ... AND RACED ON WITH A CLEAR FIELD

A GATING AND A GAME

For the next few days Thornton’s thrashing was the principal theme of the school talk. The story was told, though no one knew whence it originated. Tony and Kit dismissed it with a laugh or an exclamation, but Finch, interrogated on all hands, gave a correct version. Thornton and his friends kept themselves in the background for a week or so, but nursed their grudge with the dogged determination of ill-will, and when occasion offered continued to torture Finch on the sly, but not so brutally.

The chief satisfaction that Tony got out of the incident, after the pleasure of thrashing a bully, was his talk with the Head on the subject. “I hear,” said Doctor Forester, as he stopped Deering after Chapel one morning, “that there have been some lively doings in Standerland of late, in the absence of the masters.”

Tony, not yet sure of the Doctor’s attitude, blushed and stammered something that was quite unintelligible. The Head eyed him keenly. “For once,” he said, laying his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder, “I am not disposed to object to a somewhat vigorous method of taking the law into your own hands. I fancy you will have been successful in putting an end to thebrutal hazing to which young Finch has been subjected.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Tony. “We were a bit rough and pretty generally out of order, but we hoped the end justified the means.”

The Doctor smiled and went on.

Tony found Kit at the lobby outside the schoolroom, and repeated the conversation in great glee.

“Great man, the Doctor!” remarked Kit, judiciously. “Now I guess we’ll let the Gumshoe whistle for his lines. What a relief it is occasionally to meet with broad-mindedness on the part of those who are charged with our education. Same with the Gumshoe’s gating,” he added, in illogical parenthesis.

The opportunity to test Mr. Roylston’s whistling powers came sooner than they expected. The day before the Boxford game, Jack Stenton called off the football practice, and had the school in to a mass-meeting in the Gymnasium. The boys sang the school songs with their traditional vigor, and listened with the utmost good nature and appreciation to speeches that in many cases had been delivered a dozen times before. The Doctor remarked that it was difficult to be original on such occasions, as though he was making the remark for the first time; but at the risk of repeating himself he did not mind saying that they had supreme confidence in the prowess of the team and that the school was confident of a victory on the morrow. Stenton gave, in his matter of fact way, impressing the boys deeply, a careful estimate of the abilities of the different players and whatmight be expected of them in the game, and offered a judicial estimate that the score would be two touch-downs to none in favor of Deal. Billy Wendell, the captain, stammered, in the traditional captain’s manner, that the team wanted the school behind them, and that—that was about all he had to say. Other members of the faculty made remarks, some of which were witty, some merely facetious, but all received with wild applause. Then they sang some more, cheered for the team, for the school, for Jack Stenton, for Billy Wendell, and the meeting was concluded by the Head declaring a half-holiday for the team, and removing Monday Port bounds for the afternoon in behalf of the two upper forms. Many of the boys had friends coming on the afternoon trains, and counted on this largess as a general permission to go in and meet them.

Kit’s mother was coming, with a couple of girls. Rooms for them had been taken at the Deal Inn on the Port Road near the school. Immediately after the mass-meeting Kit called to Tony, and asked him to go in with him to the depôt and meet the five o’clock train.

“Are we really going to break the Gumshoe’s gating?” asked Tony.

“We certainly are,” responded Kit cheerfully. “To heck with the Gumshoe; bounds are off for the afternoon anyway. It’ll be a good way to get the matter officially to the Head. By gum!” he exclaimed, glancing toward the Schoolhouse, “Gumshoe’s got call-over.”

Surely enough Mr. Roylston was standing on theSchoolhouse steps, with a long line of boys in single file beneath him, waiting to report.

“Shall we tell him?” asked Kit.

“Guess we’ll have to,” answered Tony. “Let’s butt in to the middle of the line for once, and get it over.” Ordinarily, it may be remarked, Fifth Formers did not report, unless they were going into Monday Port. They made for the line, and Kit grabbed a Third Form boy by the arm.

“Say, Bunting, do you mind letting us in here? We’re in a big hurry.”

The small boy flushed with pleasure at the request from such popular and distinguished persons as Wilson and Deering, and readily made way. Mr. Roylston, who seldom failed to see anything that was going on around him, stopped for a moment and looked at them with an expression of stern disapproval. The boys thought that he was about to order them to the end of the line, but for once he disappointed them, and after a significant compression of his lips, went on with the call-over. There was a general titter along the line.

Soon it was Kit’s turn, and he was at Mr Roylston’s side. The master held a paper in his hand, on which was printed the school list. It was the duty of the master of the day to note on such a slip opposite each boy’s name the plans that he reported for the afternoon.

“Wilson and Deering, sir,” said Kit.

Mr. Roylston faced him. “Now that they have usurped the places of a score or so of boys who were in line before them, what do the Messrs. Wilson and Deering propose to do in such a hurry?”

“We are going to town, sir, to meet my mother who is arriving on the five o’clock train.”

“Ah, indeed!” said Mr. Roylston. “I am very sorry to put Mrs. Wilson to any inconvenience, but I fear I must do so. As you both are gated for the month, it is impossible for me to acquiesce in your ingenuous proposal.”

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Kit, “but the Head has declared bounds off for the afternoon.”

“Undoubtedly,” commented Mr. Roylston, “but I have had the unpleasant duty of gating you for a month. Next!”

Wilson and Deering were swept on by the crowd. Without further ado, they cut across the field, climbed the stone wall and started across the meadows for the town.

In Monday Port they loafed about until five o’clock, when they went to the depôt and met Mrs. Wilson. She was accompanied by two very pretty and attractive girls, Betty, Kit’s sister, and Barbara Worthington, her great friend and a boyish flame of Kit’s. The party had a merry time on the drive out the Port Road and a pleasant tea on the old-fashioned gallery of the Inn, in the golden light of the Indian summer afternoon. Absorbed in the unusual pleasure attendant upon the presence of girls at Deal, they quite forgot the predicament they were in with Mr. Roylston.

The master in charge had a better memory, and was waiting for them at the entrance of the cloister that led into the refectory, where the school was gathering for supper. He was very angry.

“I will trouble you,” he said, “to come with me at once to the Head. You have been flagrantly disobedient.”

The boys followed him without a word across the quadrangle to the Rectory.

“A very annoying case, Doctor Forester,” Mr. Roylston began when they were closeted with the Head in his study. “I gated Wilson and Deering for a month, but despite my warning at call-over, they deliberately ignored the gating and went to town this afternoon.”

“It was quite necessary, sir,” protested Kit, “that I should meet my mother, who arrived at five o’clock. Besides, sir, we think that Mr. Roylston’s gating was unjust, and we asked him to refer the matter to you, sir, and he refused.”

“That was not necessary,” said the Doctor, “except under exceptional circumstances. However, I may say that it is my general understanding that when bounds are raised the day before the Boxford game, that for the afternoon ordinary penalties and restrictions are suspended. Why were they gated, sir?”

“For brutal conduct, Doctor Forester, to their younger schoolmates.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Head, with something like a smile flitting across his face. “You behaved brutally toward smaller boys?” He faced the culprits.

Tony smiled in spite of himself. “Why, yes, sir, I suppose we did; we planned to.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said the Head. “But, Mr. Roylston, for once let us compromise and temperjustice with mercy. Only recently these two young brutes did a very effective and commendable service to the school,—they thrashed two bullies who had been making the life of a small boy quite miserable. Let us forgive them their brutality in the one case for the sake of their brutality in the other, where it was not undeserved. I am disposed to ask you to dispense the gating and the penalties for violating it.”

Mr. Roylston compressed his lips. “I—is it just, sir?”

The Doctor smiled in his odd way. “I am disposed to insist on your being merciful, Mr. Roylston. I will guarantee that there will be no more brutality nor disobedience. Let us threaten them with dire penalties, if they are reported for brutality again. Good-day, boys.”

As they went out, they heard the Doctor say in suave and cheerful tones, “Stay and have a bit of supper with me, Roylston.” “Thank you, no;” answered the master, “I have duties immediately. Good-evening, sir.”

“One for the Gumshoe,” said Tony blithely, as they turned onto the campus.

Kit was serious. “I have always said,” he remarked sententiously, “that the Gumshoe Ebenezer was an odious ass; but I have always had, until this moment, a sneaking conviction that in so saying I was doing him an injustice. Henceforth my conscience is absolved. Ass he is; ass he shall be.”

“Amen,” said Tony. “Fact is, Gumshoe’s had it in for Finch. Mysterious beast, ain’t he! We score to-day, kiddo, but the Gumshoe is not annihilated.”

“No, I dare say not. The possibilities of his getting back at us are pretty nigh endless. But say, Tonio, old sport, isn’t Bab Worthington a queen?”

“Quite the queen, Kitty; but Betty Wilson is no mere handmaid.”

“Oh, bother Betty; she’s a good sort. But let’s hurry, so we can get down early. I am half sorry I asked the crowd. Think I’d rather have—”

They both began to run then toward the dining-room, where the school was already at supper.

That evening “the crowd,” as our friends called themselves in their modest schoolboy way, including Kit, Tony, Jimmie Lawrence, Teddy Lansing and Tack Turner, went to the Inn and spent a merry evening under Mrs. Wilson’s indulgent chaperonage. There were other parties there, including the parents and sisters and cousins and an occasional aunt of various boys; a gathering of the clans loyal to Deal; a score or so of Old Boys, mostly from Kingsbridge, back for the game, who had overflowed from the crowded school into the Inn. In the proud consciousness of their undoubted superiority as college men, the Old Boys somewhat cast their younger brethren in the shade, and treated them with patronizing airs, asking them occasional questions in a patriarchal manner.

