CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVTONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGELMr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect. From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends. He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process, and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion. Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the master’s lips.In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open hostility.But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’ unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over their four or five years at Deal, the incident ofThe Spectacleseemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young friends.And mixed up in all this affair of Deering and his “crowd,” there was in Mr. Roylston’s mind a sense, not clear but keen, that Finch was somehow concerned. He genuinely believed that Doctor Forester had made a mistake in taking Finch at Deal, and the passage of words with Morris on the occasion of the boy’s arrival, had irritated him intensely. He knew, and was sometimes ashamed of the fact, that he had let that irritation affect his treatment, in little ways, of the boy himself. He had always disliked Morris, and quite sincerely thought Morris’s unaffected good nature and genial optimism with regard to boys was a pose. The incident of Finch’s hazing, wherein he had punished the rescuers instead of the hazers, increased his uncomfortable feeling about the whole situation. But the discomfort did not increase his humility. He knew that in much he was wrong, buthe was so accustomed to the idea of supposing himself to be right, that he argued away the accusations of his conscience.On Finch he therefore continued to vent a good deal of his spleen. And on Finch the old sledge-hammer method of sarcasm was an effective weapon. The boy bore the master’s reproofs with a little less outward wincing than of old, but inwardly they racked his very soul. Mr. Roylston’s attitude affected him very differently from the way it affected Deering. He could not work in his class. A shaft of sarcasm, an expression of patient suffering on the master’s face as the boy blundered through his recitation, altogether confused him. Day after day he would fail in a lesson which he had spent hours in preparing. From a sense of duty Mr. Roylston now and then would see the delinquent outside of the classroom, and make an attempt to clear up his difficulties. But on these occasions Finch seemingly was more completely bereft of his senses than during a recitation. Mr. Roylston mistook this confusion for willful refusal to understand, and in time treated him accordingly.“What the deuce is the matter with you, Jake?” Tony asked once, after a trying period in Latin, wherein Finch had floundered about in absurd fashion. “You know a heap more Latin than I do, but you go in before Gumshoe and act as if he were asking you questions in Sanscrit.”“I know—I know,” Finch answered, miserably. “But I can’t help it. I just can’t get my wits before him. Every idea flies out of my head when he asks me a question. I am doing all right in other subjects.”“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”“And that’s all my fault!”“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.”“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?”“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.”Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul.Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The nervous, overwroughtstate in which he had been living during the fall and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary.Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.”Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar, on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?”“Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.”“The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man, you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?”“Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school were willing to give him a chance.”“I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the maimed, the halt and the blind.”“No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I have.”“But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.“No I don’t see,” answered Tony. “I dare say the three of us have a certain amount of influence, and if we chose to exert it I’ve an idea that we could get him in.”“Well, you can hang that harp on a weeping willow-tree,” was Kit’s conclusive comment, “I don’t intend to try. I am perfectly willing to lick Ducky Thornton every day in the week for hazing him, if need be; I’m willing to have Tony bring him in here three or four times a week and bore us to death, if he wants to; but I’m hanged if I’ll try to get him into the Dealonian. That’s supposed to be made up of the representative fellows of the school. You’re carrying your guardian angelship business too far, kiddo. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”Tony, for once, did not reply in like fashion to Kit’s vigorous and breezy way of expressing himself. He reflected a moment or so, and then spoke with an unusually quiet and determined air, as though he were simply making an announcement and not asking advice. “I have thought it over pretty carefully, Kit; and I’ve made up my mind to try it. I only hope you fellows will back me up.”Jimmie was silent. Kit, convinced at last that Tony was indeed in earnest, protested vigorously. “You’redead wrong, Tony. You oughtn’t to try it. The fellows won’t stand for it. And you’ve no right to ask me to back you up in a thing which I’m perfectly certain is a darn fool proposition.”“Well,” said Tony, “you needn’t back me up, if you don’t want to. But that’s all rot for you to say it’s a darn fool notion. I’ve a perfect right to put him up, if I think it the thing to do, and I am going to do it.”“Well, go ahead, and waste your time. I s’pose the little pup’ll lick your boots cleaner than ever in gratitude, whether you’re successful or not.”Tony flared up at this. “I’ll thank you, Wilson, not to call my friends pups. I reckon I can find some decent chaps to vote for him, even if I can’t count on my own pals.” And with that, very hot in the head, he flung himself out of the room.“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Kit. “To think of him flinging me over for that drowned rat! What’s the matter with him? Has he gone clean crazy?”“He’s got the kid on his brain. But no sense in your flaring out so, Kit; that’s no way to get on with Tony. Naturally he’s sensitive.”“Who flared up?” demanded Kit, indignantly. “I’m as calm as a millpond. Tony went off the handle because we disagreed with him. I guess I’ve as good a right to my opinions as he has to his.”“Oh, for gosh’s sake, shut up; there’s no sense in quarreling over this matter. Finch won’t get into the Dealonian, but whether he can or not, I’d just as soon vote for him.”“Well, I’ll be hanged if I would,” asserted Wilson.“And what’s more I’ll get up in the meeting and say it’s a darn fool proposition and ought to be turned down.”“What’s the sense in doing that? It’ll just mean that you and Tony will have a serious falling-out, and the crowd will get busted up. What’s the use? It ain’t worth while.”“The heck it isn’t! I won’t compromise a principle for a friend ever, I don’t care who he is. Nor I won’t have a friend ram his ideas down my throat. I’ve as much right to put a fellow up or blackball him in the Dealonian as Tony has. Seems to me he’s getting——.”“Oh, shut up. You are working yourself all up over nothing. It isn’t worth it. Don’t quarrel with Tony.”“Seems to me Tony’s picking the quarrel with me. Who flung himself out of the room just now? I didn’t, I guess. I tell you what, Jim, if Tony wants to keep on good terms with me, he can; but he’s not going to make the price of his friendship my voting to suit him about anything. I guess we made Tony Deering in this school—you and I.”“Rot!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Tony made himself. He’d have been the head of the school if we had never exchanged a word with him. We’ve been darn glad to have him in the crowd, that’s the truth of it; he’s been the center of it ever since he’s been here. You were keen enough about making him president of the Dealonian, and I guess you want him for head prefect next year.”“’Course I was keen; ‘course I do ... I’m allserene. If there’s a quarrel, it won’t be my fault. But I’m going to blackball Finch for the good of the Society, ‘cause I think it would be a mistake to let him in, and I hope you’ll do the same.”“Well, I won’t.”“Do as you please, that’syourright. So long, kiddo, I guess I’ll seek a more congenial clime for the time bein’.” And with that Kit swung himself out of the room.Jimmie, genuinely distressed by this first serious difference in their congenial little circle, went over to Mr. Morris’s room, and took him into his confidence on the subject. Morris was not a little disturbed by the situation. He admired Tony’s purpose, but with Jimmie, thought it somewhat ill-judged and ill-timed, and deplored the possible cleavage it might make in the little knot of friends. But, characteristically, he did not see his way to interfering, even with advice.Unfortunately Tony and Kit again encountered each other that night in Reggie Carroll’s room. Tony was cool, and Reggie, ignorant of what had happened, made matters worse by asking them facetiously what had ruffled the sweet waters of their friendship.“Ask Tony,” answered Kit laconically, as he thumbed a school year book and tried to think of some way of getting out of the room.Tony shrugged his shoulders.“What’s up?” repeated Reggie.“Nothing particular,” Deering answered, after a pause. “We just don’t pull together in a certain matter.”“Well, what do you expect,” exclaimed Kit impulsively, “do you expect me to measure my opinions by yours?”“Rather not,” answered Tony, with a faint sneer, “you’d find them in that case a darn sight too big for you.”“Softly, softly,” protested Reggie. But Tony again was gone.When he got back to his own room later in the evening, Jimmie tried to talk the subject over with him, but Tony, ruffled and irritated, was not inclined to do so.“I’ve made up my mind, Jim, so that’s all there is to it. I’m going to put Finch up next Saturday night, and in the meantime I’m going to work hard to try to get the fellows to vote for him. I hope you won’t blackball him.”“No, I won’t do that, Tony; but I wish you’d see Kit and talk it over with him in a friendly way.”“I’ll talk it over with Kit, if he wants to talk it over with me; but he has got to drop his swagger and bulldozing manner, if he wants to.”“Look here, old man; Kit’s just impulsive; that’s all. Suppose I, after I had thought it over, made up my mind that it would be a bad thing for the Society and blackballed Finch, would you let that make any difference between us?”Tony thought a moment. “No, old chap, of course it wouldn’t. I’d be sorry, of course, because I would feel you were wrong. But it isn’t being opposed that makes me sore, it’s Kit’s blustering blowing way of doing it.”Jimmie went that night and sat on Tony’s bed for a long time after lights. They said nothing more about Kit or Finch, but talked intimately of a variety of other things in which they were interested, in the old close pleasant way. It was a long happy quiet talk and it did much to strengthen their friendship in the times of stress that were coming.The conversations we have recorded took place well along in the winter term on a Monday night in March. The following Saturday evening was the date of the important meeting of the Dealonian Society at which new members were elected.Tony spent a zealous week campaigning for Finch, and found it a disheartening business. Most of the boys—there were about forty members of the Society—protested, but after long persuasion, promised to cast favorable votes, though they took pains, almost without exception, to assure Tony that they were doing it simply because he asked them. Others refused definitely to commit themselves, and Tony had to be content with that. To Jimmie’s distress, Kit kept away from Number Five study all that week, and refused to make any advances toward setting things right with Tony. “I’ll talk it over, if he comes to me,” he would say to Jimmie over and over. “But I am going to blackball Finch, and I guess I can persuade at least one other fellow to do the same, so he won’t get into the Dealonian. Tony can do what he pleases. After it’s all over, if he wants to make up, well and good; I’ll have no hard feelings: if he don’t,—well, well and good, also.”At last, after what seemed an interminable week toour three friends Saturday night came, and the forty members of the Dealonian Society met in solemn conclave in the Library. Tony took the chair, looking a trifle nervous and anxious, and called the meeting to order. Kit was present, sitting well back, and assumed an air of bland indifference to the proceedings. There were four new members to be elected from the Fifth Form.Routine business was transacted for a quarter of an hour, and at last the president announced, “If there is no objection, we will proceed to the election of new members. As I wish to place a name in nomination, I will ask Mr. Wendell to take the chair.”Billy Wendell, the head prefect, captain of the football team, and the last year’s president of the Dealonian, rose from his seat, and took the chair behind the big desk in a very solemn way, very much as a presidentpro tem. walks up to the platform of the Senate. He settled himself, coughed slightly, and recognized Tony. “Mr. Deering has the floor,” he observed in judicial tones.“Mr. President and members of the Dealonian Society, I desire to place in nomination for membership in this society the name of Jacob Finch of the Fifth Form.” As this was expected, the boys showed little surprise. Jimmie glanced back at Kit, and saw his lips curl with faint contempt. Tony too glanced about him; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he threw back his shoulders, and addressed the Society. He cast aside now the solemn traditional oratorical form that the boys made an effort to assume, and his clear sweet voice rang with feeling. “Fellows,” he said,“I believe, as we all do, that this Society has the right to consider itself the most important institution in the school, and I realize that I am nominating one for membership in it, who, according to all standards we have set for ourselves and which have been so well maintained through many school generations, seems not to have a shadow of right to election. We want here fellows whose opinion counts, whose influence will be strong and positive, who have done and are able to do things for the school, in athletics, in scholarship, and in various other ways. I can’t pretend that I think that Jacob Finch will stand for these things or will do these things. But for once, it seems to me, that other considerations should weigh with us.”The boys were startled by the unusual feeling in Deering’s voice and by the unconventional arguments he was using to urge his candidate upon their favor, and they settled into attitudes of deep attention.“At the beginning of the year,” Tony went on, “a new boy came amongst us who, as we all know, has been treated as no boy ever was who came to the school before. He has been brutally hazed, and for months his life has been made miserable by young and old, and unfortunately he has had no way of defending himself. He has never had a chance, he hasn’t got a square deal. I have got to know him, I suppose, better than anyone else, and while I don’t claim or even think that he is an unusual fellow, I do believe there is something in him that could be made to count for the school if he had a show; if it could really be proved to him that you fellows werewilling to make him one of yourselves, give him not merely a fair, but a generous chance. I don’t want you merely to admit him to this Society because I ask it as a favor to me, though I hope you will do it for that reason if you won’t do it for any other; but I ask you to vote for him as an act of generous kindness toward a chap who hasn’t had the chance that any of us have had, whose life in this school up to now has been downright hell.”With that Tony sat down. A ripple of conversation went round the room. The boys were quite won by this unusual appeal to their generosity and sympathy. Billy Wendell called them sharply to order. “Are there any further remarks upon Finch?”Half a dozen fellows rose one after another, and declared, with a certain amount of feeling and a certain lack of grace, that they agreed with Deering, and that they thought Finch ought to be elected. Jimmie wanted to speak for Tony’s sake, but he could not quite bring himself to do so. In his heart he agreed with Kit that Tony’s judgment on this occasion was mistaken, and that were Finch elected it would not accomplish for him what Tony so generously hoped. There was a pause after good-natured Clayton had uttered a few stuttering sentimental remarks. Then Kit Wilson rose up quickly. His face was flushed, he seemed nervous, but there were lines of dogged determination about his mouth.“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair are notthose of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous, but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be elected.”With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the names and the boys respondingPlacetorNon Placet, as the case might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative. Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called. “Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up.“The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair.The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted. After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result, which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In thecorridor he came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were successful, weren’t you!”Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered.Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books.CHAPTER XVIA RIFT IN FRIENDSHIPThe prominent members of a particular set of boys can scarcely be on bad terms with each other without the relations of them all being more or less affected, and this was certainly the case with our friends at Deal. Tony had more and more become the real leader of the little circle, so that Kit’s defection partook of the nature of a rebellion.Tack Turner, who had blackballed Finch at Kit’s request, had by that act lined himself on Wilson’s side. He was a slow, rather dull boy, quieter than the others, but generally liked. He had not felt particularly one way or the other with regard to Finch, and had agreed with Kit chiefly because it happened to be Kit that spoke to him first. But having given his word, he was of that tenacious and somewhat unintelligent type, that will stick to it whether subsequent events show his position to be a reasonable one or not. His semi-indifferent attitude was transformed, however, into violent partisanship for Kit, as Tony took occasion the morning after the Dealonian meeting to express his opinion of Tack’s blackballing Finch somewhat caustically.