Tony alone amongst his companions seemed to shine that evening. There flashed into prominence, to their first observation, in his manner, his appearance even, something of that charm which was more and more making him a favorite, and which, though his schoolfellows never analyzed it, was to be cordially recognized later on. It would have been hard to sayin just what Tony’s charm lay, perhaps it was that a certain serious sweetness of disposition, the finer traits of his character, for the most part unnoticed in the helter-skelter rough-and-readiness of school life, were emerging. Women, who are always quicker than men to estimate a personality, to be conscious of its finer as well as its more obvious strains, felt this at once in Tony. He was a success with Mrs. Wilson and the girls. His own friends, intimate with him in all the openness and yet sometimes quite misleading circumstances of everyday existence, who ordinarily thought of him merely as a boon companion, a genial playmate, gifted with a nice sense of honor but ready for a lark and a risk with the most reckless, were a little surprised at the evident impression he made not only on Mrs. Wilson, but on Betty and Barbara Worthington. His friends saw in him that night a facility despite his modesty, a social poise untempered by self-consciousness, that more distinctly than ever before singled him out as their natural leader. Kit indeed, felt several miserable pangs of jealousy, as he noted Barbara’s quick response to Tony’s gayety, and her unconcealed desire to remain part of the group of which Tony was in some sense the center rather than wander off with him for the too obvious pleasure of a tête-à-tête. But Kit himself was too whole-souled, too merry of nature, to sulk, and save for an occasional growl to which no one paid attention, before the evening was over, he was enjoying Tony as he had never enjoyed him before, wondering at the quick development of this social side of his character which had been unobserved.

As for Tony he was quite unconscious of anything save that he was enjoying himself immensely; that Betty Wilson was an extremely attractive girl, a thoroughly “good sort,” as Kit had said; and that he wished there were more frequent occasions when the girls came to Deal. He was not sentimental, so that he did not imagine that he had fallen in love.

The day of the game was a perfect one for football, cool and gray, with no wind blowing. The teams were in fine condition, and the Boxford boys, who had come over in the old-time coach across the hills, looked tremendously big and strong. Tony was still playing end, the position to which he had been so unexpectedly assigned in his Third Form year, and in which, through no fault of his own, he had been the means of losing the game. To be sure in the following year, when the circumstances of that defeat had been made rather generally clear, he had redeemed himself by good playing and they had won, but he felt a keen desire this year to blot out forever, if it might be, the bitter memory of that first Boxford game. He wanted, quite selfishly he told himself,—and perhaps he was thinking a little of Betty—to win a game as definitely as he had lost one.

As the team stepped out onto the field that afternoon, resplendent in their red sweaters with the big black D across the breast, and he sniffed the cool air and heard the chorus of Deal cheers ring down the lines, he lifted his head like a good hunter keen for the chase, and a thrill of determination went through him like a shiver. They must win!

Billy Wendell had the ball under his arm as theycame onto the field. Immediately he tossed it to Kit, prominent to the spectators for his shock of yellow hair and his bright red cheeks despite the fact that this was his first appearance on the school team. Kit tossed it to Barney Clayton, who muffed it, and then made a quick dive and fell on it very much as a kitten plays with a ball of yarn.... So for fifteen minutes or so the preliminary practice went on, until the boys were well warmed up for the strenuous work of the game.

Then came the shrill note of the referee’s whistle; the two captains met in the center of the field; the Boxford boy called and won the toss, and the two teams trotted out to their places for the kick-off. There were roars from the two grand-stands, the antiphonal ringing-out of the Deal and Boxford cheers; another blast from the referee’s whistle, and Kit, who was playing center, gave the ball a kick that sent it sailing down the field to within five yards of the Boxford goal posts. A Boxford back caught it, but Tony downed him in his tracks.

Then the teams lined up, the Boxford quarter signaled to his full back for a line plunge, and in less time than it takes to write it, the great hulk of a six-foot boy went tearing through the Deal line. Deal received a shock as great as it was unexpected. They had foreseen no such smashing attack, and before they could rally to the defense, they had been forced for down after down over the smooth brown field until the play was well in their own territory....

We do not mean to describe the game in detail, for is it not written in the chronicles of the boys of Deal? Wendell rallied his team just in time to preventBoxford from scoring in the first half, when the ball had been worried to within twenty yards of his goal. Then followed an exchange of punts, which, as Edward Clavering, Deal’s full back, could kick farther than his opponent, gave Deal a slight advantage. When they got the ball at last in the middle of the field, they made a few gains by end runs. They were swifter, more ingenious, better kickers than the Boxford boys, but the team from over the hills had the advantage in weight and strength.

During the intermission between the halves Stenton did his best to hearten his boys, but it was a poor best, for he felt pretty certain that they were bound to be scored against heavily in the next half. They could not stand the smashing of the line—already Clayton and one or two others had been taken out.

The second half saw a repetition of the tactics of the first. Boxford persistently hit the line, and within five minutes of the play had scored the inevitable touchdown. The enthusiasm of their supporters was only a trifle dampened when they failed to kick the goal. After that Deal worried them a good deal with trick plays, and once after gaining a considerable distance by an exceptionally long punt and a fumble, they seemed within striking distance of the goal. Clavering tried for a field goal, but to the sharp distress of his supporters the ball went wide of the mark. Boxford took the ball on their twenty-five yard line, and renewed their demoralizing attack. Despite the Deal boys’ desperate efforts, the ball was forced back into their territory, straight down the field by smashing center plays toward their goal. Poor Kithad been carried off, bruised and lame, but not seriously hurt; the veteran Clavering had succumbed, and Deal was left to finish the game with a team that was half composed of substitutes. It was a question now, it seemed, of simply keeping down the score.

Boxford fumbled, and again they escaped danger for the moment. But soon the ball had been worried again dangerously near their goal. Twenty-five, twenty, fifteen yards—Tony measured the distance with grim despair. Suddenly, as the Boxford quarter snapped back the ball, something unexpected happened. Signals got twisted,—at any rate, there was a fumble and a scrimmage, and twenty boys were scrambling in a heap, when the attention of the spectators was arrested by the shrill cry of the Boxford quarter, for Tony Deering, with the ball tucked under his arm, had emerged from the mass of players, and was speeding like a frightened deer down the field toward the Boxford goal.

The quarter made a desperate effort to intercept him, but Tony dodged as quickly as lightning flashes, and raced on with a clear field. The two teams, recovered, were rushing after him.... One could have heard a whisper from one side of the field to the other so tense was the excitement. The silence was absolute save for the pattering of the swift feet upon the turf.... Then the cheers broke forth, for Tony had planted the ball midway behind the goal posts. For five minutes there was pandemonium on the side lines, restrained for a moment, only to break forth afresh as Clavering kicked the goal. The game was won, for almost immediately after the kick-off, the whistle blew, and the referee called “Time.”

i158

TONY DODGED ... AND RACED ON WITH A CLEAR FIELD

TONY DODGED ... AND RACED ON WITH A CLEAR FIELD

TONY DODGED ... AND RACED ON WITH A CLEAR FIELD

CHAPTER XIIITHE NIGHT OF THE BONFIREIf Tony had enjoyed the sensation of expanding under appreciation the night before the game, it reached fatigue point the night after. It falls to few boys, even for so short a time, to be the hero of his school; but it is one of the pleasantest experiences that can befall him. It gives the hero a feeling of kinship with the mighty conquerors of the past; a sense, intense if fleeting, of being one with Alexander, with Cæsar, with Napoleon. And though Deering bore his honors modestly, for this once he enjoyed them to the full; with the full-bloodedness of youth, he luxuriated in a sense of satisfaction with the world in general and with himself in particular. He was not ordinarily self-important, but it would have been an inhuman boy who remained indifferent to the incense of praise he received after that Boxford game. To have turned what seemed certain defeat into unexpected victory was a piece of good luck for which he was grateful, as well as he was grateful for the undoubted fact that he could run faster than most boys of his age.Immediately after the game a score of boys, rushing across the lines, had laid bodily hold of him, hoisted him on their shoulders; and with similar groups, who had performed like service for other members of theteam, they marched off the field, singing the school song at the top of their hoarse voices, in dreadful tune but with an enthusiasm that atoned for all defects. Jack Stenton was in the midst of them, and he literally hugged Tony when the boys put him down at the entrance to the Gymnasium locker-room. “I’m glad it fell to you, young ‘un,” he said; “it was a great run that will be remembered as long as boys play football at Deal.”After his shower Tony dressed, joined Kit and Jimmie Lawrence, and wandered about the campus with them, enjoying to the fullest the sensation of universal proprietorship. At half-past six, they went again to the Inn to dine with Mrs. Wilson and the girls.Kit had a black eye and a swollen nose that hurt considerably, but which he would not have foregone for the world; they made him feel as well as look a martyr to the cause. The girls were beaming, quite unaffectedly proud to be the guests of such heroes. Kit’s bruises seemed to affect Miss Worthington rather as ornaments than otherwise, to lend a fascination not afforded by his natural good looks, for she acquiesced this time in the pairing off on the way to the school after the dinner, for the celebration, that afforded him an opportunity for the much desired tête-à-tête. Mrs. Wilson appropriated Jimmie, so that Tony and Betty were left to walk together.Alone with him, Betty ceased to beam; in fact, became shy and unwontedly silent. Tony liked the shyness, thought her sweeter so. He felt a pronounced sentimental thrill as he gave her his hand to help her across an insignificant ditch.“It must be wonderful,” she said at last to break the awkward silence, “it must be wonderful to win a game.”“It is,” Tony laughed ingenuously. “Do you know, Miss Wilson, I feel half ashamed of myself. I so hoped something like that might happen. I suppose a fellow ought to think of the game and the school, and I reckon most of ‘em do; but two years ago, I was the means of our losing the Boxford game, and I tell you it took me a long time to get over the feeling that gave me.”“I know,” said Betty. “Kit has told me about that.”“Well, it was a long time ago; but I never did really get over it.”“But it wasn’t your fault,” protested Betty.“Oh, yes, in a sense it was; if I had stuck to the ball tighter, I reckon it wouldn’t have happened. But that sort of made me feel that I wanted a special chance to-day.”“Well, you got it,” said the girl, with a smile. “Of course, one cannot help wanting to do things one’s self. I suppose we are all a little bit selfish.”They chatted on then more at ease, until they reached the great field behind the Chapel where the celebration was to take place.Every light in the school building was blazing, and a line of Chinese lanterns had been strung to fine effect up and down the driveway and along the terraces. In the center of the playing-field back of the school an enormous bonfire had been constructed, of drygoods boxes, barrels, fence rails, and variousother combustibles, including an untenanted chicken-house that an amateur farmer of the Second Form had contributed in a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Around the bonfire were gathered three hundred boys of the school, a score or so of the masters and many of the Old Boys and friends who had stayed over. On the outskirts of the crowd there was a complement of sundry enthusiastic country urchins, who for the night had buried the proverbial hatchet usually in play between them and the school, and were rejoicing lustily in the honor that had fallen upon the entire community.As Mrs. Wilson’s party arrived, Billy Wendell applied a match to a mass of kerosene-soaked excelsior, and the flames started up the pile with an avidity, it seemed, that was impelled by sympathy with the mounting spirits of the boys. A dozen rockets were fired off simultaneously, three hundred Roman candles were exploded, and a score of red fires were lighted in various parts of the field. There was a sudden blaze of splendid light.Soon the magnificent bonfire dominated the interest. The boys circled about it, hand in hand, shouting, cheering, singing. The school bells rang out joyously on the frosty night; the strains of the school songs echoed and re-echoed, until was caught up in full chorus by those hundreds of happy voices, the triumphal song,—“Palms of victory, palms of glory.”Finally they hoisted Billy Wendell, the captain, up on the wooden rostrum that was brought out onsuch occasions; and after more wild and intense cheering when the cheer leaders had sunk back almost exhausted by their efforts, they gave him a chance to speak. “Fellows,” said Billy, with not more than the usual oratorical grace but with an effect that many a trained orator might have envied, “Fellows, I guess we’re all glad we won. I can’t make a speech; and anyway there’s some one else here to whom our victory to-day really is due. And I move we have Tony Deering up here, and tell him what we think of him.”Frantic howls as Billy leaped down, and a dozen boys hustled Tony with rough-and-ready good will up to the rostrum, paying absolutely no attention to his protests. Tony’s presence of mind quite deserted him as he faced the encircling crowd of eager, flame-brightened faces,—also the feeling that there was anything heroic in being a hero. As they cheered and cheered him to the echo, he had a moment in which to gather his wits. “Fellows,” he said at last, when the crowd had become quiet, “I’m mighty grateful for the way in which you’ve treated me. But I don’t deserve it. The ball popped into my arms in the scrimmage, and I just ran. Any other fellow would have done the same. What really won,” he added, “was that the team had made a good defense against a whirlwind attack at critical moments. And that’s the reason that when we got a chance to score, it meant a victory. Ned Clavering scored the winning point by kicking the goal.”With that he jumped down, struggled through the crowd, and slipped unobserved to the outskirts ofthe circle. Other boys were being elevated to the rostrum, so that attention was diverted from him. For himself, his heart was full, and for the moment he wanted to be alone.He could not hear the speeches from where he stood, but the scene was before him like the stage at a play. Suddenly he noticed, standing quite near him, apart from the jubilant crowd, the lonely, pathetic little figure of the despised Finch. The boy was gazing at Tony intently, with an expression of pathetic admiration, the self-forgetting admiration sometimes experienced when we behold a noble or a fine action in which we have had no part, of which we are incapable. There was longing in the boy’s pale watery little eyes, and his mouth was twisted out of shape, as though it were not fashioned to express the unwonted emotions that stirred his soul. As Tony glanced at him, with a flash of intuition, it seemed to him that he thoroughly understood the half-starved soul of Jacob Finch, his pathetic and terrible loneliness, his unreasoned terrors of life, his ardent unsatisfied longings for the boyish friendliness and companionship about him in which he had no part.... Involuntarily Tony moved toward him, and obeying an impulse quite devoid of that repulsion that Finch usually stirred in him, he threw his arm carelessly over the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a great sight, kid; ain’t it?” he said.Finch was trembling as if he had a chill. His eyes glanced for a moment into Tony’s intensely, then shifted, and he answered in a queer hoarse tone, “I ‘spose so. I dunno.” And then he added, fiercely,“But I’m glad—I’mglad youmade that run.” The next instant, as if his own speech had frightened him, he shook Tony’s arm from his shoulder, and slipped away into the shadows. Tony saw him no more that night.“Poor kid!” he thought, and his eyes filled with tears. He had seen unhappiness before, in his own home, and the memory of it was bitter. Here at school he had forgotten it all; the world had seemed a bright and a happy place, and he was happy in it. Poor Finch brought back to him intensely the realization that life was not altogether as free from care, as full of affection and kindness and joy, as this gay scene and jubilant celebration would indicate. There was bitterness in the thought, and yet, in a way, he was not sorry it had come. It seemed to him now that for the last few days he had been absolutely absorbed in himself, in fact that he had been living self-absorbed for a long time; that despite his generous words from the rostrum, what he had really been glad of in the victory was, that it had been so largely due to him.Suddenly he gave the tree against which he was standing a vigorous kick. What a fool he was! to be silly with delight at winning a football game when just across the hall from him there lived such livid boyish misery!At length he resought his companions, and when at last the celebration was over, and the great blazing pile of the bonfire had collapsed, he walked back again with Kit’s party to the Inn. Both Betty and he were quieter now than before. She was shy again,and this time he could think of nothing to say. Their commonplaces about the celebration fell flat.“You are going to-morrow?” he asked abruptly, as they turned into the grounds of the Inn.“Yes,” she answered, “quite early. Bab and I are at school too, you know?”“Yes, I know. I wish I could see you sometimes....”“Well, can’t you?... You’ll be coming home with Kit some holiday.”“Perhaps I will. I hope so.” He was silent for a moment, then with a strange shyness, he said, “Will you—will you give me those violets?”Betty was silent. She hesitated for a moment, then unpinned the violets from her dress, and gave them to him. Their hands met in the dark, and fluttered in a little clasp for the moment. Then Tony slipped the violets into his pocket. They were at the Inn steps, and to the surprise of all, he declined to come in, but bade them good-bye there.Instead of going back to the school, he struck across the meadows to the beach. It had cleared at nightfall, and the stars were shining in a deep blue sky, and a lovely young crescent moon, cloud-clung, hung in the west. Tony walked up the beach alone, thinking, feeling intensely. The silent somber beauty of the night, the great stars, the lazy splash of the little foam-flecked waves upon the sands, the cool frosty dark, appealed to him deeply. He could scarcely have told of what he was thinking: of various things—the day’s events, the celebration, Betty and the violets she had given him, Finch and his hungry eyes,life. The world seemed beautiful to him, but strange and sad.... Years afterward he was to recall that night, and remember that it had marked a definite moment in the process of his coming to himself.At the end of the beach he met Mr. Morris, who was also walking alone. “Hello,” exclaimed the master, “what are you doing here? The conqueror is tired of plaudits, eh?”“What bringsyou, magister?... I wanted to be alone I guess.”“And I,” said Morris, with a smile. “Sometimes a day of excitement reacts on me like this. I need to round it off with a walk by myself. Let’s go back together though, if you have had enough of yourself as I have.”“Quite enough,” said Tony, as he turned with the older man back toward the school.For a while they said nothing, but eventually the master, by tactful questions, led the boy to talk of himself. There followed one of those long quiet conversations that come so rarely, but mean so much to boy and master when they come. When they reached the school all of the lights were out save for a glow at the spot where the bonfire had been. They shook hands and parted at the door of Morris’s study.The schoolmaster, when he was alone, instead of lighting his lamp, stood for a long while before the glowing embers of the fire on his hearth, absorbed in his thoughts. He had had a bad day, a stupid day after the excitement of the game, for there had come upon him one of those unaccountable and unreasonable moods of depression wherein it seemed tohim that he was wasting his life in the obscurity of a petty profession, wasting the talents, abilities, ambitions, that in college days had promised a brilliant career. He knew it was but a mood, but he had not been able to shake it off. Other fellows, classmates of his at school and college, had been back, with their good-natured, ill-chosen greetings that drove the iron deeper into his soul: “Old Morris—holding the fort—still on the old camp-ground, eh?” and the like.As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he lived....