“I confess, Tack,” he said “that I never gave you the credit for much independence of judgment, but Ididn’t think you were quite so devoid of it as to vote just the way you were told to.”Turner growled out a bitter retort to this unnecessary remark, and the two parted on bad terms for the first time in their lives.Charlie Gordon, a light-hearted, easy-going, generous-minded lad sided naturally enough with Tony, and had been quite impressed by Tony’s eloquence the evening before. Teddy Lansing had not voted, and refused to commit himself. Poor Jimmie Lawrence was torn in both directions. He had been willing enough to vote for Finch and let Tony have his way, because he was deeply and genuinely fond of him, and was accustomed to follow his lead; but he could not bring himself to feel, despite Tony’s eloquent appeal at the meeting, that there was any real case for Finch with respect to the Dealonian, and he deplored the fact that Tony insisted on his plan. He was fond of Kit also; they had been chums since they had entered Deal together in the First Form five years before. His position was really a very hard one, because he felt and tried to be neutral, and neither Tony nor Kit, between whom the breach grew wider, was satisfied with neutrality. Both actually, if not expressly, were demanding partisanship.Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the incident—and this also Jimmie had dimly foreseen and feared—was the effect it had on Jacob Finch. Forty boys cannot keep a secret, so that it was not long before Finch heard a tolerably correct version of what had taken place at the Dealonian meeting. He was grateful to Deering for the effort he had made in his behalf,but the consciousness that he had been publicly discussed by a society of representative boys and formally rejected as a candidate for their companionship, added intensely to the bitterness of what he felt was his position.Sometimes when he was alone and thought of the incident, the hot tears would well up in his eyes and blind him. Bitter thoughts likewise would rise up in his soul and overwhelm him. He sometimes felt he could not stick it out for the year. But then, what else could he do? He could not think. He was absolutely dependent upon Doctor Forester, and he was not of the caliber to act rashly, go bravely out and face the hostile world. And the world seemed hostile to him—the very elements, these biting winter winds and prolonged northeast storms—seemed to beat against him. Hated alike by masters and boys, as he thought, he indeed was miserable. And, alas! save for his ardent affection for Deering, he began to hate bitterly and maliciously in return.Life had taught him to be sly and silent, but heretofore beyond a furtive manner and an intense reserve, the quality of slyness had not shown itself. But now his malice seemed to demand expression, impelled him to action, and he began, first in little ways, afterwards by more systematic plans to torment his tormentors. But so secretly, so cautiously, that, though his sting was felt, his victim was ignorant whence it had come.The principal objects of his hatred were Mr. Roylston and Kit Wilson, the latter only after he learned of Kit’s breach with Tony. Mr. Roylston began to beafflicted with a series of annoying and inexplicable incidents; anonymous letters were slipped into his mail-box, threatening him with dire calamities unless he speedily exhibited a change of heart; his books, his papers were misplaced, to be found in out-of-the-way places; twice or thrice his study was disordered; and once, at night as he was crossing the field, mud was thrown at him and his immaculate clothes were sadly bespattered. But so carefully did the culprit destroy all clues to his identity that the master had no redress. For once he was baffled. Never, so contemptuous an opinion did he hold of Finch’s spirit, did it occur to him even to suspect the poor worm whom daily he ground beneath the brazen feet of his sarcasm in the classroom.He took little Beverly into his confidence as they sat late one night over a comfortable fire in the masters’ common-room.“These things,” he remarked, “have been going on now for a number of weeks, and for the first time in my experience I do not discover the slightest clue to the culprit.”“Of course, however,” was Beverly’s comment, made partly to display his omniscience, partly to flatter an older colleague, “of course, you have your suspicions?”“Of course,” responded Roylston dryly, “that goes without saying. I have suspected both Deering and Wilson, whom indeed several times before have I discovered in misdemeanors of a similar character; but, if you chance to have been observing of late, you will have noticed and wondered that those two charming youths no longer consort together.”“Oh, boys of that sort,” said Beverly blithely, to hide his ignorance of the alleged coolness, “boys of that sort always fall out after a time. Mischief is a poor cement for friendship.”“On the contrary it has been my observation that it often does cement it. But I am the less inclined to lay my annoyances to the two boys I have mentioned than I would be if they were as thick as they formerly were. Wilson simply has not the ingenuity or the wit to do such things for so long a time and escape detection; and Deering lacks the incentive of Wilson’s impulsive and malignant vindictiveness. I am inclined to feel that I will discover the miscreant in some other set. Alas! they are not the only boys not above such things.”“I would keep an eye on my suspects, however,” remarked Beverly, with an air of conviction that he was offering very subtle advice.“Oh, my eye is ever on suspects, my friend.”At that moment Morris happened to come into the common-room, and the conversation was dropped.Finch, impishly elated by the successful secrecy of his attentions to Mr. Roylston and finding a certain relief for his spleen in his malicious tricks, began to extend his operations, concentrating on Wilson. Kit, when he discovered the tricks that had been played upon him, would storm about noisily, berating possible miscreants right and left, but for some time with as little effect as had attended Mr. Roylston’s quieter efforts. Success, however, rarely waits upon the criminal faithfully. He grows inevitably careless and falls at last into the most obvious trapthat is set for him. Poor Jake proved no exception.Twice in a week Kit had come in about four o’clock from his run across country with the hare and hounds, an unpopular game that he was seeking to boom, to find his room “rough-housed.” It was not the general disorder familiarly known by that term, but a more systematic confusion, if we may so speak; a more malicious effort to injure his property. His prepared work for the next day’s recitations would be smeared with ink so that it would have to be completely rewritten; his desk drawers would be turned topsy-turvy; his clothes hidden away in unexpected nooks and corners. This had happened several times, and the character of the destruction was more wanton than is often the case when boys indulge in such misguided forms of practical joking. He determined to watch carefully for weeks, if necessary, and catch the culprit if he should attempt to repeat his vandalism.As usual, one afternoon after two o’clock call-over, he went off ostensibly for his run in running drawers and shirt, his white legs and arms gleaming in the winter sunshine, as he dashed down the hill with his hounds. But this time he deserted them at the foot of the hill, skirted the path along the Rocks in the direction of Whetstone and returned to the school within half-an-hour by way of the steep-sloping south field, which faces Monday Port and which the boys seldom played upon. Unobserved, for his schoolmates were mostly far afield, he reached Standerland, tiptoed through the corridors to his room, and once insidehid himself carefully behind the curtains that screened the door into his bedroom.He waited impatiently a long dull half-hour, and several times was on the point of giving up; but for all his impulsiveness, Kit was doggedly persistent, and was quite capable of waiting there for an hour or more several times a week. And at last, to his joy, he heard a soft step in the corridor. Some one had paused before his door, and was evidently listening for sounds within. Then there was a gentle tap. Kit was still as a mouse. Another tap, another wait, then the door opened softly, and some one slipped in. Kit scarcely breathed. He could not see who it was, but he heard the intruder close the door gently behind him and stand for a moment, as Kit thought, looking furtively around him. He even came to the door of the bedroom, brushing the curtains back of which Kit was concealed as he passed. Then, satisfied at last that he was safe and alone, he went quickly to Kit’s desk, opened the drawers and thrust malicious disturbing hands amongst their contents. Then he drew forth a bundle of papers. Kit heard him rattle the ink-well, and his quick ears caught the sound of the patter of the ink drops as they fell on the papers. Instantly he leaped forward, with one bound was across the room, and had grabbed the vandal by the collar. It was Jacob Finch.For a moment, as Kit recognized the intruder, he was speechless with surprise. Finch stood as if he were paralyzed, in the position in which Kit had grabbed him. Only the ink-well had fallen from his fingers, and the black fluid was trickling from the desk onto the floor. His face was ashy, his eyes glared like those of a rat in a corner. In a second Kit recovered himself.i210HE OPENED THE DRAWERS AND THRUST MALICIOUS DISTURBING HANDS AMONG THE CONTENTS“You little hound,” he hissed, his anger blazing forth. “So it’s you that’s been rough-housing my room!”Finch could not utter a word.“Speak up, you cur. Bah! there’s no need. I’ve got you in the act. You’re caught red-handed, you sneak!”He advanced threateningly, determined to administer instantly the sound thrashing he felt was too good for the palsied little wretch before him. As he grasped Finch’s collar the second time, the boy let out a weird shrill wail like the cry of an animal.“Pah!” cried Wilson, “I can’t stand the touch of you. Get out of my sight.” He gave Finch a vicious kick that sent him reeling toward the door.“If ever you come near my room again,” shouted Kit, “I’ll break every bone in your miserable body. You sneak! You cur! Get out!”Poor Finch did not debate upon the manner of his going. With one movement, he had wrenched open the door and fled, not escaping, however, a parting shot from Wilson’s boot.Kit turned wrathfully to survey his damaged desk and papers, and began to clear the litter up.“The sneak!” he muttered. “And that’s the specimen that Tony Deering thought we ought to take into the Dealonian, that’s the dirty little cur for whom he’s thrown me over!”Unfortunately, as Finch sped down the corridorfor his own room, he ran squarely into Tony who was just coming out of Number Five study.“Well, what the deuce is the matter with you?” exclaimed Deering, turning to look at the bewildered figure. But Finch did not reply. He dashed into his own room, and slammed and locked the door. Tony whistled softly, and went on. He was on his way to the shower, and had nothing on but his wrapper. His way led past Number Twelve study where Kit roomed, and at its door, as he turned a corner of the corridor, he saw Wilson thrusting armfuls of paper into the waste basket. Tony dropped his eyes and did not speak. Wilson looked up suddenly and recognized him, and impulsively exclaimed: “I say, Deering, just look here and see what a mess your particular pet has made for me.”Tony stopped, surprised, and annoyed by Wilson’s angry tone. He glanced indifferently at the disordered room, the desk stained by the great blot of ink, the crumbled papers. “Well,” he remarked, “I don’t see how this concerns me or my friends.”“You don’t, eh?” exclaimed Kit. “Well, I blamed well do. That’s the sort of thing I’ve had to put up with for the last three weeks. Your friend Finch has been in here, kindly putting my room on the bum.”“Finch!” cried Tony. “I don’t be—I reckon you’ve made a mistake.”“IreckonI haven’t. I laid for him, if you want to know; and I had the pleasure just now of kicking him out. If I catch him in here again, I’ll break every bone in his body. Since you are so deeply interested in hiswelfare, you’ll be doing him a kindness if you tell him that for me.”Deering’s lips curled contemptuously. “I don’t know exactly what you are driving at, Wilson, and I don’t think I particularly care.”Kit snorted, and went on with the task of setting his things to right. Tony majestically proceeded toward the shower. After he had stood for a quarter of an hour under cold water he felt considerably cooler, and when he had dressed, he stopped at Finch’s room on his way to the Rectory for tea. Finch at first refused to respond to his knock.“Come, come, open up, old man. I want to see you particularly.”It was a bedraggled depressed-looking Finch that finally opened his door. Deering pushed it back and entered. “Now, what’s the trouble?” he asked. “I know something’s up, because Wilson just now said he had—had put you out of his room. What were you there for?”“He did put me out,” gasped Finch. He hesitated, then lied desperately. “I wanted to borrow some paper. I thought of asking you, but Wilson had the kind I wanted. He wasn’t in, or at least I thought he wasn’t in, so I went to his desk, and began to pull some sheets off his pad, and he jumped on me from behind a curtain or out of his bedroom, from somewhere, I dunno where.”“What did he say?”“Nothing much. He called me a sneak, and kicked me out.”“How did the ink get spilled?”“I knocked it over when he jumped at me. Somebody’s been rough-housing his room, I guess, and he thought it was me.”“Well, it wasn’t you, Jake, was it?” asked Tony, fixing him with a keen hurt glance.“No, Deering, ‘pon my honor, it wasn’t.”“Had you ever been to his room before?”“Never alone.” His eyes shifted back to meet Tony’s wondering glance. “Don’t you believe me, Deering?” There was a wail of despair in his voice.“Yes, Jake, yes; of course, I believe you. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Cheer up, I’ll try to get Wilson to listen to reason.”“Oh, don’t—!” Jake stopped, aghast at his possible mistake. “I don’t want you to do anything for me, Deering, you’ve done enough. I’m just always getting you in trouble.”“That’s all right, Jake; helping a friend out isn’t trouble.”And with that Tony went on. He stopped again at Wilson’s room. The door was still open, and Kit was still fussing about his desk. He looked up at the knock, and scowled a little as he bade his visitor come in.Tony came in and closed the door behind him. “Look here, Kit,” he said, trying hard to keep control of his voice. “I want to speak to you about Finch. I think you have done him a wrong. He came in here to borrow some paper——”“Oh, is that the song and dance he gives you? Well, I know what he came in for. If you want to know, I kept still behind those curtains for a couple of minutes while he started his dirty work, and I caughthim right in the act, with that ink-well in his greasy fingers smearing my exercises with it. He has been rough-housing this room for two or three weeks.”“Well, he says he hasn’t, and I don’t think he’s a liar. Will you give him a chance to explain?”“I’ll be hanged if I will. I know he’s a liar. I know it, man. Don’t talk to me any such blamed rot about his coming in here to borrow paper; he’s a sneak and a toad, and if he comes near me again I’ll lick the life out of him.”“Go ahead, bully a chap that can’t defend himself.”“Look here, Tony. I hate to quarrel with you, but it’s got to come. I thought you were wrong about that kid from the first; he ain’t fit for help, and ’s for the Dealonian,—well, save the mark! But it’s come to this—you and I can’t be friends, if you are going to take that little sneak’s part against me. We’ll just break for good and all. You can’t be a friend of mine, and take the attitude toward him that you’ve been taking. I might have got over the other business; but I can’t get over to-day’s dirty work, and for you to come in here, and tell me the pack of lies he’s made up, is too much. Let’s cut it out, and have done with each other.”“Oh, all right; if that’s your point of view, I’m willing. You’re unreasonable and hot-headed, Kit. So long, old man, I’m sorry you can’t be just.”“So long,” said Wilson, as Tony stalked out.For a moment or so Kit fumed about, pulling things out of their places and thrusting them viciously back. Suddenly he put his head down on the table, and burst into tears.CHAPTER XVIILEAVE-TAKINGThe short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, had come and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routine of the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of all concerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speak to each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly terms with them both.The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were come again when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and the mounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. The fields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseball teams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavily manned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the little harbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews, went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past Deigr Light into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys and masters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part the stress of the long winter term problems and discipline was wholly relaxed.Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, worked fairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happy and contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams on the north field, so that they did not come in contact with him very frequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but he came no more to Number Five study.Kit had said nothing about his affair with Finch; but, as he expected, his rooms were disturbed no more. Finch, terrified by discovery and the fear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. His conscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but less perhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. There was on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in their friendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believed of course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode in Wilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’s open break with him, he saw no way to set things right.This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of that bright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Each boy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both were impulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quick by the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.One day in Fifth English they were readingAs You Like It, and it fell to Kit to read the lines of Amiens’ song in the second act:“Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:Most friendship is feigning, most love merely folly.“Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,Thou dost not bite so nighAs benefits forgot:Though thou the waters warp,Thy sting is not so sharpAs friend remembered not.”As he got toward the end of the lines, his voice almost broke. Stenton, realizing with quick sympathy that the song had taken on for him some keen personal meaning, passed on the reading immediately to another boy. Tony sat in his seat flushed and uncomfortable; for him also the verse had intense meaning. He longed to look up and catch Kit’s eye, and then join him after class and say boldly how foolish he felt their coolness was. But he did not do so. He felt he never could do so. Kit had been too unfair, too bitter—the advance must come from him.Suddenly one day, in the midst of all this intense life and activity of school so absorbing to our boys, there came a word to Tony that was rudely and without warning to take him out of it. The message came in the form of a letter from his grandfather bidding him come home at once.“It will be bad news to you, my dear boy,” he wrote, “but your unfortunate father’s business venture has been an absolute failure; he has been very ill and is only just now on the road to recovery, and your poor mother has fallen a victim at last to the worry and strain. She wants you, and the doctor and I think it best for you to come. So you must do so at once, as I am writing to the Head Master. I don’t know, Anthony, whether we shall beable or not to send you back next year. We poor people of the south, when Fortune turns against us, are pretty well down and out. You have made a good record at school, and I do not doubt but that Doctor Forester will promote you to the Sixth Form next year, should we be able to send you back, even if you do lose these two months. But you must come now, and at once. Telegraph me the day and hour and I will have Sambo meet you at the Junction.“Your affectionate grandfather,“Basil Deering.”Poor Tony read this letter over and over before he could clearly take it in. He knew something of old of his reckless father’s terrible propensity to indulge in wild-cat speculation, of the disaster and trouble it had brought upon the family at Low Deering before. And now too his mother was ill! Of course, of course, he must go home. He fumbled in his drawer and found a time-table. Yes, he could leave that night. And yet—he paused, with the letter in his hand—it was like a sentence of banishment: to leave school now in the middle of the best term of the year, and with so many things in which he was interested at loose ends! He could not believe it really meant that; it could not be true. And perhaps never to return! He looked again at his letter, and the old general’s words made him sick at heart. Never again to race up and down that hillside, to look out upon that splendid sea; never again to swagger about the campus with his chums in the old glad, happy, self-important way! No, no, he could not bear that it should mean that! The hot tears welled in his eyes,—but he brushed them away. Of course, his mother needed him. He had gone through before those agonizingfamily crises, had seen his tender patient mother struggle bravely against his father’s bad moods and dark despair. He knew that indeed she must have collapsed when his grandfather sent for him and she permitted it.He ran over to the Rectory and found the Doctor in his study. He too had just been reading a letter from General Deering.He clasped Tony’s hand in his strong affectionate grip. “I am sorry for you, my boy.... Yes, I have just been reading a letter from your grandfather. There is no choice but for you to go at once.”“I can leave on the ten o’clock from Monday Port, to-night, sir,” said Tony, “and catch the midnight express at Coventry, which will get me home the next evening.”“Doubtless that is the best plan,” the Doctor agreed. “I don’t think, from what the General tells me, that you need worry about your mother’s immediate condition. But undoubtedly you are needed. I am very sorry that you should lose these two months, but you can keep up your work at home and there is no reason why you should not make the Sixth comfortably in September.”“I think I could do that, sir,” replied Tony, “but my grandfather says there is some doubt about—about their being able to send me back next year.”“Yes, yes, he writes that to me; but you are to come, nevertheless. We will arrange that. I hope the financial difficulties will straighten out satisfactorily, but if worst comes to worst and they should not, why there are any number of ways that we canprovide for you. There is always a scholarship fund rusting in the bank,—ripening, I had better say, for just some such occasion. I fancy, even, that the school would be willing to trust you for your tuition. But one thing is quite settled: youareto return. And I will make that clear to Basil—to your grandfather.”“Thank you, sir; you’ve been mighty good to me.”“You have been mighty good to us—mighty goodforus, I may say,—my boy.... Good-bye now, for the present.... And God bless you.”In a moment or so Tony was gone. He found Jimmie, Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing, and told them the news. And then, after a few hasty farewells, went to his rooms with Jimmie to pack. It was then late in the afternoon. The packing was a sad business, for he felt he must take everything. He would be away five months; perhaps, despite the Doctor’s kind prophecy, for good. As this possibility occurred to him, he would stand now and then in the middle of the room, with a coat or hat or what not in his hands, and feel it was simply impossible to go on. Tears would start in his eyes and trickle down his cheeks. He had always liked the school, even in his bad moods he had been loyal; but he had not known, he had not realized, as few boys do at the time, how the school had become a part of his very life, how intensely his affections were centered there. And then—Mr. Morris; the fellows, Jimmie, Teddy, Charlie, Kit—it would be hard to leave without saying good-bye to Kit—, Reggie!He turned to Jimmie who had come in at the moment with his arms full of Tony’s belongings thathe had collected from various parts of the school, locker rooms and the like. “Excuse me for a little while, Jimmie old boy; I’ve got to run over and see Reggie. I haven’t told him yet.” Tony had a pang of regret that he had seen so little of Reggie of late, “I’ll be back before long.”“All right,” said Jimmie dolefully. “I’ll go on with the packing, if you don’t mind. Don’t be long.”“I won’t,” said Tony.He found Carroll fortunately in his own room in the Old School. For once Reginald was studying, and Tony could scarcely remember when he had seen him so engaged. But the Sixth Former closed his Horace with relief as he recognized his visitor and kicked out a chair for him to sit down. “Well, I am certainly glad you have come. Heaven knows how long I would have kept at that futile exercise, if it had not been pleasantly interrupted. But what’s up, my boy, you look as if you had seen a ghost?”Tony sat down on the chair that Carroll had pushed out. “I have, Reggie,” he said, “I have just got a letter from home; worse luck. My mother’s ill, and I have to start south to-night.”“Jove, that is hard luck! When shall you get back, do you suppose?”“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother is dangerously ill, but she wants me. There’s been a mess about money too. The old governor has written, and says I may not get back at all—not this term any way.”“Not this term!” Reggie jumped up quickly, allthe habitual languor of his attitude and movements gone, and strode over to the window.“No, I’m afraid not, Reggie.”“Why—why—I’ll be gone next term, boy.”“I know, old man.”For a moment Carroll turned his back to Tony and looked out of the window into the deepening twilight, and was silent. There was a lump in his throat that kept him from speaking.“I’ve only a few minutes, Reggie, old boy,” said Tony, at last. “I am leaving in an hour and I am only half packed. I’ve got to say good-bye.”Carroll turned at this: a pathetic smile was on his lips. “It has come so suddenly, boy ... it’s kind of taken the wind out of my sails.” He came over then and took Tony’s hand in his. “Tonio, ... I can’t say good-bye.... You’ll write to me ... you will come back surely.... I’ll be at Kingsbridge and often back at school.”“I hope so, Reggie.”“You don’t know, boy,” Reggie went on, still holding Tony’s hand, “I can’t tell you what your being here has meant for me—you and Bill. We haven’t seen each other much this year, and I reckon I’ve often seemed to you a poor sort of friend ... but, to put it poetically, old chap, ... the light o’ my heart goes out with you.”Tony gripped the hand in his tightly at this. There was a lump in his throat too.“Good-bye, Reggie.... I will write, and you be sure to write to me. Tell me all that’s going on.... Have an eye on Finch, will you? Poor duffer!”“Poor duffer, indeed!” said Carroll, and then added, “Poor me!” Their hands clasped tightly, and then Tony was gone.Reggie stood for a long time just as Tony had left him. “One by one the lamps go out,” he murmured, quoting a line from one of his own verses. He sighed. “So runs, so runs the world away....” There was a queer sharp pain at his heart. He sat down at last and opened his Horace again, and began to read, but the words conveyed no sense to his mind. He threw his arms out once, and whispered softly, pathetically, “Oh, Tony, Tony.... God bless you, boy; God bless you!”Back in Number Five Jimmie and Tony were absorbed in the last stages of the packing. Morris, to whom Tony had explained the occasion of his going, had come in and was helping them. And his presence went a great way to cheer them up, for Morris refused for an instant, even in his own mind, to consider the possibility of Deering not coming back. He eased off their good-byes, and sent Lawrence over to cheer up Carroll, whom he knew would feel it more than the rest, for it was good-bye to Tony for him as he was in the Sixth and would be at Kingsbridge next year when Tony returned.Deering said good-bye to Finch, quickly, quietly, he had time for little explanation. Finch said nothing, but died of despair within.On the way down the corridor Tony passed Kit, a generous word was on his lips, their eyes met for a second, but Kit looked quickly away, and Tony passed on. The opportunity for a reconciliationwas gone. Morris drove in to Monday Port with the boy and saw him off on the way-train for Coventry. With persistent tact, he continued to treat the parting as only a temporary one, and refused himself the melancholy pleasure of saying much to his young friend that was in his heart and that Tony might have been glad to hear. It was better so, thought Morris. The kind things could be written, if the need came.There was a quick, short, strong grip of their hands at last, and Tony climbed into the train. He stowed his things in the empty car, and then went and stood on the rear platform and waved his hand to Morris as the train pulled out of the little station, and strained his eyes to see the last of the master’s patient, kindly friendly figure until darkness blotted out the vision. The train was rushing through the outskirts of the little town. Beyond the limits it ascended a steep grade and ran along a high level plateau for a way, and thence Tony caught a glimpse of the lights of the school shining brightly from the far-away hill, wafting him, it seemed, a friendly good-bye across the dark. Suddenly the train plunged into a narrow cut in a hill and Deering could see the lights of Deal no more.At Coventry he had a dreary wait for half-an-hour until the midnight express for the south lumbered in and stopped on signal. As soon as he had boarded the through train, he got into his berth, for he was worn out with the wearisome journey from Monday Port and with the excitement of the last seven hours. But he could not sleep for a long time. When at last he did fall into a fitful slumber, constantly disturbed by the jolts and jars of the rushing train, it was todream bad dreams. Once it seemed to him, in the dazed state between sleeping and waking, that he was lying in his little bed at Low Deering, that he was still a little boy of fourteen, and that the last four years at Deal had been only a dream....At Low Deering Tony found things almost as bad as he had feared. His father, a genial, charming, irresponsible creature—the unaccountable wild olive that grows now and then on the stock of the good olive tree—had rather more deeply than usual—for the same sort of thing had happened before—plunged his family into distress. He had ventured all his available capital and more that he had borrowed, on the security of his extravagant hopes and good intentions, from his wife; staked it in a case where he stood to win twenty-fold or quite overwhelmingly lose; and, as not unfrequently happens, had lost. Then had followed, as Tony could remember the horror of it all at an earlier period of his boyhood, a trying disappearance and a return in a mood of black melancholy and idle remorse.But the worst was over by the time he reached home. Victor Deering, thanks to his father’s stern but tender patience and his wife’s unfailing much-tried devotion, was slowly recovering his normal health, his irrepressible spirits, his habitual weaving of futile plans and nursing of quixotic hopes. But the process this time had cost his family a good deal more than its meager income could pay for and had sacrificed Mrs. Deering’s health to worry and distress. For weeks she had been lying in a state of nervous exhaustion, from which the physician at last thoughtshe might be rallied if her wish were granted and Tony, her only child, might be with her. And so he had been sent for.During those two hot months of the southern spring Tony devoted himself to his mother, a devotion that was only relaxed when later, the old general having scraped together enough for the purpose, the family removed for the summer to the cooler climate of a resort in the North Carolina mountains. The mother grieved not a little for her boy’s interrupted school days—she guessed at the sacrifice Tony’s cheerfulness hid,—but Tony and the General knew that his return had saved her health if not her life.Tony had been separated a great deal from his family since he had gone north to school, so that, after the first homesickness for Deal was over, he began to be deeply interested again in the old scenes and familiar friends of his early boyhood: the easy-going, ill-managed old plantation with its extensive sugar industry bringing in such income as they had; the little hill on which stood the house of Low Deering, low, white and great galleried; the sleepy bayou that stretched away below to the wild and beautiful jungle, a marshy live-oak forest, picturesquely hung with the heavy lace of the gray Spanish moss and the delicate purple of the wild wistaria; the inky black darkies, relics of ante-bellum days; the few families of similar decaying plantations in the neighborhood.Later in the summer at Bald Rock in North Carolina, at the hotel to which their diminutive cottage was attached, there were young people again—boys to play baseball and climb the near by mountainswith, girls with whom to dance at the Saturday night hops on the great gallery of the hotel. Then too there was his father. Despite an inner disapproval that Tony could not help feeling for his father’s irresponsible doings, for the trouble he now and then brought so deeply, perhaps unwittingly, upon them all, Tony enjoyed his father immensely. If he himself had inherited his strong sense of honor and his manly grip on life from his grandfather, and the inner patient tenderness we have sometimes noted in him from his mother, it was from his father that his charm, his quick and ready sympathy, his genial grace had come.After the terrible six months he had given them, Victor Deering could not have done more to atone than he was whole-heartedly trying to do. It was characteristic of him, for he deeply appreciated what Deal School had done for Tony, that his repentance should have caused him to suggest to the old general that his own patrimony, hoarded by the head of the house against a rainy day, should be made over to Tony at once, and the income, the capital if necessary, be applied to completing his education at Deal and later on at Kingsbridge. General Deering took his son at his word. Victor was only too eager to promise from then on steadfast attention to the plantation, which, better managed, was capable still of recouping their fortunes and furnishing them with a living. So it began to look bright, as Tony wrote to Jimmie Lawrence, for his return to school, and without any question of taking advantage of scholarships or such aid as the Head had so kindly offered. That offer rankled, unjustly as he knew, in the old aristocrat’smind. He was determined Tony should have no such humiliation to face.Of the school in these days of Tony’s enforced exile, a glimpse shall be had through the medium of Jimmie Lawrence’s letters, for, of course, the two boys had written each other with some regularity.“Deal School:May 10th.“Dear Tony:“Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be back next term....“I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about. I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work, and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry. From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate the pages of theDeal Lit. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now, despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again next year.“The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We havewon all our games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th. It’s a shame you won’t be here.“There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs and says nothing.“The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.“Ever affectionately,“Jimmie.”In June there came another letter that interested Tony very much.“Reggie has pulled both the Latin and the Poetry Prizes. Even the Gumshoe thawed a trifle and shook hands with him as he came down from the platform on Prize Day, with a set of Browning in his arms and the Jackson medal in his inside pocket. He’s so blamed clever that he has got acum laude. Bill beams with pride over him. The President of Kingsbridge, a funny old chap who talks through his nose and has a wit as keen as a razor, made us a bully talk, and the Doctor announced the prefects for next year—curiously enough he said the Head Prefect will not be appointed until the opening of school in September. We all suppose, of course, that that means you, and that it is only postponed until it is certain that you are coming back. The other prefects will be Teddy, Gordon Powel, Doc Thorn, Ned Clavering and myself. I had hoped Kit would be one, but he’s been too independent I guess. It’s a pretty good lot of fellows, I think, though I say it as shouldn’t, and with you at the head, we ought to run things very much as we want to next year....”Tony had scarcely thought of the Head Prefectship since he had left school. He believed that there were others better fitted for it than himself and whomore deserved it. The fact that he was President of the Dealonian made him an obvious candidate, of course; and certainly if the authorities thought him up to the position he would be glad to have it. The possibility from this time on added to the keenness with which he looked forward to his return in September.

CHAPTER XVTONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGELMr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect. From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends. He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process, and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion. Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the master’s lips.In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open hostility.But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’ unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over their four or five years at Deal, the incident ofThe Spectacleseemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young friends.And mixed up in all this affair of Deering and his “crowd,” there was in Mr. Roylston’s mind a sense, not clear but keen, that Finch was somehow concerned. He genuinely believed that Doctor Forester had made a mistake in taking Finch at Deal, and the passage of words with Morris on the occasion of the boy’s arrival, had irritated him intensely. He knew, and was sometimes ashamed of the fact, that he had let that irritation affect his treatment, in little ways, of the boy himself. He had always disliked Morris, and quite sincerely thought Morris’s unaffected good nature and genial optimism with regard to boys was a pose. The incident of Finch’s hazing, wherein he had punished the rescuers instead of the hazers, increased his uncomfortable feeling about the whole situation. But the discomfort did not increase his humility. He knew that in much he was wrong, buthe was so accustomed to the idea of supposing himself to be right, that he argued away the accusations of his conscience.On Finch he therefore continued to vent a good deal of his spleen. And on Finch the old sledge-hammer method of sarcasm was an effective weapon. The boy bore the master’s reproofs with a little less outward wincing than of old, but inwardly they racked his very soul. Mr. Roylston’s attitude affected him very differently from the way it affected Deering. He could not work in his class. A shaft of sarcasm, an expression of patient suffering on the master’s face as the boy blundered through his recitation, altogether confused him. Day after day he would fail in a lesson which he had spent hours in preparing. From a sense of duty Mr. Roylston now and then would see the delinquent outside of the classroom, and make an attempt to clear up his difficulties. But on these occasions Finch seemingly was more completely bereft of his senses than during a recitation. Mr. Roylston mistook this confusion for willful refusal to understand, and in time treated him accordingly.“What the deuce is the matter with you, Jake?” Tony asked once, after a trying period in Latin, wherein Finch had floundered about in absurd fashion. “You know a heap more Latin than I do, but you go in before Gumshoe and act as if he were asking you questions in Sanscrit.”“I know—I know,” Finch answered, miserably. “But I can’t help it. I just can’t get my wits before him. Every idea flies out of my head when he asks me a question. I am doing all right in other subjects.”“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”“And that’s all my fault!”“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.”“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?”“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.”Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul.Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The nervous, overwroughtstate in which he had been living during the fall and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary.Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.”Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar, on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?”“Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.”“The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man, you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?”“Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school were willing to give him a chance.”“I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the maimed, the halt and the blind.”“No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I have.”“But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.“No I don’t see,” answered Tony. “I dare say the three of us have a certain amount of influence, and if we chose to exert it I’ve an idea that we could get him in.”“Well, you can hang that harp on a weeping willow-tree,” was Kit’s conclusive comment, “I don’t intend to try. I am perfectly willing to lick Ducky Thornton every day in the week for hazing him, if need be; I’m willing to have Tony bring him in here three or four times a week and bore us to death, if he wants to; but I’m hanged if I’ll try to get him into the Dealonian. That’s supposed to be made up of the representative fellows of the school. You’re carrying your guardian angelship business too far, kiddo. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”Tony, for once, did not reply in like fashion to Kit’s vigorous and breezy way of expressing himself. He reflected a moment or so, and then spoke with an unusually quiet and determined air, as though he were simply making an announcement and not asking advice. “I have thought it over pretty carefully, Kit; and I’ve made up my mind to try it. I only hope you fellows will back me up.”Jimmie was silent. Kit, convinced at last that Tony was indeed in earnest, protested vigorously. “You’redead wrong, Tony. You oughtn’t to try it. The fellows won’t stand for it. And you’ve no right to ask me to back you up in a thing which I’m perfectly certain is a darn fool proposition.”“Well,” said Tony, “you needn’t back me up, if you don’t want to. But that’s all rot for you to say it’s a darn fool notion. I’ve a perfect right to put him up, if I think it the thing to do, and I am going to do it.”“Well, go ahead, and waste your time. I s’pose the little pup’ll lick your boots cleaner than ever in gratitude, whether you’re successful or not.”Tony flared up at this. “I’ll thank you, Wilson, not to call my friends pups. I reckon I can find some decent chaps to vote for him, even if I can’t count on my own pals.” And with that, very hot in the head, he flung himself out of the room.“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Kit. “To think of him flinging me over for that drowned rat! What’s the matter with him? Has he gone clean crazy?”“He’s got the kid on his brain. But no sense in your flaring out so, Kit; that’s no way to get on with Tony. Naturally he’s sensitive.”“Who flared up?” demanded Kit, indignantly. “I’m as calm as a millpond. Tony went off the handle because we disagreed with him. I guess I’ve as good a right to my opinions as he has to his.”“Oh, for gosh’s sake, shut up; there’s no sense in quarreling over this matter. Finch won’t get into the Dealonian, but whether he can or not, I’d just as soon vote for him.”“Well, I’ll be hanged if I would,” asserted Wilson.“And what’s more I’ll get up in the meeting and say it’s a darn fool proposition and ought to be turned down.”“What’s the sense in doing that? It’ll just mean that you and Tony will have a serious falling-out, and the crowd will get busted up. What’s the use? It ain’t worth while.”“The heck it isn’t! I won’t compromise a principle for a friend ever, I don’t care who he is. Nor I won’t have a friend ram his ideas down my throat. I’ve as much right to put a fellow up or blackball him in the Dealonian as Tony has. Seems to me he’s getting——.”“Oh, shut up. You are working yourself all up over nothing. It isn’t worth it. Don’t quarrel with Tony.”“Seems to me Tony’s picking the quarrel with me. Who flung himself out of the room just now? I didn’t, I guess. I tell you what, Jim, if Tony wants to keep on good terms with me, he can; but he’s not going to make the price of his friendship my voting to suit him about anything. I guess we made Tony Deering in this school—you and I.”“Rot!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Tony made himself. He’d have been the head of the school if we had never exchanged a word with him. We’ve been darn glad to have him in the crowd, that’s the truth of it; he’s been the center of it ever since he’s been here. You were keen enough about making him president of the Dealonian, and I guess you want him for head prefect next year.”“’Course I was keen; ‘course I do ... I’m allserene. If there’s a quarrel, it won’t be my fault. But I’m going to blackball Finch for the good of the Society, ‘cause I think it would be a mistake to let him in, and I hope you’ll do the same.”“Well, I won’t.”“Do as you please, that’syourright. So long, kiddo, I guess I’ll seek a more congenial clime for the time bein’.” And with that Kit swung himself out of the room.Jimmie, genuinely distressed by this first serious difference in their congenial little circle, went over to Mr. Morris’s room, and took him into his confidence on the subject. Morris was not a little disturbed by the situation. He admired Tony’s purpose, but with Jimmie, thought it somewhat ill-judged and ill-timed, and deplored the possible cleavage it might make in the little knot of friends. But, characteristically, he did not see his way to interfering, even with advice.Unfortunately Tony and Kit again encountered each other that night in Reggie Carroll’s room. Tony was cool, and Reggie, ignorant of what had happened, made matters worse by asking them facetiously what had ruffled the sweet waters of their friendship.“Ask Tony,” answered Kit laconically, as he thumbed a school year book and tried to think of some way of getting out of the room.Tony shrugged his shoulders.“What’s up?” repeated Reggie.“Nothing particular,” Deering answered, after a pause. “We just don’t pull together in a certain matter.”“Well, what do you expect,” exclaimed Kit impulsively, “do you expect me to measure my opinions by yours?”“Rather not,” answered Tony, with a faint sneer, “you’d find them in that case a darn sight too big for you.”“Softly, softly,” protested Reggie. But Tony again was gone.When he got back to his own room later in the evening, Jimmie tried to talk the subject over with him, but Tony, ruffled and irritated, was not inclined to do so.“I’ve made up my mind, Jim, so that’s all there is to it. I’m going to put Finch up next Saturday night, and in the meantime I’m going to work hard to try to get the fellows to vote for him. I hope you won’t blackball him.”“No, I won’t do that, Tony; but I wish you’d see Kit and talk it over with him in a friendly way.”“I’ll talk it over with Kit, if he wants to talk it over with me; but he has got to drop his swagger and bulldozing manner, if he wants to.”“Look here, old man; Kit’s just impulsive; that’s all. Suppose I, after I had thought it over, made up my mind that it would be a bad thing for the Society and blackballed Finch, would you let that make any difference between us?”Tony thought a moment. “No, old chap, of course it wouldn’t. I’d be sorry, of course, because I would feel you were wrong. But it isn’t being opposed that makes me sore, it’s Kit’s blustering blowing way of doing it.”Jimmie went that night and sat on Tony’s bed for a long time after lights. They said nothing more about Kit or Finch, but talked intimately of a variety of other things in which they were interested, in the old close pleasant way. It was a long happy quiet talk and it did much to strengthen their friendship in the times of stress that were coming.The conversations we have recorded took place well along in the winter term on a Monday night in March. The following Saturday evening was the date of the important meeting of the Dealonian Society at which new members were elected.Tony spent a zealous week campaigning for Finch, and found it a disheartening business. Most of the boys—there were about forty members of the Society—protested, but after long persuasion, promised to cast favorable votes, though they took pains, almost without exception, to assure Tony that they were doing it simply because he asked them. Others refused definitely to commit themselves, and Tony had to be content with that. To Jimmie’s distress, Kit kept away from Number Five study all that week, and refused to make any advances toward setting things right with Tony. “I’ll talk it over, if he comes to me,” he would say to Jimmie over and over. “But I am going to blackball Finch, and I guess I can persuade at least one other fellow to do the same, so he won’t get into the Dealonian. Tony can do what he pleases. After it’s all over, if he wants to make up, well and good; I’ll have no hard feelings: if he don’t,—well, well and good, also.”At last, after what seemed an interminable week toour three friends Saturday night came, and the forty members of the Dealonian Society met in solemn conclave in the Library. Tony took the chair, looking a trifle nervous and anxious, and called the meeting to order. Kit was present, sitting well back, and assumed an air of bland indifference to the proceedings. There were four new members to be elected from the Fifth Form.Routine business was transacted for a quarter of an hour, and at last the president announced, “If there is no objection, we will proceed to the election of new members. As I wish to place a name in nomination, I will ask Mr. Wendell to take the chair.”Billy Wendell, the head prefect, captain of the football team, and the last year’s president of the Dealonian, rose from his seat, and took the chair behind the big desk in a very solemn way, very much as a presidentpro tem. walks up to the platform of the Senate. He settled himself, coughed slightly, and recognized Tony. “Mr. Deering has the floor,” he observed in judicial tones.“Mr. President and members of the Dealonian Society, I desire to place in nomination for membership in this society the name of Jacob Finch of the Fifth Form.” As this was expected, the boys showed little surprise. Jimmie glanced back at Kit, and saw his lips curl with faint contempt. Tony too glanced about him; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he threw back his shoulders, and addressed the Society. He cast aside now the solemn traditional oratorical form that the boys made an effort to assume, and his clear sweet voice rang with feeling. “Fellows,” he said,“I believe, as we all do, that this Society has the right to consider itself the most important institution in the school, and I realize that I am nominating one for membership in it, who, according to all standards we have set for ourselves and which have been so well maintained through many school generations, seems not to have a shadow of right to election. We want here fellows whose opinion counts, whose influence will be strong and positive, who have done and are able to do things for the school, in athletics, in scholarship, and in various other ways. I can’t pretend that I think that Jacob Finch will stand for these things or will do these things. But for once, it seems to me, that other considerations should weigh with us.”The boys were startled by the unusual feeling in Deering’s voice and by the unconventional arguments he was using to urge his candidate upon their favor, and they settled into attitudes of deep attention.“At the beginning of the year,” Tony went on, “a new boy came amongst us who, as we all know, has been treated as no boy ever was who came to the school before. He has been brutally hazed, and for months his life has been made miserable by young and old, and unfortunately he has had no way of defending himself. He has never had a chance, he hasn’t got a square deal. I have got to know him, I suppose, better than anyone else, and while I don’t claim or even think that he is an unusual fellow, I do believe there is something in him that could be made to count for the school if he had a show; if it could really be proved to him that you fellows werewilling to make him one of yourselves, give him not merely a fair, but a generous chance. I don’t want you merely to admit him to this Society because I ask it as a favor to me, though I hope you will do it for that reason if you won’t do it for any other; but I ask you to vote for him as an act of generous kindness toward a chap who hasn’t had the chance that any of us have had, whose life in this school up to now has been downright hell.”With that Tony sat down. A ripple of conversation went round the room. The boys were quite won by this unusual appeal to their generosity and sympathy. Billy Wendell called them sharply to order. “Are there any further remarks upon Finch?”Half a dozen fellows rose one after another, and declared, with a certain amount of feeling and a certain lack of grace, that they agreed with Deering, and that they thought Finch ought to be elected. Jimmie wanted to speak for Tony’s sake, but he could not quite bring himself to do so. In his heart he agreed with Kit that Tony’s judgment on this occasion was mistaken, and that were Finch elected it would not accomplish for him what Tony so generously hoped. There was a pause after good-natured Clayton had uttered a few stuttering sentimental remarks. Then Kit Wilson rose up quickly. His face was flushed, he seemed nervous, but there were lines of dogged determination about his mouth.“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair are notthose of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous, but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be elected.”With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the names and the boys respondingPlacetorNon Placet, as the case might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative. Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called. “Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up.“The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair.The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted. After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result, which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In thecorridor he came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were successful, weren’t you!”Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered.Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books.

TONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL

Mr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect. From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends. He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process, and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion. Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the master’s lips.

In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open hostility.But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’ unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over their four or five years at Deal, the incident ofThe Spectacleseemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young friends.

And mixed up in all this affair of Deering and his “crowd,” there was in Mr. Roylston’s mind a sense, not clear but keen, that Finch was somehow concerned. He genuinely believed that Doctor Forester had made a mistake in taking Finch at Deal, and the passage of words with Morris on the occasion of the boy’s arrival, had irritated him intensely. He knew, and was sometimes ashamed of the fact, that he had let that irritation affect his treatment, in little ways, of the boy himself. He had always disliked Morris, and quite sincerely thought Morris’s unaffected good nature and genial optimism with regard to boys was a pose. The incident of Finch’s hazing, wherein he had punished the rescuers instead of the hazers, increased his uncomfortable feeling about the whole situation. But the discomfort did not increase his humility. He knew that in much he was wrong, buthe was so accustomed to the idea of supposing himself to be right, that he argued away the accusations of his conscience.

On Finch he therefore continued to vent a good deal of his spleen. And on Finch the old sledge-hammer method of sarcasm was an effective weapon. The boy bore the master’s reproofs with a little less outward wincing than of old, but inwardly they racked his very soul. Mr. Roylston’s attitude affected him very differently from the way it affected Deering. He could not work in his class. A shaft of sarcasm, an expression of patient suffering on the master’s face as the boy blundered through his recitation, altogether confused him. Day after day he would fail in a lesson which he had spent hours in preparing. From a sense of duty Mr. Roylston now and then would see the delinquent outside of the classroom, and make an attempt to clear up his difficulties. But on these occasions Finch seemingly was more completely bereft of his senses than during a recitation. Mr. Roylston mistook this confusion for willful refusal to understand, and in time treated him accordingly.

“What the deuce is the matter with you, Jake?” Tony asked once, after a trying period in Latin, wherein Finch had floundered about in absurd fashion. “You know a heap more Latin than I do, but you go in before Gumshoe and act as if he were asking you questions in Sanscrit.”

“I know—I know,” Finch answered, miserably. “But I can’t help it. I just can’t get my wits before him. Every idea flies out of my head when he asks me a question. I am doing all right in other subjects.”

“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”

“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”

“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”

“And that’s all my fault!”

“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”

“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.”

“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?”

“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.”

Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul.

Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The nervous, overwroughtstate in which he had been living during the fall and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary.

Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.”

Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar, on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?”

“Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.”

“The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man, you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school were willing to give him a chance.”

“I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the maimed, the halt and the blind.”

“No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I have.”

“But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.

“No I don’t see,” answered Tony. “I dare say the three of us have a certain amount of influence, and if we chose to exert it I’ve an idea that we could get him in.”

“Well, you can hang that harp on a weeping willow-tree,” was Kit’s conclusive comment, “I don’t intend to try. I am perfectly willing to lick Ducky Thornton every day in the week for hazing him, if need be; I’m willing to have Tony bring him in here three or four times a week and bore us to death, if he wants to; but I’m hanged if I’ll try to get him into the Dealonian. That’s supposed to be made up of the representative fellows of the school. You’re carrying your guardian angelship business too far, kiddo. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Tony, for once, did not reply in like fashion to Kit’s vigorous and breezy way of expressing himself. He reflected a moment or so, and then spoke with an unusually quiet and determined air, as though he were simply making an announcement and not asking advice. “I have thought it over pretty carefully, Kit; and I’ve made up my mind to try it. I only hope you fellows will back me up.”