THE NIGHT OF THE BONFIRE

If Tony had enjoyed the sensation of expanding under appreciation the night before the game, it reached fatigue point the night after. It falls to few boys, even for so short a time, to be the hero of his school; but it is one of the pleasantest experiences that can befall him. It gives the hero a feeling of kinship with the mighty conquerors of the past; a sense, intense if fleeting, of being one with Alexander, with Cæsar, with Napoleon. And though Deering bore his honors modestly, for this once he enjoyed them to the full; with the full-bloodedness of youth, he luxuriated in a sense of satisfaction with the world in general and with himself in particular. He was not ordinarily self-important, but it would have been an inhuman boy who remained indifferent to the incense of praise he received after that Boxford game. To have turned what seemed certain defeat into unexpected victory was a piece of good luck for which he was grateful, as well as he was grateful for the undoubted fact that he could run faster than most boys of his age.

Immediately after the game a score of boys, rushing across the lines, had laid bodily hold of him, hoisted him on their shoulders; and with similar groups, who had performed like service for other members of theteam, they marched off the field, singing the school song at the top of their hoarse voices, in dreadful tune but with an enthusiasm that atoned for all defects. Jack Stenton was in the midst of them, and he literally hugged Tony when the boys put him down at the entrance to the Gymnasium locker-room. “I’m glad it fell to you, young ‘un,” he said; “it was a great run that will be remembered as long as boys play football at Deal.”

After his shower Tony dressed, joined Kit and Jimmie Lawrence, and wandered about the campus with them, enjoying to the fullest the sensation of universal proprietorship. At half-past six, they went again to the Inn to dine with Mrs. Wilson and the girls.

Kit had a black eye and a swollen nose that hurt considerably, but which he would not have foregone for the world; they made him feel as well as look a martyr to the cause. The girls were beaming, quite unaffectedly proud to be the guests of such heroes. Kit’s bruises seemed to affect Miss Worthington rather as ornaments than otherwise, to lend a fascination not afforded by his natural good looks, for she acquiesced this time in the pairing off on the way to the school after the dinner, for the celebration, that afforded him an opportunity for the much desired tête-à-tête. Mrs. Wilson appropriated Jimmie, so that Tony and Betty were left to walk together.

Alone with him, Betty ceased to beam; in fact, became shy and unwontedly silent. Tony liked the shyness, thought her sweeter so. He felt a pronounced sentimental thrill as he gave her his hand to help her across an insignificant ditch.

“It must be wonderful,” she said at last to break the awkward silence, “it must be wonderful to win a game.”

“It is,” Tony laughed ingenuously. “Do you know, Miss Wilson, I feel half ashamed of myself. I so hoped something like that might happen. I suppose a fellow ought to think of the game and the school, and I reckon most of ‘em do; but two years ago, I was the means of our losing the Boxford game, and I tell you it took me a long time to get over the feeling that gave me.”

“I know,” said Betty. “Kit has told me about that.”

“Well, it was a long time ago; but I never did really get over it.”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” protested Betty.

“Oh, yes, in a sense it was; if I had stuck to the ball tighter, I reckon it wouldn’t have happened. But that sort of made me feel that I wanted a special chance to-day.”

“Well, you got it,” said the girl, with a smile. “Of course, one cannot help wanting to do things one’s self. I suppose we are all a little bit selfish.”

They chatted on then more at ease, until they reached the great field behind the Chapel where the celebration was to take place.

Every light in the school building was blazing, and a line of Chinese lanterns had been strung to fine effect up and down the driveway and along the terraces. In the center of the playing-field back of the school an enormous bonfire had been constructed, of drygoods boxes, barrels, fence rails, and variousother combustibles, including an untenanted chicken-house that an amateur farmer of the Second Form had contributed in a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Around the bonfire were gathered three hundred boys of the school, a score or so of the masters and many of the Old Boys and friends who had stayed over. On the outskirts of the crowd there was a complement of sundry enthusiastic country urchins, who for the night had buried the proverbial hatchet usually in play between them and the school, and were rejoicing lustily in the honor that had fallen upon the entire community.

As Mrs. Wilson’s party arrived, Billy Wendell applied a match to a mass of kerosene-soaked excelsior, and the flames started up the pile with an avidity, it seemed, that was impelled by sympathy with the mounting spirits of the boys. A dozen rockets were fired off simultaneously, three hundred Roman candles were exploded, and a score of red fires were lighted in various parts of the field. There was a sudden blaze of splendid light.

Soon the magnificent bonfire dominated the interest. The boys circled about it, hand in hand, shouting, cheering, singing. The school bells rang out joyously on the frosty night; the strains of the school songs echoed and re-echoed, until was caught up in full chorus by those hundreds of happy voices, the triumphal song,—

“Palms of victory, palms of glory.”

Finally they hoisted Billy Wendell, the captain, up on the wooden rostrum that was brought out onsuch occasions; and after more wild and intense cheering when the cheer leaders had sunk back almost exhausted by their efforts, they gave him a chance to speak. “Fellows,” said Billy, with not more than the usual oratorical grace but with an effect that many a trained orator might have envied, “Fellows, I guess we’re all glad we won. I can’t make a speech; and anyway there’s some one else here to whom our victory to-day really is due. And I move we have Tony Deering up here, and tell him what we think of him.”

Frantic howls as Billy leaped down, and a dozen boys hustled Tony with rough-and-ready good will up to the rostrum, paying absolutely no attention to his protests. Tony’s presence of mind quite deserted him as he faced the encircling crowd of eager, flame-brightened faces,—also the feeling that there was anything heroic in being a hero. As they cheered and cheered him to the echo, he had a moment in which to gather his wits. “Fellows,” he said at last, when the crowd had become quiet, “I’m mighty grateful for the way in which you’ve treated me. But I don’t deserve it. The ball popped into my arms in the scrimmage, and I just ran. Any other fellow would have done the same. What really won,” he added, “was that the team had made a good defense against a whirlwind attack at critical moments. And that’s the reason that when we got a chance to score, it meant a victory. Ned Clavering scored the winning point by kicking the goal.”

With that he jumped down, struggled through the crowd, and slipped unobserved to the outskirts ofthe circle. Other boys were being elevated to the rostrum, so that attention was diverted from him. For himself, his heart was full, and for the moment he wanted to be alone.

He could not hear the speeches from where he stood, but the scene was before him like the stage at a play. Suddenly he noticed, standing quite near him, apart from the jubilant crowd, the lonely, pathetic little figure of the despised Finch. The boy was gazing at Tony intently, with an expression of pathetic admiration, the self-forgetting admiration sometimes experienced when we behold a noble or a fine action in which we have had no part, of which we are incapable. There was longing in the boy’s pale watery little eyes, and his mouth was twisted out of shape, as though it were not fashioned to express the unwonted emotions that stirred his soul. As Tony glanced at him, with a flash of intuition, it seemed to him that he thoroughly understood the half-starved soul of Jacob Finch, his pathetic and terrible loneliness, his unreasoned terrors of life, his ardent unsatisfied longings for the boyish friendliness and companionship about him in which he had no part.... Involuntarily Tony moved toward him, and obeying an impulse quite devoid of that repulsion that Finch usually stirred in him, he threw his arm carelessly over the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a great sight, kid; ain’t it?” he said.

Finch was trembling as if he had a chill. His eyes glanced for a moment into Tony’s intensely, then shifted, and he answered in a queer hoarse tone, “I ‘spose so. I dunno.” And then he added, fiercely,“But I’m glad—I’mglad youmade that run.” The next instant, as if his own speech had frightened him, he shook Tony’s arm from his shoulder, and slipped away into the shadows. Tony saw him no more that night.

“Poor kid!” he thought, and his eyes filled with tears. He had seen unhappiness before, in his own home, and the memory of it was bitter. Here at school he had forgotten it all; the world had seemed a bright and a happy place, and he was happy in it. Poor Finch brought back to him intensely the realization that life was not altogether as free from care, as full of affection and kindness and joy, as this gay scene and jubilant celebration would indicate. There was bitterness in the thought, and yet, in a way, he was not sorry it had come. It seemed to him now that for the last few days he had been absolutely absorbed in himself, in fact that he had been living self-absorbed for a long time; that despite his generous words from the rostrum, what he had really been glad of in the victory was, that it had been so largely due to him.

Suddenly he gave the tree against which he was standing a vigorous kick. What a fool he was! to be silly with delight at winning a football game when just across the hall from him there lived such livid boyish misery!

At length he resought his companions, and when at last the celebration was over, and the great blazing pile of the bonfire had collapsed, he walked back again with Kit’s party to the Inn. Both Betty and he were quieter now than before. She was shy again,and this time he could think of nothing to say. Their commonplaces about the celebration fell flat.

“You are going to-morrow?” he asked abruptly, as they turned into the grounds of the Inn.

“Yes,” she answered, “quite early. Bab and I are at school too, you know?”

“Yes, I know. I wish I could see you sometimes....”

“Well, can’t you?... You’ll be coming home with Kit some holiday.”

“Perhaps I will. I hope so.” He was silent for a moment, then with a strange shyness, he said, “Will you—will you give me those violets?”

Betty was silent. She hesitated for a moment, then unpinned the violets from her dress, and gave them to him. Their hands met in the dark, and fluttered in a little clasp for the moment. Then Tony slipped the violets into his pocket. They were at the Inn steps, and to the surprise of all, he declined to come in, but bade them good-bye there.