Jimmie was silent. Kit, convinced at last that Tony was indeed in earnest, protested vigorously. “You’redead wrong, Tony. You oughtn’t to try it. The fellows won’t stand for it. And you’ve no right to ask me to back you up in a thing which I’m perfectly certain is a darn fool proposition.”

“Well,” said Tony, “you needn’t back me up, if you don’t want to. But that’s all rot for you to say it’s a darn fool notion. I’ve a perfect right to put him up, if I think it the thing to do, and I am going to do it.”

“Well, go ahead, and waste your time. I s’pose the little pup’ll lick your boots cleaner than ever in gratitude, whether you’re successful or not.”

Tony flared up at this. “I’ll thank you, Wilson, not to call my friends pups. I reckon I can find some decent chaps to vote for him, even if I can’t count on my own pals.” And with that, very hot in the head, he flung himself out of the room.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Kit. “To think of him flinging me over for that drowned rat! What’s the matter with him? Has he gone clean crazy?”

“He’s got the kid on his brain. But no sense in your flaring out so, Kit; that’s no way to get on with Tony. Naturally he’s sensitive.”

“Who flared up?” demanded Kit, indignantly. “I’m as calm as a millpond. Tony went off the handle because we disagreed with him. I guess I’ve as good a right to my opinions as he has to his.”

“Oh, for gosh’s sake, shut up; there’s no sense in quarreling over this matter. Finch won’t get into the Dealonian, but whether he can or not, I’d just as soon vote for him.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged if I would,” asserted Wilson.“And what’s more I’ll get up in the meeting and say it’s a darn fool proposition and ought to be turned down.”

“What’s the sense in doing that? It’ll just mean that you and Tony will have a serious falling-out, and the crowd will get busted up. What’s the use? It ain’t worth while.”

“The heck it isn’t! I won’t compromise a principle for a friend ever, I don’t care who he is. Nor I won’t have a friend ram his ideas down my throat. I’ve as much right to put a fellow up or blackball him in the Dealonian as Tony has. Seems to me he’s getting——.”

“Oh, shut up. You are working yourself all up over nothing. It isn’t worth it. Don’t quarrel with Tony.”

“Seems to me Tony’s picking the quarrel with me. Who flung himself out of the room just now? I didn’t, I guess. I tell you what, Jim, if Tony wants to keep on good terms with me, he can; but he’s not going to make the price of his friendship my voting to suit him about anything. I guess we made Tony Deering in this school—you and I.”

“Rot!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Tony made himself. He’d have been the head of the school if we had never exchanged a word with him. We’ve been darn glad to have him in the crowd, that’s the truth of it; he’s been the center of it ever since he’s been here. You were keen enough about making him president of the Dealonian, and I guess you want him for head prefect next year.”

“’Course I was keen; ‘course I do ... I’m allserene. If there’s a quarrel, it won’t be my fault. But I’m going to blackball Finch for the good of the Society, ‘cause I think it would be a mistake to let him in, and I hope you’ll do the same.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“Do as you please, that’syourright. So long, kiddo, I guess I’ll seek a more congenial clime for the time bein’.” And with that Kit swung himself out of the room.

Jimmie, genuinely distressed by this first serious difference in their congenial little circle, went over to Mr. Morris’s room, and took him into his confidence on the subject. Morris was not a little disturbed by the situation. He admired Tony’s purpose, but with Jimmie, thought it somewhat ill-judged and ill-timed, and deplored the possible cleavage it might make in the little knot of friends. But, characteristically, he did not see his way to interfering, even with advice.

Unfortunately Tony and Kit again encountered each other that night in Reggie Carroll’s room. Tony was cool, and Reggie, ignorant of what had happened, made matters worse by asking them facetiously what had ruffled the sweet waters of their friendship.

“Ask Tony,” answered Kit laconically, as he thumbed a school year book and tried to think of some way of getting out of the room.

Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s up?” repeated Reggie.

“Nothing particular,” Deering answered, after a pause. “We just don’t pull together in a certain matter.”

“Well, what do you expect,” exclaimed Kit impulsively, “do you expect me to measure my opinions by yours?”

“Rather not,” answered Tony, with a faint sneer, “you’d find them in that case a darn sight too big for you.”

“Softly, softly,” protested Reggie. But Tony again was gone.

When he got back to his own room later in the evening, Jimmie tried to talk the subject over with him, but Tony, ruffled and irritated, was not inclined to do so.

“I’ve made up my mind, Jim, so that’s all there is to it. I’m going to put Finch up next Saturday night, and in the meantime I’m going to work hard to try to get the fellows to vote for him. I hope you won’t blackball him.”

“No, I won’t do that, Tony; but I wish you’d see Kit and talk it over with him in a friendly way.”

“I’ll talk it over with Kit, if he wants to talk it over with me; but he has got to drop his swagger and bulldozing manner, if he wants to.”

“Look here, old man; Kit’s just impulsive; that’s all. Suppose I, after I had thought it over, made up my mind that it would be a bad thing for the Society and blackballed Finch, would you let that make any difference between us?”

Tony thought a moment. “No, old chap, of course it wouldn’t. I’d be sorry, of course, because I would feel you were wrong. But it isn’t being opposed that makes me sore, it’s Kit’s blustering blowing way of doing it.”

Jimmie went that night and sat on Tony’s bed for a long time after lights. They said nothing more about Kit or Finch, but talked intimately of a variety of other things in which they were interested, in the old close pleasant way. It was a long happy quiet talk and it did much to strengthen their friendship in the times of stress that were coming.

The conversations we have recorded took place well along in the winter term on a Monday night in March. The following Saturday evening was the date of the important meeting of the Dealonian Society at which new members were elected.

Tony spent a zealous week campaigning for Finch, and found it a disheartening business. Most of the boys—there were about forty members of the Society—protested, but after long persuasion, promised to cast favorable votes, though they took pains, almost without exception, to assure Tony that they were doing it simply because he asked them. Others refused definitely to commit themselves, and Tony had to be content with that. To Jimmie’s distress, Kit kept away from Number Five study all that week, and refused to make any advances toward setting things right with Tony. “I’ll talk it over, if he comes to me,” he would say to Jimmie over and over. “But I am going to blackball Finch, and I guess I can persuade at least one other fellow to do the same, so he won’t get into the Dealonian. Tony can do what he pleases. After it’s all over, if he wants to make up, well and good; I’ll have no hard feelings: if he don’t,—well, well and good, also.”

At last, after what seemed an interminable week toour three friends Saturday night came, and the forty members of the Dealonian Society met in solemn conclave in the Library. Tony took the chair, looking a trifle nervous and anxious, and called the meeting to order. Kit was present, sitting well back, and assumed an air of bland indifference to the proceedings. There were four new members to be elected from the Fifth Form.

Routine business was transacted for a quarter of an hour, and at last the president announced, “If there is no objection, we will proceed to the election of new members. As I wish to place a name in nomination, I will ask Mr. Wendell to take the chair.”

Billy Wendell, the head prefect, captain of the football team, and the last year’s president of the Dealonian, rose from his seat, and took the chair behind the big desk in a very solemn way, very much as a presidentpro tem. walks up to the platform of the Senate. He settled himself, coughed slightly, and recognized Tony. “Mr. Deering has the floor,” he observed in judicial tones.

“Mr. President and members of the Dealonian Society, I desire to place in nomination for membership in this society the name of Jacob Finch of the Fifth Form.” As this was expected, the boys showed little surprise. Jimmie glanced back at Kit, and saw his lips curl with faint contempt. Tony too glanced about him; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he threw back his shoulders, and addressed the Society. He cast aside now the solemn traditional oratorical form that the boys made an effort to assume, and his clear sweet voice rang with feeling. “Fellows,” he said,“I believe, as we all do, that this Society has the right to consider itself the most important institution in the school, and I realize that I am nominating one for membership in it, who, according to all standards we have set for ourselves and which have been so well maintained through many school generations, seems not to have a shadow of right to election. We want here fellows whose opinion counts, whose influence will be strong and positive, who have done and are able to do things for the school, in athletics, in scholarship, and in various other ways. I can’t pretend that I think that Jacob Finch will stand for these things or will do these things. But for once, it seems to me, that other considerations should weigh with us.”

The boys were startled by the unusual feeling in Deering’s voice and by the unconventional arguments he was using to urge his candidate upon their favor, and they settled into attitudes of deep attention.

“At the beginning of the year,” Tony went on, “a new boy came amongst us who, as we all know, has been treated as no boy ever was who came to the school before. He has been brutally hazed, and for months his life has been made miserable by young and old, and unfortunately he has had no way of defending himself. He has never had a chance, he hasn’t got a square deal. I have got to know him, I suppose, better than anyone else, and while I don’t claim or even think that he is an unusual fellow, I do believe there is something in him that could be made to count for the school if he had a show; if it could really be proved to him that you fellows werewilling to make him one of yourselves, give him not merely a fair, but a generous chance. I don’t want you merely to admit him to this Society because I ask it as a favor to me, though I hope you will do it for that reason if you won’t do it for any other; but I ask you to vote for him as an act of generous kindness toward a chap who hasn’t had the chance that any of us have had, whose life in this school up to now has been downright hell.”

With that Tony sat down. A ripple of conversation went round the room. The boys were quite won by this unusual appeal to their generosity and sympathy. Billy Wendell called them sharply to order. “Are there any further remarks upon Finch?”

Half a dozen fellows rose one after another, and declared, with a certain amount of feeling and a certain lack of grace, that they agreed with Deering, and that they thought Finch ought to be elected. Jimmie wanted to speak for Tony’s sake, but he could not quite bring himself to do so. In his heart he agreed with Kit that Tony’s judgment on this occasion was mistaken, and that were Finch elected it would not accomplish for him what Tony so generously hoped. There was a pause after good-natured Clayton had uttered a few stuttering sentimental remarks. Then Kit Wilson rose up quickly. His face was flushed, he seemed nervous, but there were lines of dogged determination about his mouth.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair are notthose of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous, but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be elected.”

With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the names and the boys respondingPlacetorNon Placet, as the case might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative. Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called. “Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up.

“The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair.

The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted. After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result, which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In thecorridor he came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were successful, weren’t you!”

Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered.

Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books.