Instead of going back to the school, he struck across the meadows to the beach. It had cleared at nightfall, and the stars were shining in a deep blue sky, and a lovely young crescent moon, cloud-clung, hung in the west. Tony walked up the beach alone, thinking, feeling intensely. The silent somber beauty of the night, the great stars, the lazy splash of the little foam-flecked waves upon the sands, the cool frosty dark, appealed to him deeply. He could scarcely have told of what he was thinking: of various things—the day’s events, the celebration, Betty and the violets she had given him, Finch and his hungry eyes,life. The world seemed beautiful to him, but strange and sad.... Years afterward he was to recall that night, and remember that it had marked a definite moment in the process of his coming to himself.

At the end of the beach he met Mr. Morris, who was also walking alone. “Hello,” exclaimed the master, “what are you doing here? The conqueror is tired of plaudits, eh?”

“What bringsyou, magister?... I wanted to be alone I guess.”

“And I,” said Morris, with a smile. “Sometimes a day of excitement reacts on me like this. I need to round it off with a walk by myself. Let’s go back together though, if you have had enough of yourself as I have.”

“Quite enough,” said Tony, as he turned with the older man back toward the school.

For a while they said nothing, but eventually the master, by tactful questions, led the boy to talk of himself. There followed one of those long quiet conversations that come so rarely, but mean so much to boy and master when they come. When they reached the school all of the lights were out save for a glow at the spot where the bonfire had been. They shook hands and parted at the door of Morris’s study.

The schoolmaster, when he was alone, instead of lighting his lamp, stood for a long while before the glowing embers of the fire on his hearth, absorbed in his thoughts. He had had a bad day, a stupid day after the excitement of the game, for there had come upon him one of those unaccountable and unreasonable moods of depression wherein it seemed tohim that he was wasting his life in the obscurity of a petty profession, wasting the talents, abilities, ambitions, that in college days had promised a brilliant career. He knew it was but a mood, but he had not been able to shake it off. Other fellows, classmates of his at school and college, had been back, with their good-natured, ill-chosen greetings that drove the iron deeper into his soul: “Old Morris—holding the fort—still on the old camp-ground, eh?” and the like.

As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he lived....