CHAPTER XVIA RIFT IN FRIENDSHIPThe prominent members of a particular set of boys can scarcely be on bad terms with each other without the relations of them all being more or less affected, and this was certainly the case with our friends at Deal. Tony had more and more become the real leader of the little circle, so that Kit’s defection partook of the nature of a rebellion.Tack Turner, who had blackballed Finch at Kit’s request, had by that act lined himself on Wilson’s side. He was a slow, rather dull boy, quieter than the others, but generally liked. He had not felt particularly one way or the other with regard to Finch, and had agreed with Kit chiefly because it happened to be Kit that spoke to him first. But having given his word, he was of that tenacious and somewhat unintelligent type, that will stick to it whether subsequent events show his position to be a reasonable one or not. His semi-indifferent attitude was transformed, however, into violent partisanship for Kit, as Tony took occasion the morning after the Dealonian meeting to express his opinion of Tack’s blackballing Finch somewhat caustically.“I confess, Tack,” he said “that I never gave you the credit for much independence of judgment, but Ididn’t think you were quite so devoid of it as to vote just the way you were told to.”Turner growled out a bitter retort to this unnecessary remark, and the two parted on bad terms for the first time in their lives.Charlie Gordon, a light-hearted, easy-going, generous-minded lad sided naturally enough with Tony, and had been quite impressed by Tony’s eloquence the evening before. Teddy Lansing had not voted, and refused to commit himself. Poor Jimmie Lawrence was torn in both directions. He had been willing enough to vote for Finch and let Tony have his way, because he was deeply and genuinely fond of him, and was accustomed to follow his lead; but he could not bring himself to feel, despite Tony’s eloquent appeal at the meeting, that there was any real case for Finch with respect to the Dealonian, and he deplored the fact that Tony insisted on his plan. He was fond of Kit also; they had been chums since they had entered Deal together in the First Form five years before. His position was really a very hard one, because he felt and tried to be neutral, and neither Tony nor Kit, between whom the breach grew wider, was satisfied with neutrality. Both actually, if not expressly, were demanding partisanship.Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the incident—and this also Jimmie had dimly foreseen and feared—was the effect it had on Jacob Finch. Forty boys cannot keep a secret, so that it was not long before Finch heard a tolerably correct version of what had taken place at the Dealonian meeting. He was grateful to Deering for the effort he had made in his behalf,but the consciousness that he had been publicly discussed by a society of representative boys and formally rejected as a candidate for their companionship, added intensely to the bitterness of what he felt was his position.Sometimes when he was alone and thought of the incident, the hot tears would well up in his eyes and blind him. Bitter thoughts likewise would rise up in his soul and overwhelm him. He sometimes felt he could not stick it out for the year. But then, what else could he do? He could not think. He was absolutely dependent upon Doctor Forester, and he was not of the caliber to act rashly, go bravely out and face the hostile world. And the world seemed hostile to him—the very elements, these biting winter winds and prolonged northeast storms—seemed to beat against him. Hated alike by masters and boys, as he thought, he indeed was miserable. And, alas! save for his ardent affection for Deering, he began to hate bitterly and maliciously in return.Life had taught him to be sly and silent, but heretofore beyond a furtive manner and an intense reserve, the quality of slyness had not shown itself. But now his malice seemed to demand expression, impelled him to action, and he began, first in little ways, afterwards by more systematic plans to torment his tormentors. But so secretly, so cautiously, that, though his sting was felt, his victim was ignorant whence it had come.The principal objects of his hatred were Mr. Roylston and Kit Wilson, the latter only after he learned of Kit’s breach with Tony. Mr. Roylston began to beafflicted with a series of annoying and inexplicable incidents; anonymous letters were slipped into his mail-box, threatening him with dire calamities unless he speedily exhibited a change of heart; his books, his papers were misplaced, to be found in out-of-the-way places; twice or thrice his study was disordered; and once, at night as he was crossing the field, mud was thrown at him and his immaculate clothes were sadly bespattered. But so carefully did the culprit destroy all clues to his identity that the master had no redress. For once he was baffled. Never, so contemptuous an opinion did he hold of Finch’s spirit, did it occur to him even to suspect the poor worm whom daily he ground beneath the brazen feet of his sarcasm in the classroom.He took little Beverly into his confidence as they sat late one night over a comfortable fire in the masters’ common-room.“These things,” he remarked, “have been going on now for a number of weeks, and for the first time in my experience I do not discover the slightest clue to the culprit.”“Of course, however,” was Beverly’s comment, made partly to display his omniscience, partly to flatter an older colleague, “of course, you have your suspicions?”“Of course,” responded Roylston dryly, “that goes without saying. I have suspected both Deering and Wilson, whom indeed several times before have I discovered in misdemeanors of a similar character; but, if you chance to have been observing of late, you will have noticed and wondered that those two charming youths no longer consort together.”“Oh, boys of that sort,” said Beverly blithely, to hide his ignorance of the alleged coolness, “boys of that sort always fall out after a time. Mischief is a poor cement for friendship.”“On the contrary it has been my observation that it often does cement it. But I am the less inclined to lay my annoyances to the two boys I have mentioned than I would be if they were as thick as they formerly were. Wilson simply has not the ingenuity or the wit to do such things for so long a time and escape detection; and Deering lacks the incentive of Wilson’s impulsive and malignant vindictiveness. I am inclined to feel that I will discover the miscreant in some other set. Alas! they are not the only boys not above such things.”“I would keep an eye on my suspects, however,” remarked Beverly, with an air of conviction that he was offering very subtle advice.“Oh, my eye is ever on suspects, my friend.”At that moment Morris happened to come into the common-room, and the conversation was dropped.Finch, impishly elated by the successful secrecy of his attentions to Mr. Roylston and finding a certain relief for his spleen in his malicious tricks, began to extend his operations, concentrating on Wilson. Kit, when he discovered the tricks that had been played upon him, would storm about noisily, berating possible miscreants right and left, but for some time with as little effect as had attended Mr. Roylston’s quieter efforts. Success, however, rarely waits upon the criminal faithfully. He grows inevitably careless and falls at last into the most obvious trapthat is set for him. Poor Jake proved no exception.Twice in a week Kit had come in about four o’clock from his run across country with the hare and hounds, an unpopular game that he was seeking to boom, to find his room “rough-housed.” It was not the general disorder familiarly known by that term, but a more systematic confusion, if we may so speak; a more malicious effort to injure his property. His prepared work for the next day’s recitations would be smeared with ink so that it would have to be completely rewritten; his desk drawers would be turned topsy-turvy; his clothes hidden away in unexpected nooks and corners. This had happened several times, and the character of the destruction was more wanton than is often the case when boys indulge in such misguided forms of practical joking. He determined to watch carefully for weeks, if necessary, and catch the culprit if he should attempt to repeat his vandalism.As usual, one afternoon after two o’clock call-over, he went off ostensibly for his run in running drawers and shirt, his white legs and arms gleaming in the winter sunshine, as he dashed down the hill with his hounds. But this time he deserted them at the foot of the hill, skirted the path along the Rocks in the direction of Whetstone and returned to the school within half-an-hour by way of the steep-sloping south field, which faces Monday Port and which the boys seldom played upon. Unobserved, for his schoolmates were mostly far afield, he reached Standerland, tiptoed through the corridors to his room, and once insidehid himself carefully behind the curtains that screened the door into his bedroom.He waited impatiently a long dull half-hour, and several times was on the point of giving up; but for all his impulsiveness, Kit was doggedly persistent, and was quite capable of waiting there for an hour or more several times a week. And at last, to his joy, he heard a soft step in the corridor. Some one had paused before his door, and was evidently listening for sounds within. Then there was a gentle tap. Kit was still as a mouse. Another tap, another wait, then the door opened softly, and some one slipped in. Kit scarcely breathed. He could not see who it was, but he heard the intruder close the door gently behind him and stand for a moment, as Kit thought, looking furtively around him. He even came to the door of the bedroom, brushing the curtains back of which Kit was concealed as he passed. Then, satisfied at last that he was safe and alone, he went quickly to Kit’s desk, opened the drawers and thrust malicious disturbing hands amongst their contents. Then he drew forth a bundle of papers. Kit heard him rattle the ink-well, and his quick ears caught the sound of the patter of the ink drops as they fell on the papers. Instantly he leaped forward, with one bound was across the room, and had grabbed the vandal by the collar. It was Jacob Finch.For a moment, as Kit recognized the intruder, he was speechless with surprise. Finch stood as if he were paralyzed, in the position in which Kit had grabbed him. Only the ink-well had fallen from his fingers, and the black fluid was trickling from the desk onto the floor. His face was ashy, his eyes glared like those of a rat in a corner. In a second Kit recovered himself.i210HE OPENED THE DRAWERS AND THRUST MALICIOUS DISTURBING HANDS AMONG THE CONTENTS“You little hound,” he hissed, his anger blazing forth. “So it’s you that’s been rough-housing my room!”Finch could not utter a word.“Speak up, you cur. Bah! there’s no need. I’ve got you in the act. You’re caught red-handed, you sneak!”He advanced threateningly, determined to administer instantly the sound thrashing he felt was too good for the palsied little wretch before him. As he grasped Finch’s collar the second time, the boy let out a weird shrill wail like the cry of an animal.“Pah!” cried Wilson, “I can’t stand the touch of you. Get out of my sight.” He gave Finch a vicious kick that sent him reeling toward the door.“If ever you come near my room again,” shouted Kit, “I’ll break every bone in your miserable body. You sneak! You cur! Get out!”Poor Finch did not debate upon the manner of his going. With one movement, he had wrenched open the door and fled, not escaping, however, a parting shot from Wilson’s boot.Kit turned wrathfully to survey his damaged desk and papers, and began to clear the litter up.“The sneak!” he muttered. “And that’s the specimen that Tony Deering thought we ought to take into the Dealonian, that’s the dirty little cur for whom he’s thrown me over!”Unfortunately, as Finch sped down the corridorfor his own room, he ran squarely into Tony who was just coming out of Number Five study.“Well, what the deuce is the matter with you?” exclaimed Deering, turning to look at the bewildered figure. But Finch did not reply. He dashed into his own room, and slammed and locked the door. Tony whistled softly, and went on. He was on his way to the shower, and had nothing on but his wrapper. His way led past Number Twelve study where Kit roomed, and at its door, as he turned a corner of the corridor, he saw Wilson thrusting armfuls of paper into the waste basket. Tony dropped his eyes and did not speak. Wilson looked up suddenly and recognized him, and impulsively exclaimed: “I say, Deering, just look here and see what a mess your particular pet has made for me.”Tony stopped, surprised, and annoyed by Wilson’s angry tone. He glanced indifferently at the disordered room, the desk stained by the great blot of ink, the crumbled papers. “Well,” he remarked, “I don’t see how this concerns me or my friends.”“You don’t, eh?” exclaimed Kit. “Well, I blamed well do. That’s the sort of thing I’ve had to put up with for the last three weeks. Your friend Finch has been in here, kindly putting my room on the bum.”“Finch!” cried Tony. “I don’t be—I reckon you’ve made a mistake.”“IreckonI haven’t. I laid for him, if you want to know; and I had the pleasure just now of kicking him out. If I catch him in here again, I’ll break every bone in his body. Since you are so deeply interested in hiswelfare, you’ll be doing him a kindness if you tell him that for me.”Deering’s lips curled contemptuously. “I don’t know exactly what you are driving at, Wilson, and I don’t think I particularly care.”Kit snorted, and went on with the task of setting his things to right. Tony majestically proceeded toward the shower. After he had stood for a quarter of an hour under cold water he felt considerably cooler, and when he had dressed, he stopped at Finch’s room on his way to the Rectory for tea. Finch at first refused to respond to his knock.“Come, come, open up, old man. I want to see you particularly.”It was a bedraggled depressed-looking Finch that finally opened his door. Deering pushed it back and entered. “Now, what’s the trouble?” he asked. “I know something’s up, because Wilson just now said he had—had put you out of his room. What were you there for?”“He did put me out,” gasped Finch. He hesitated, then lied desperately. “I wanted to borrow some paper. I thought of asking you, but Wilson had the kind I wanted. He wasn’t in, or at least I thought he wasn’t in, so I went to his desk, and began to pull some sheets off his pad, and he jumped on me from behind a curtain or out of his bedroom, from somewhere, I dunno where.”“What did he say?”“Nothing much. He called me a sneak, and kicked me out.”“How did the ink get spilled?”“I knocked it over when he jumped at me. Somebody’s been rough-housing his room, I guess, and he thought it was me.”“Well, it wasn’t you, Jake, was it?” asked Tony, fixing him with a keen hurt glance.“No, Deering, ‘pon my honor, it wasn’t.”“Had you ever been to his room before?”“Never alone.” His eyes shifted back to meet Tony’s wondering glance. “Don’t you believe me, Deering?” There was a wail of despair in his voice.“Yes, Jake, yes; of course, I believe you. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Cheer up, I’ll try to get Wilson to listen to reason.”“Oh, don’t—!” Jake stopped, aghast at his possible mistake. “I don’t want you to do anything for me, Deering, you’ve done enough. I’m just always getting you in trouble.”“That’s all right, Jake; helping a friend out isn’t trouble.”And with that Tony went on. He stopped again at Wilson’s room. The door was still open, and Kit was still fussing about his desk. He looked up at the knock, and scowled a little as he bade his visitor come in.Tony came in and closed the door behind him. “Look here, Kit,” he said, trying hard to keep control of his voice. “I want to speak to you about Finch. I think you have done him a wrong. He came in here to borrow some paper——”“Oh, is that the song and dance he gives you? Well, I know what he came in for. If you want to know, I kept still behind those curtains for a couple of minutes while he started his dirty work, and I caughthim right in the act, with that ink-well in his greasy fingers smearing my exercises with it. He has been rough-housing this room for two or three weeks.”“Well, he says he hasn’t, and I don’t think he’s a liar. Will you give him a chance to explain?”“I’ll be hanged if I will. I know he’s a liar. I know it, man. Don’t talk to me any such blamed rot about his coming in here to borrow paper; he’s a sneak and a toad, and if he comes near me again I’ll lick the life out of him.”“Go ahead, bully a chap that can’t defend himself.”“Look here, Tony. I hate to quarrel with you, but it’s got to come. I thought you were wrong about that kid from the first; he ain’t fit for help, and ’s for the Dealonian,—well, save the mark! But it’s come to this—you and I can’t be friends, if you are going to take that little sneak’s part against me. We’ll just break for good and all. You can’t be a friend of mine, and take the attitude toward him that you’ve been taking. I might have got over the other business; but I can’t get over to-day’s dirty work, and for you to come in here, and tell me the pack of lies he’s made up, is too much. Let’s cut it out, and have done with each other.”“Oh, all right; if that’s your point of view, I’m willing. You’re unreasonable and hot-headed, Kit. So long, old man, I’m sorry you can’t be just.”“So long,” said Wilson, as Tony stalked out.For a moment or so Kit fumed about, pulling things out of their places and thrusting them viciously back. Suddenly he put his head down on the table, and burst into tears.