CHAPTER XIVTHE SPECTACLEGames and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in before the Christmas holidays.The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring. And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books.As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters, but as the keen-eyed mistressat Betty’s school soon detected the nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between. At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But, it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or opportunity for love affairs.During the winter he became interested in the Dealonian, a semi-secret society, that held frequent debates and discussions before the school, and regarded itself as being an institution of great importance. For exercise and sport he went in for hockey, where his fleetness counted as much toward success as it did in football. The Deal boys had capital hockey grounds, one on Deal Water which lay at the foot of the hill between the school and Monday Port; and the other on Beaver Pond, under the lee of Lovel’s Woods which though smaller usually froze earlier.It was customary for the Dealonian to elect a Fifth Former as its president at the beginning of the winter term. This office was supposed, and usually did, register the boys’ somewhat premature choice for a head prefect for the school for the following year. Deering was elected president of the Dealonian by a unanimous vote, after very little campaigning on the part of his friends. He was generally popular, and his exploit in the Boxford game had brought him more prominently before the school than ever before.In the opinion of his particular friends he was also developing qualities of leadership, which made him the logical candidate of their group for general honors. Tony valued the position of president highly. And in the fine fervor of his good resolutions he determined that through it he would do a lot for the school. The Dealonian held frequent meetings at which the entire school were invited, and at which topics of general interest were discussed by the boys themselves. It was indeed through these meetings that the public opinion of the school was largely formed and guided by the older boys.The walk with Mr. Morris on the beach the night of the Boxford game had solidified in Tony’s mind a good many resolutions. And, though it is not usually the case that the generous ideals and ambitions of boys find particular expression, since the flash of intuition into Finch’s starved life had been in part the occasion of his forming good resolutions at all, it was not unnatural that he should have settled upon Finch as a concrete opportunity for putting them into effect. The talk with Mr. Morris, though Finch’s name had not actually been mentioned, had also brought the matter before Tony’s mind, for Morris had been the first to suggest to him the possibility of his being of use in that direction. To be sure, the sympathy with Finch had been intuitive and had not stayed with him as vividly as it had impressed him on the night of the bonfire, but then it had flashed so intensely that it was not soon altogether to expire. It glowed in the depths of his consciousness like sparks amongst the embers of a dying fire, capableof blazing forth again if fresh fuel should be added. Tony proposed to add the fuel.He made a point, for instance, of dropping in at Finch’s room in Standerland two or three times a week and chatting with the boy the odd quarters of an hour that he otherwise would have spent in genial loafing with his cronies. And though he certainly would not have kept on going there for the sake of anything that Finch could contribute to the joy of life for him, when the awkwardness of deliberately performing a kindness had somewhat worn off, he found a certain amount of compensating satisfaction in noting the light of pleasure that came into Jake’s pale blue eyes, and in the relaxation of the corners of his mouth from bitter rigidity into friendly appreciation and welcome. Gradually too Finch’s shyness wore off a little when he was alone with Tony; and though it can hardly be said that even in his most un-selfconscious moments he ever seemed a full-blooded care-free boy, he thawed into a semblance of humanity. He reminded Tony often of a dog that has been treated cruelly in its puppyhood, which never recovers fearlessness but shrinks even under a friendly hand.And like a dog Jacob Finch began to idolize Anthony Deering. This was the first time in all his barren life that a fellow boy had treated him with kindness, who had not showed in his manner the repulsion the unhappy little chap had the misfortune to stir in his kind. Tony’s image loomed large in his thoughts. The intense worship he paid him secretly did much to atone for the slights of others, to blot outother boys from his consciousness. He cringed and shrank still under jibes and jokes, trembled with unreasoned fear before masters, quivered with fright when he found himself alone in a crowd of boys; but he did his work faithfully and with the success that comes from persistence even when a keen intelligence is lacking. More and more, however, his inner life was absorbed in his devotion to Deering.From his seat in the chapel he could just see the wavy, copper-colored top of Tony’s head. By straining a little he could frequently see his face,—bright, sensitive, mobile, smiling often that smile of a singular and rare sweetness that made Tony beautiful to others beside Finch. To Jake he was as perfect, as spotless, as wonderful, as a god. The fervor of his adoration was akin to the enthusiasm of adevotéefor his idol. All this of course he hid, not altogether but mostly, from Deering; never voiced, though he could not help looking his devotion. He would spend hours during a day standing about in various places on the mere chance that he would get a glimpse of Tony; haunted the woods above Beaver Pond in the hockey season, where he would lie, flat and shivering, upon a projecting rock, and follow with weak, straining eyes the skaters on the ice below, his eager gaze seeking always for one bright slim form. And when he had found it, he was as happy as he often had been.Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration hehad for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend.Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have theirprotégéin Number Five study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them.Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world, he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the best for him.Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine, issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title ofThe Spectacle. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager, printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to required work for the masters he had written yards of shortstories, poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de Coverly papers fromThe Spectatorthat Stenton had inflicted on the Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them. Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay and practical joking of the Lower School.One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.“By Jove, Jim, that’s a joy!” was his room-mate’s gratifying criticism. “That’s a blame sight better than the sawdust that Jack is trying to stuff down our throats in English.”“Well, I have me doubts as to that,” Jimmie responded, “but I appreciate the compliment even if it makes the critic out to be an ignoramus.”“Words of one syllable, my dear,” protested Tony, “when you try to get ideas into my cranium.Critic or not, that’s darn good writing. Give us another.”Jimmie smiled, closed his mathematics books with the air of one who makes a sacrifice in a noble cause, and for half an hour bent again to laborious composition. The result was a clever little skit on Ducky Thornton entitled “The Human Sofa Cushion.” The wit was broader, and it struck Tony as quite irresistibly funny.“By Jove, kiddo, we’ll start aSpectatorof our own, eh? Hit off the masters and some of our loving schoolmates, and let ‘em circulate. It’ll be heaps of fun.”Lawrence laughed at the vision of the possibilities that came to him. “I think it will,” he said. “We’ll write ‘em out in your clear hand, and pass ‘em on to the crowd.”And soThe Spectaclecame into existence. Jimmie did most of the composition, and Tony invariably copied it out, for Jimmie’s handwriting left much to be desired, as is the case we have been told with other authors. Now and then there was an original contribution from Tony, and occasionally one from Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing or Tack Turner, all more crude and broad, but few absolutely devoid of real humor. In the course of a few months they had composed quite a gallery of pen-portraits, wherein were caricatured, seldom unkindly, the faults and foibles of most of the faculty and many of the boys.The Spectaclehad a popular if restricted circulation.It fell to Tony at length to do the paper on Mr. Roylston. None of the articles were labeled by correct names, but there was scarcely ever any doubt in themind of the reader who had served as the model of the portrait. The paper on Mr. Roylston, paraphrasing his nickname, was entitled “Soft-toed Samuel.” Tony had caricatured broadly, but before being written out in his neat fine hand, the style had been softened, smoothed and improved, occasional lapses in orthography had been corrected, and the defects of punctuation supplied,—in fact the crude strokes of the amateur had been retouched by the hand of an artist. The artist was Jimmie.It was a great success with thehabituésof Number Five study. Tony was so pleased with it himself, that he took it in late of an evening to Finch’s room with the idea of cheering up his charge who had seemed even unwontedly seedy that day.“Here, Jake,” he exclaimed, as he burst in at the door, “here’s the latestSpectacle. Have a try at it.”Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting. “Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a flash, pushed him gently back.“There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.”Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?”“No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleepit off; it’s the only way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.”“Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.”“Leave theSpectacle, will you?”“All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning. Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re sick?”“Yes—he’s been in.”“Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.”When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery till sleep came at last and released him.The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as Mr. Roylston held it, usually wasstudyand not the loafing, letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations, and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling broadly in the schoolroom. The master, solong the traditionalbête noirand subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr. Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him to be amusing.Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless grasp.“I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply. “It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in reading amusing letters.”“It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch.“It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,” replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing whatever upon Xenophon’sAnabasisor the Greek Grammar.”He glanced at the title as he spoke. “Soft-toed Samuel” conveyed little to him, enough however to inform him that he had been correct in his surmise that it was tabooed matter.“But—but, it—it isn’t mine,” protested Finch.“No?” commented Mr. Roylston, with an accent of indifference. “I shall return it to its owner in good time, if you choose to inform me who he is.” He glanced casually over the writing.“Don’t—don’t you dare to read that!” cried Finch, his face livid, as for the moment anger got the better of fear. “I’ll—I’ll—” he half rose from his seat, his fists clenched in helpless rage.Mr. Roylston turned upon him with a glare. “Youwill do what?” he asked in tones that almost robbed Finch of his senses. “Get to work,” he added, after looking at him steadily for a moment; and then turned away, leaving his victim morally and spiritually prostrate.Poor Finch sank back in his seat, bent his head, and fastened his unseeing eyes on the pages of theAnabasis. The incident, though observed and heard by the whole schoolroom, seemed not to have created a ripple of excitement. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the room. As the master turned from Finch, he observed a hundred heads bent diligently over their books, and a slight grim smile of satisfaction crossed his face. He felt that he had reason to be proud of his discipline. He seated himself at the desk, and his eyes fell idly upon the first page of the manuscript. “Soft-toed Samuel,” he read, and a curl of contempt trembled along his thin lips. And then:“There is no place of general resort in the school which is immune from the presence of Soft-toed Sam; sometimes he is seen thrusting his head even into the locker-rooms below stairs and listening with eager and suspicious ear to the slang and careless conversation that is apt to take place there. And woe to the boy whose tongue is not restrained on such occasions! there will be a day of reckoning. Sometimes he munches a bit of cake at the Pie-house, making pretense of joviality; but whilst he seems attentive to nothing but his goody and the Pie-lady, he overhears the remarks of every boy in the place, and makes a note of them in his little book. Sometimes he comes into the general assembly of all the boys on a Sunday evening, as one who comes to hear and to improve, but who leaves to carp. His face is too well-known, too often seen by every boy in the school. The stealthy tread of Soft-toed Samuel is ever on the trail of the lazy, the indifferent and the wicked, and where he does not find matter for condemnation providedhim by nature, he creates it out of nothing. The Head has....”Mr. Roylston turned the pages, and glanced at the conclusion.“Thus he lives in the school as a critic of and a bane to mankind rather than as one of the species.”It was enough. The handwriting, of course, he recognized. He folded the paper neatly and placed it in his pocket.Poor Finch meanwhile was undergoing excruciating agonies. Not a line of the Greek penetrated his consciousness, even the familiarἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαῦναιwas to him as the inscription on a Babylonian tablet. His own careless folly and stupidity had brought about a catastrophe, a frightful situation, in which he could see his hero was apt to suffer more grievously than himself. But in reality that was not possible. Finch was suffering vicariously with an intensity that Tony could never realize, that in such connection he could never share.And at the end of the period he fearfully approached the master’s desk. As though divining the petition trembling on his lips, Mr. Roylston bade him sternly go out with his form, adding sharply, “I shall return the paper myself when I have had the opportunity of enjoying its promising humor.”At recess Finch found Deering eating his bit of luncheon in the Fifth Form common room. He drew him aside.“Well, Jake, headache gone?” began Tony. “Whatdid you think of the Soft-toed Sammy? Why, what’s the matter?”Finch was white as a sheet. “Oh, Deering,” he gasped, “an awful thing has happened. I—I was reading it—like a fool—in First Study—and—and—Mr. Roylston swiped it.”Tony paused in the midst of taking a bite from his bun, and looked at Jake in consternation.“Gumshoe swiped it?”“Yes, Deering.... I’m sorry.... You don’t know ... I wish I was dead.” He leaned against the lintel of the doorway and hid his face in his hands.Tony pulled himself together with an effort. “I guess you’ve done me,” he began. Then, as he saw Finch wince under his words, he went over quickly to his side, and put his hand on his shoulder. “There, cheer up; I was a beast to say that. It’s all my own fault. It was a darn fool stunt to write such things.”After a time he calmed the unhappy lad, and got from him the details of the incident. At last he went off to report the matter to Jimmie.Lawrence naturally was inclined to say harsh things of Finch, but he too realized that they themselves were to blame for the predicament.“Hate to deprive you of the honor, old chap,” he said, “but honesty forbids me deny the authorship and responsibility forThe Spectacle. The horse is on me.”“The horse!” exclaimed Tony. “It will be a ton of bricks. But it’s rot, Jimmie, to say you’re responsible. I’ll be hanged if I think sticking an adjective here and there, sprinkling commas about,and tinkering with a few mixed tenses, makes you the author. ‘Tis true it’s but a beastly paraphrase on Addison,—but ‘twas my best and, so to speak, my own.”They waited somewhat anxiously that day for the dreaded summons to Mr. Roylston’s outraged presence, but it did not come. That night on his way to Standerland from a meeting of the Dealonian, Tony found a sealed packet in his letter-box in the Old School. It was directed to him in Mr. Roylston’s minute slanting chirography. He tore it open, and found that it contained the confiscated copy ofThe Spectacleand a note from the master therein caricatured.“I return to you under cover,” it ran, without address, “the manuscript for which, since it is in your handwriting, I presume you are responsible. It was confiscated from Finch in First Study this morning. I have read it enough to suggest that the wisest course will be for you to destroy this piece of scurrility at once, also any copies of it that may exist. I have only to say that the offense is so deep and gratuitous an insult that it is not punishable by any of the ordinary methods at our command. Vain as the supposition sometimes seems, we proceed at Deal School on the assumption that we have to treat with gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen.“E. Roylston.”As he read this note, Tony by turns went hot and cold. The last sentence stung him to the quick. He was intensely angry, but as the first impulse of rage passed away, he realized with a bitter sense of humiliation that the master had a perfect right to his resentment; that for once he, Tony Deering, was absolutely, hopelessly in the wrong. Alas! while he had beenfondly supposing that he was beginning to live more unselfishly, beginning to do more for others than he had ever done before, he had wantonly wounded and grossly insulted, as a result of indulging in his propensity to make fun, a fellow member of the school. With the shame and repentance warm in his heart, he hurried over to Howard House where Mr. Roylston roomed, and knocked at his door.The master looked up from his desk, as Tony entered, and his face hardened into a severe expression as he waited for his visitor to speak.“Sir,” exclaimed Tony, impulsively, “I’ve come to beg your pardon.... I know I have done an inexcusable thing, but I am sorry——.”Mr. Roylston laid his pen down and looked fixedly at the boy, but the muscles of his face did not relax. “Don’t you think, Deering,” he interrupted coolly, “that your apology comes with a bad grace after the offense is accidentally discovered? Apparently the despicable character of your method of poking fun seems only to occur to you when you are in danger of incurring the just penalty of such conduct.”Tony bit his lips, but he felt he deserved what the master chose to say. He would not spoil his apology by showing resentment. “I dare say it seems to you that way, sir. But I can only say that at first I simply saw the amusing side of it, and that it was not until I thought how it must have seemed to you that I realized it was an unkind caricature.”Mr. Roylston perceptibly sniffed at the wordcaricature. “Gratuitous insult, it were better termed,” he ejaculated.“Well, sir, I can’t undo it ... I only wish I could. I apologize to you, sir, ... unreservedly.”Mr. Roylston appeared to choose his words with even more than his usual care. “I accept the apology, of course, technically. But naturally it does not atone for the offense.”“No,” said Tony, “I know it does not.”For a moment there was silence. “You are curious to know what I propose to do?” asked Mr. Roylston, with a note of sarcasm.“No—no, sir,” replied Tony ingenuously. “I don’t think that matters, sir. I only hope you believe what I say, that I am truly sorry for what has occurred.”He had worded his sentence unfortunately, for the master took it as a quibble. “Yes,” he replied tartly, “I can well believe that you are sorry for what hasoccurred.”“I don’t mean——” began Tony.“That will do,” said Mr. Roylston dryly. “I have gathered enough of your meaning for the once. No—I do not mean to punish you.” A bitter smile flickered over his face. “As I sought to explain in my note, which I had every intention should put a period to the incident, our punishments in this school are not adapted to the case. One has but two alternatives in such affairs,—to expel or to ignore persons capable of such conduct. I have concluded to ignore. I bid you good evening.”Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it quickly, and with a slight inclination of his head, turned and left the room.“He means to rub it in by slow degrees, by his peculiar and unspeakable methods of torture,” was Jimmie’s comment when Tony had told him of the interview later. “You were an ass not to let me share the responsibility. The Gumshoe accept an apology! why, he hasn’t the charity of a mosquito. As Kit would say,” he added thoughtfully, “he is ‘a gloomy ass.’ Well, I reckon, Tonio, old sport, we’ll have to chuckThe Spectacle.”“Hang it, of course, we will. It was a poor fool sheet, Jim; rather a sad business for two good little schoolboys like us to be taken up with.”“And like most wicked things, amusing,” remarked Reggie from the depths of an armchair where he had been an interested hearer of the conversation. “Like most forbidden things, diverting.”“What a crude philosopher you sometimes are, Reggie,” said Lawrence. “One looks to you for illuminating comment—not for the obvious platitude.”“True, my poet,” drawled Carroll, “but there are moments when one inadvertently sinks below one’s normal level. But adieu to some diverting moments!”“Thanks! Adieu, too, to my Addisonian English! I wish we could as easily bid adieu to the consequences.”“I fancy it will be a long time before you say farewell to those, my young friends.”“Hm, he evidently doesn’t mean to take it to the Head,” said Tony.“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet,“the time is not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in the hour of your pride. Beware.”“Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work.

THE SPECTACLE

Games and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in before the Christmas holidays.

The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring. And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books.

As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters, but as the keen-eyed mistressat Betty’s school soon detected the nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between. At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But, it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or opportunity for love affairs.

During the winter he became interested in the Dealonian, a semi-secret society, that held frequent debates and discussions before the school, and regarded itself as being an institution of great importance. For exercise and sport he went in for hockey, where his fleetness counted as much toward success as it did in football. The Deal boys had capital hockey grounds, one on Deal Water which lay at the foot of the hill between the school and Monday Port; and the other on Beaver Pond, under the lee of Lovel’s Woods which though smaller usually froze earlier.

It was customary for the Dealonian to elect a Fifth Former as its president at the beginning of the winter term. This office was supposed, and usually did, register the boys’ somewhat premature choice for a head prefect for the school for the following year. Deering was elected president of the Dealonian by a unanimous vote, after very little campaigning on the part of his friends. He was generally popular, and his exploit in the Boxford game had brought him more prominently before the school than ever before.In the opinion of his particular friends he was also developing qualities of leadership, which made him the logical candidate of their group for general honors. Tony valued the position of president highly. And in the fine fervor of his good resolutions he determined that through it he would do a lot for the school. The Dealonian held frequent meetings at which the entire school were invited, and at which topics of general interest were discussed by the boys themselves. It was indeed through these meetings that the public opinion of the school was largely formed and guided by the older boys.

The walk with Mr. Morris on the beach the night of the Boxford game had solidified in Tony’s mind a good many resolutions. And, though it is not usually the case that the generous ideals and ambitions of boys find particular expression, since the flash of intuition into Finch’s starved life had been in part the occasion of his forming good resolutions at all, it was not unnatural that he should have settled upon Finch as a concrete opportunity for putting them into effect. The talk with Mr. Morris, though Finch’s name had not actually been mentioned, had also brought the matter before Tony’s mind, for Morris had been the first to suggest to him the possibility of his being of use in that direction. To be sure, the sympathy with Finch had been intuitive and had not stayed with him as vividly as it had impressed him on the night of the bonfire, but then it had flashed so intensely that it was not soon altogether to expire. It glowed in the depths of his consciousness like sparks amongst the embers of a dying fire, capableof blazing forth again if fresh fuel should be added. Tony proposed to add the fuel.

He made a point, for instance, of dropping in at Finch’s room in Standerland two or three times a week and chatting with the boy the odd quarters of an hour that he otherwise would have spent in genial loafing with his cronies. And though he certainly would not have kept on going there for the sake of anything that Finch could contribute to the joy of life for him, when the awkwardness of deliberately performing a kindness had somewhat worn off, he found a certain amount of compensating satisfaction in noting the light of pleasure that came into Jake’s pale blue eyes, and in the relaxation of the corners of his mouth from bitter rigidity into friendly appreciation and welcome. Gradually too Finch’s shyness wore off a little when he was alone with Tony; and though it can hardly be said that even in his most un-selfconscious moments he ever seemed a full-blooded care-free boy, he thawed into a semblance of humanity. He reminded Tony often of a dog that has been treated cruelly in its puppyhood, which never recovers fearlessness but shrinks even under a friendly hand.

And like a dog Jacob Finch began to idolize Anthony Deering. This was the first time in all his barren life that a fellow boy had treated him with kindness, who had not showed in his manner the repulsion the unhappy little chap had the misfortune to stir in his kind. Tony’s image loomed large in his thoughts. The intense worship he paid him secretly did much to atone for the slights of others, to blot outother boys from his consciousness. He cringed and shrank still under jibes and jokes, trembled with unreasoned fear before masters, quivered with fright when he found himself alone in a crowd of boys; but he did his work faithfully and with the success that comes from persistence even when a keen intelligence is lacking. More and more, however, his inner life was absorbed in his devotion to Deering.

From his seat in the chapel he could just see the wavy, copper-colored top of Tony’s head. By straining a little he could frequently see his face,—bright, sensitive, mobile, smiling often that smile of a singular and rare sweetness that made Tony beautiful to others beside Finch. To Jake he was as perfect, as spotless, as wonderful, as a god. The fervor of his adoration was akin to the enthusiasm of adevotéefor his idol. All this of course he hid, not altogether but mostly, from Deering; never voiced, though he could not help looking his devotion. He would spend hours during a day standing about in various places on the mere chance that he would get a glimpse of Tony; haunted the woods above Beaver Pond in the hockey season, where he would lie, flat and shivering, upon a projecting rock, and follow with weak, straining eyes the skaters on the ice below, his eager gaze seeking always for one bright slim form. And when he had found it, he was as happy as he often had been.

Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration hehad for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend.

Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have theirprotégéin Number Five study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them.

Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world, he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the best for him.

Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine, issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title ofThe Spectacle. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager, printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to required work for the masters he had written yards of shortstories, poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de Coverly papers fromThe Spectatorthat Stenton had inflicted on the Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them. Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay and practical joking of the Lower School.

One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.

“By Jove, Jim, that’s a joy!” was his room-mate’s gratifying criticism. “That’s a blame sight better than the sawdust that Jack is trying to stuff down our throats in English.”

“Well, I have me doubts as to that,” Jimmie responded, “but I appreciate the compliment even if it makes the critic out to be an ignoramus.”

“Words of one syllable, my dear,” protested Tony, “when you try to get ideas into my cranium.Critic or not, that’s darn good writing. Give us another.”

Jimmie smiled, closed his mathematics books with the air of one who makes a sacrifice in a noble cause, and for half an hour bent again to laborious composition. The result was a clever little skit on Ducky Thornton entitled “The Human Sofa Cushion.” The wit was broader, and it struck Tony as quite irresistibly funny.

“By Jove, kiddo, we’ll start aSpectatorof our own, eh? Hit off the masters and some of our loving schoolmates, and let ‘em circulate. It’ll be heaps of fun.”

Lawrence laughed at the vision of the possibilities that came to him. “I think it will,” he said. “We’ll write ‘em out in your clear hand, and pass ‘em on to the crowd.”

And soThe Spectaclecame into existence. Jimmie did most of the composition, and Tony invariably copied it out, for Jimmie’s handwriting left much to be desired, as is the case we have been told with other authors. Now and then there was an original contribution from Tony, and occasionally one from Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing or Tack Turner, all more crude and broad, but few absolutely devoid of real humor. In the course of a few months they had composed quite a gallery of pen-portraits, wherein were caricatured, seldom unkindly, the faults and foibles of most of the faculty and many of the boys.The Spectaclehad a popular if restricted circulation.

It fell to Tony at length to do the paper on Mr. Roylston. None of the articles were labeled by correct names, but there was scarcely ever any doubt in themind of the reader who had served as the model of the portrait. The paper on Mr. Roylston, paraphrasing his nickname, was entitled “Soft-toed Samuel.” Tony had caricatured broadly, but before being written out in his neat fine hand, the style had been softened, smoothed and improved, occasional lapses in orthography had been corrected, and the defects of punctuation supplied,—in fact the crude strokes of the amateur had been retouched by the hand of an artist. The artist was Jimmie.

It was a great success with thehabituésof Number Five study. Tony was so pleased with it himself, that he took it in late of an evening to Finch’s room with the idea of cheering up his charge who had seemed even unwontedly seedy that day.

“Here, Jake,” he exclaimed, as he burst in at the door, “here’s the latestSpectacle. Have a try at it.”

Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting. “Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a flash, pushed him gently back.

“There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.”

Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”

Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?”

“No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleepit off; it’s the only way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.”

“Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.”

“Leave theSpectacle, will you?”

“All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning. Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re sick?”

“Yes—he’s been in.”

“Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.”

When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery till sleep came at last and released him.

The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as Mr. Roylston held it, usually wasstudyand not the loafing, letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations, and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling broadly in the schoolroom. The master, solong the traditionalbête noirand subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr. Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him to be amusing.

Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless grasp.

“I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply. “It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in reading amusing letters.”

“It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch.

“It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,” replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing whatever upon Xenophon’sAnabasisor the Greek Grammar.”

He glanced at the title as he spoke. “Soft-toed Samuel” conveyed little to him, enough however to inform him that he had been correct in his surmise that it was tabooed matter.

“But—but, it—it isn’t mine,” protested Finch.

“No?” commented Mr. Roylston, with an accent of indifference. “I shall return it to its owner in good time, if you choose to inform me who he is.” He glanced casually over the writing.

“Don’t—don’t you dare to read that!” cried Finch, his face livid, as for the moment anger got the better of fear. “I’ll—I’ll—” he half rose from his seat, his fists clenched in helpless rage.

Mr. Roylston turned upon him with a glare. “Youwill do what?” he asked in tones that almost robbed Finch of his senses. “Get to work,” he added, after looking at him steadily for a moment; and then turned away, leaving his victim morally and spiritually prostrate.

Poor Finch sank back in his seat, bent his head, and fastened his unseeing eyes on the pages of theAnabasis. The incident, though observed and heard by the whole schoolroom, seemed not to have created a ripple of excitement. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the room. As the master turned from Finch, he observed a hundred heads bent diligently over their books, and a slight grim smile of satisfaction crossed his face. He felt that he had reason to be proud of his discipline. He seated himself at the desk, and his eyes fell idly upon the first page of the manuscript. “Soft-toed Samuel,” he read, and a curl of contempt trembled along his thin lips. And then:

“There is no place of general resort in the school which is immune from the presence of Soft-toed Sam; sometimes he is seen thrusting his head even into the locker-rooms below stairs and listening with eager and suspicious ear to the slang and careless conversation that is apt to take place there. And woe to the boy whose tongue is not restrained on such occasions! there will be a day of reckoning. Sometimes he munches a bit of cake at the Pie-house, making pretense of joviality; but whilst he seems attentive to nothing but his goody and the Pie-lady, he overhears the remarks of every boy in the place, and makes a note of them in his little book. Sometimes he comes into the general assembly of all the boys on a Sunday evening, as one who comes to hear and to improve, but who leaves to carp. His face is too well-known, too often seen by every boy in the school. The stealthy tread of Soft-toed Samuel is ever on the trail of the lazy, the indifferent and the wicked, and where he does not find matter for condemnation providedhim by nature, he creates it out of nothing. The Head has....”

Mr. Roylston turned the pages, and glanced at the conclusion.

“Thus he lives in the school as a critic of and a bane to mankind rather than as one of the species.”

It was enough. The handwriting, of course, he recognized. He folded the paper neatly and placed it in his pocket.

Poor Finch meanwhile was undergoing excruciating agonies. Not a line of the Greek penetrated his consciousness, even the familiarἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαῦναιwas to him as the inscription on a Babylonian tablet. His own careless folly and stupidity had brought about a catastrophe, a frightful situation, in which he could see his hero was apt to suffer more grievously than himself. But in reality that was not possible. Finch was suffering vicariously with an intensity that Tony could never realize, that in such connection he could never share.

And at the end of the period he fearfully approached the master’s desk. As though divining the petition trembling on his lips, Mr. Roylston bade him sternly go out with his form, adding sharply, “I shall return the paper myself when I have had the opportunity of enjoying its promising humor.”

At recess Finch found Deering eating his bit of luncheon in the Fifth Form common room. He drew him aside.

“Well, Jake, headache gone?” began Tony. “Whatdid you think of the Soft-toed Sammy? Why, what’s the matter?”

Finch was white as a sheet. “Oh, Deering,” he gasped, “an awful thing has happened. I—I was reading it—like a fool—in First Study—and—and—Mr. Roylston swiped it.”

Tony paused in the midst of taking a bite from his bun, and looked at Jake in consternation.

“Gumshoe swiped it?”

“Yes, Deering.... I’m sorry.... You don’t know ... I wish I was dead.” He leaned against the lintel of the doorway and hid his face in his hands.

Tony pulled himself together with an effort. “I guess you’ve done me,” he began. Then, as he saw Finch wince under his words, he went over quickly to his side, and put his hand on his shoulder. “There, cheer up; I was a beast to say that. It’s all my own fault. It was a darn fool stunt to write such things.”

After a time he calmed the unhappy lad, and got from him the details of the incident. At last he went off to report the matter to Jimmie.

Lawrence naturally was inclined to say harsh things of Finch, but he too realized that they themselves were to blame for the predicament.

“Hate to deprive you of the honor, old chap,” he said, “but honesty forbids me deny the authorship and responsibility forThe Spectacle. The horse is on me.”

“The horse!” exclaimed Tony. “It will be a ton of bricks. But it’s rot, Jimmie, to say you’re responsible. I’ll be hanged if I think sticking an adjective here and there, sprinkling commas about,and tinkering with a few mixed tenses, makes you the author. ‘Tis true it’s but a beastly paraphrase on Addison,—but ‘twas my best and, so to speak, my own.”

They waited somewhat anxiously that day for the dreaded summons to Mr. Roylston’s outraged presence, but it did not come. That night on his way to Standerland from a meeting of the Dealonian, Tony found a sealed packet in his letter-box in the Old School. It was directed to him in Mr. Roylston’s minute slanting chirography. He tore it open, and found that it contained the confiscated copy ofThe Spectacleand a note from the master therein caricatured.

“I return to you under cover,” it ran, without address, “the manuscript for which, since it is in your handwriting, I presume you are responsible. It was confiscated from Finch in First Study this morning. I have read it enough to suggest that the wisest course will be for you to destroy this piece of scurrility at once, also any copies of it that may exist. I have only to say that the offense is so deep and gratuitous an insult that it is not punishable by any of the ordinary methods at our command. Vain as the supposition sometimes seems, we proceed at Deal School on the assumption that we have to treat with gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen.

“E. Roylston.”

As he read this note, Tony by turns went hot and cold. The last sentence stung him to the quick. He was intensely angry, but as the first impulse of rage passed away, he realized with a bitter sense of humiliation that the master had a perfect right to his resentment; that for once he, Tony Deering, was absolutely, hopelessly in the wrong. Alas! while he had beenfondly supposing that he was beginning to live more unselfishly, beginning to do more for others than he had ever done before, he had wantonly wounded and grossly insulted, as a result of indulging in his propensity to make fun, a fellow member of the school. With the shame and repentance warm in his heart, he hurried over to Howard House where Mr. Roylston roomed, and knocked at his door.

The master looked up from his desk, as Tony entered, and his face hardened into a severe expression as he waited for his visitor to speak.

“Sir,” exclaimed Tony, impulsively, “I’ve come to beg your pardon.... I know I have done an inexcusable thing, but I am sorry——.”

Mr. Roylston laid his pen down and looked fixedly at the boy, but the muscles of his face did not relax. “Don’t you think, Deering,” he interrupted coolly, “that your apology comes with a bad grace after the offense is accidentally discovered? Apparently the despicable character of your method of poking fun seems only to occur to you when you are in danger of incurring the just penalty of such conduct.”

Tony bit his lips, but he felt he deserved what the master chose to say. He would not spoil his apology by showing resentment. “I dare say it seems to you that way, sir. But I can only say that at first I simply saw the amusing side of it, and that it was not until I thought how it must have seemed to you that I realized it was an unkind caricature.”

Mr. Roylston perceptibly sniffed at the wordcaricature. “Gratuitous insult, it were better termed,” he ejaculated.

“Well, sir, I can’t undo it ... I only wish I could. I apologize to you, sir, ... unreservedly.”

Mr. Roylston appeared to choose his words with even more than his usual care. “I accept the apology, of course, technically. But naturally it does not atone for the offense.”

“No,” said Tony, “I know it does not.”

For a moment there was silence. “You are curious to know what I propose to do?” asked Mr. Roylston, with a note of sarcasm.

“No—no, sir,” replied Tony ingenuously. “I don’t think that matters, sir. I only hope you believe what I say, that I am truly sorry for what has occurred.”

He had worded his sentence unfortunately, for the master took it as a quibble. “Yes,” he replied tartly, “I can well believe that you are sorry for what hasoccurred.”

“I don’t mean——” began Tony.

“That will do,” said Mr. Roylston dryly. “I have gathered enough of your meaning for the once. No—I do not mean to punish you.” A bitter smile flickered over his face. “As I sought to explain in my note, which I had every intention should put a period to the incident, our punishments in this school are not adapted to the case. One has but two alternatives in such affairs,—to expel or to ignore persons capable of such conduct. I have concluded to ignore. I bid you good evening.”

Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it quickly, and with a slight inclination of his head, turned and left the room.

“He means to rub it in by slow degrees, by his peculiar and unspeakable methods of torture,” was Jimmie’s comment when Tony had told him of the interview later. “You were an ass not to let me share the responsibility. The Gumshoe accept an apology! why, he hasn’t the charity of a mosquito. As Kit would say,” he added thoughtfully, “he is ‘a gloomy ass.’ Well, I reckon, Tonio, old sport, we’ll have to chuckThe Spectacle.”

“Hang it, of course, we will. It was a poor fool sheet, Jim; rather a sad business for two good little schoolboys like us to be taken up with.”

“And like most wicked things, amusing,” remarked Reggie from the depths of an armchair where he had been an interested hearer of the conversation. “Like most forbidden things, diverting.”

“What a crude philosopher you sometimes are, Reggie,” said Lawrence. “One looks to you for illuminating comment—not for the obvious platitude.”

“True, my poet,” drawled Carroll, “but there are moments when one inadvertently sinks below one’s normal level. But adieu to some diverting moments!”

“Thanks! Adieu, too, to my Addisonian English! I wish we could as easily bid adieu to the consequences.”

“I fancy it will be a long time before you say farewell to those, my young friends.”

“Hm, he evidently doesn’t mean to take it to the Head,” said Tony.

“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet,“the time is not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in the hour of your pride. Beware.”

“Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work.

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