A RIFT IN FRIENDSHIP

The prominent members of a particular set of boys can scarcely be on bad terms with each other without the relations of them all being more or less affected, and this was certainly the case with our friends at Deal. Tony had more and more become the real leader of the little circle, so that Kit’s defection partook of the nature of a rebellion.

Tack Turner, who had blackballed Finch at Kit’s request, had by that act lined himself on Wilson’s side. He was a slow, rather dull boy, quieter than the others, but generally liked. He had not felt particularly one way or the other with regard to Finch, and had agreed with Kit chiefly because it happened to be Kit that spoke to him first. But having given his word, he was of that tenacious and somewhat unintelligent type, that will stick to it whether subsequent events show his position to be a reasonable one or not. His semi-indifferent attitude was transformed, however, into violent partisanship for Kit, as Tony took occasion the morning after the Dealonian meeting to express his opinion of Tack’s blackballing Finch somewhat caustically.

“I confess, Tack,” he said “that I never gave you the credit for much independence of judgment, but Ididn’t think you were quite so devoid of it as to vote just the way you were told to.”

Turner growled out a bitter retort to this unnecessary remark, and the two parted on bad terms for the first time in their lives.

Charlie Gordon, a light-hearted, easy-going, generous-minded lad sided naturally enough with Tony, and had been quite impressed by Tony’s eloquence the evening before. Teddy Lansing had not voted, and refused to commit himself. Poor Jimmie Lawrence was torn in both directions. He had been willing enough to vote for Finch and let Tony have his way, because he was deeply and genuinely fond of him, and was accustomed to follow his lead; but he could not bring himself to feel, despite Tony’s eloquent appeal at the meeting, that there was any real case for Finch with respect to the Dealonian, and he deplored the fact that Tony insisted on his plan. He was fond of Kit also; they had been chums since they had entered Deal together in the First Form five years before. His position was really a very hard one, because he felt and tried to be neutral, and neither Tony nor Kit, between whom the breach grew wider, was satisfied with neutrality. Both actually, if not expressly, were demanding partisanship.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the incident—and this also Jimmie had dimly foreseen and feared—was the effect it had on Jacob Finch. Forty boys cannot keep a secret, so that it was not long before Finch heard a tolerably correct version of what had taken place at the Dealonian meeting. He was grateful to Deering for the effort he had made in his behalf,but the consciousness that he had been publicly discussed by a society of representative boys and formally rejected as a candidate for their companionship, added intensely to the bitterness of what he felt was his position.

Sometimes when he was alone and thought of the incident, the hot tears would well up in his eyes and blind him. Bitter thoughts likewise would rise up in his soul and overwhelm him. He sometimes felt he could not stick it out for the year. But then, what else could he do? He could not think. He was absolutely dependent upon Doctor Forester, and he was not of the caliber to act rashly, go bravely out and face the hostile world. And the world seemed hostile to him—the very elements, these biting winter winds and prolonged northeast storms—seemed to beat against him. Hated alike by masters and boys, as he thought, he indeed was miserable. And, alas! save for his ardent affection for Deering, he began to hate bitterly and maliciously in return.

Life had taught him to be sly and silent, but heretofore beyond a furtive manner and an intense reserve, the quality of slyness had not shown itself. But now his malice seemed to demand expression, impelled him to action, and he began, first in little ways, afterwards by more systematic plans to torment his tormentors. But so secretly, so cautiously, that, though his sting was felt, his victim was ignorant whence it had come.

The principal objects of his hatred were Mr. Roylston and Kit Wilson, the latter only after he learned of Kit’s breach with Tony. Mr. Roylston began to beafflicted with a series of annoying and inexplicable incidents; anonymous letters were slipped into his mail-box, threatening him with dire calamities unless he speedily exhibited a change of heart; his books, his papers were misplaced, to be found in out-of-the-way places; twice or thrice his study was disordered; and once, at night as he was crossing the field, mud was thrown at him and his immaculate clothes were sadly bespattered. But so carefully did the culprit destroy all clues to his identity that the master had no redress. For once he was baffled. Never, so contemptuous an opinion did he hold of Finch’s spirit, did it occur to him even to suspect the poor worm whom daily he ground beneath the brazen feet of his sarcasm in the classroom.

He took little Beverly into his confidence as they sat late one night over a comfortable fire in the masters’ common-room.

“These things,” he remarked, “have been going on now for a number of weeks, and for the first time in my experience I do not discover the slightest clue to the culprit.”

“Of course, however,” was Beverly’s comment, made partly to display his omniscience, partly to flatter an older colleague, “of course, you have your suspicions?”

“Of course,” responded Roylston dryly, “that goes without saying. I have suspected both Deering and Wilson, whom indeed several times before have I discovered in misdemeanors of a similar character; but, if you chance to have been observing of late, you will have noticed and wondered that those two charming youths no longer consort together.”

“Oh, boys of that sort,” said Beverly blithely, to hide his ignorance of the alleged coolness, “boys of that sort always fall out after a time. Mischief is a poor cement for friendship.”

“On the contrary it has been my observation that it often does cement it. But I am the less inclined to lay my annoyances to the two boys I have mentioned than I would be if they were as thick as they formerly were. Wilson simply has not the ingenuity or the wit to do such things for so long a time and escape detection; and Deering lacks the incentive of Wilson’s impulsive and malignant vindictiveness. I am inclined to feel that I will discover the miscreant in some other set. Alas! they are not the only boys not above such things.”

“I would keep an eye on my suspects, however,” remarked Beverly, with an air of conviction that he was offering very subtle advice.

“Oh, my eye is ever on suspects, my friend.”

At that moment Morris happened to come into the common-room, and the conversation was dropped.

Finch, impishly elated by the successful secrecy of his attentions to Mr. Roylston and finding a certain relief for his spleen in his malicious tricks, began to extend his operations, concentrating on Wilson. Kit, when he discovered the tricks that had been played upon him, would storm about noisily, berating possible miscreants right and left, but for some time with as little effect as had attended Mr. Roylston’s quieter efforts. Success, however, rarely waits upon the criminal faithfully. He grows inevitably careless and falls at last into the most obvious trapthat is set for him. Poor Jake proved no exception.

Twice in a week Kit had come in about four o’clock from his run across country with the hare and hounds, an unpopular game that he was seeking to boom, to find his room “rough-housed.” It was not the general disorder familiarly known by that term, but a more systematic confusion, if we may so speak; a more malicious effort to injure his property. His prepared work for the next day’s recitations would be smeared with ink so that it would have to be completely rewritten; his desk drawers would be turned topsy-turvy; his clothes hidden away in unexpected nooks and corners. This had happened several times, and the character of the destruction was more wanton than is often the case when boys indulge in such misguided forms of practical joking. He determined to watch carefully for weeks, if necessary, and catch the culprit if he should attempt to repeat his vandalism.

As usual, one afternoon after two o’clock call-over, he went off ostensibly for his run in running drawers and shirt, his white legs and arms gleaming in the winter sunshine, as he dashed down the hill with his hounds. But this time he deserted them at the foot of the hill, skirted the path along the Rocks in the direction of Whetstone and returned to the school within half-an-hour by way of the steep-sloping south field, which faces Monday Port and which the boys seldom played upon. Unobserved, for his schoolmates were mostly far afield, he reached Standerland, tiptoed through the corridors to his room, and once insidehid himself carefully behind the curtains that screened the door into his bedroom.

He waited impatiently a long dull half-hour, and several times was on the point of giving up; but for all his impulsiveness, Kit was doggedly persistent, and was quite capable of waiting there for an hour or more several times a week. And at last, to his joy, he heard a soft step in the corridor. Some one had paused before his door, and was evidently listening for sounds within. Then there was a gentle tap. Kit was still as a mouse. Another tap, another wait, then the door opened softly, and some one slipped in. Kit scarcely breathed. He could not see who it was, but he heard the intruder close the door gently behind him and stand for a moment, as Kit thought, looking furtively around him. He even came to the door of the bedroom, brushing the curtains back of which Kit was concealed as he passed. Then, satisfied at last that he was safe and alone, he went quickly to Kit’s desk, opened the drawers and thrust malicious disturbing hands amongst their contents. Then he drew forth a bundle of papers. Kit heard him rattle the ink-well, and his quick ears caught the sound of the patter of the ink drops as they fell on the papers. Instantly he leaped forward, with one bound was across the room, and had grabbed the vandal by the collar. It was Jacob Finch.

For a moment, as Kit recognized the intruder, he was speechless with surprise. Finch stood as if he were paralyzed, in the position in which Kit had grabbed him. Only the ink-well had fallen from his fingers, and the black fluid was trickling from the desk onto the floor. His face was ashy, his eyes glared like those of a rat in a corner. In a second Kit recovered himself.

i210

HE OPENED THE DRAWERS AND THRUST MALICIOUS DISTURBING HANDS AMONG THE CONTENTS

HE OPENED THE DRAWERS AND THRUST MALICIOUS DISTURBING HANDS AMONG THE CONTENTS

HE OPENED THE DRAWERS AND THRUST MALICIOUS DISTURBING HANDS AMONG THE CONTENTS

“You little hound,” he hissed, his anger blazing forth. “So it’s you that’s been rough-housing my room!”

Finch could not utter a word.

“Speak up, you cur. Bah! there’s no need. I’ve got you in the act. You’re caught red-handed, you sneak!”

He advanced threateningly, determined to administer instantly the sound thrashing he felt was too good for the palsied little wretch before him. As he grasped Finch’s collar the second time, the boy let out a weird shrill wail like the cry of an animal.

“Pah!” cried Wilson, “I can’t stand the touch of you. Get out of my sight.” He gave Finch a vicious kick that sent him reeling toward the door.

“If ever you come near my room again,” shouted Kit, “I’ll break every bone in your miserable body. You sneak! You cur! Get out!”

Poor Finch did not debate upon the manner of his going. With one movement, he had wrenched open the door and fled, not escaping, however, a parting shot from Wilson’s boot.

Kit turned wrathfully to survey his damaged desk and papers, and began to clear the litter up.

“The sneak!” he muttered. “And that’s the specimen that Tony Deering thought we ought to take into the Dealonian, that’s the dirty little cur for whom he’s thrown me over!”

Unfortunately, as Finch sped down the corridorfor his own room, he ran squarely into Tony who was just coming out of Number Five study.

“Well, what the deuce is the matter with you?” exclaimed Deering, turning to look at the bewildered figure. But Finch did not reply. He dashed into his own room, and slammed and locked the door. Tony whistled softly, and went on. He was on his way to the shower, and had nothing on but his wrapper. His way led past Number Twelve study where Kit roomed, and at its door, as he turned a corner of the corridor, he saw Wilson thrusting armfuls of paper into the waste basket. Tony dropped his eyes and did not speak. Wilson looked up suddenly and recognized him, and impulsively exclaimed: “I say, Deering, just look here and see what a mess your particular pet has made for me.”

Tony stopped, surprised, and annoyed by Wilson’s angry tone. He glanced indifferently at the disordered room, the desk stained by the great blot of ink, the crumbled papers. “Well,” he remarked, “I don’t see how this concerns me or my friends.”

“You don’t, eh?” exclaimed Kit. “Well, I blamed well do. That’s the sort of thing I’ve had to put up with for the last three weeks. Your friend Finch has been in here, kindly putting my room on the bum.”

“Finch!” cried Tony. “I don’t be—I reckon you’ve made a mistake.”

“IreckonI haven’t. I laid for him, if you want to know; and I had the pleasure just now of kicking him out. If I catch him in here again, I’ll break every bone in his body. Since you are so deeply interested in hiswelfare, you’ll be doing him a kindness if you tell him that for me.”

Deering’s lips curled contemptuously. “I don’t know exactly what you are driving at, Wilson, and I don’t think I particularly care.”

Kit snorted, and went on with the task of setting his things to right. Tony majestically proceeded toward the shower. After he had stood for a quarter of an hour under cold water he felt considerably cooler, and when he had dressed, he stopped at Finch’s room on his way to the Rectory for tea. Finch at first refused to respond to his knock.

“Come, come, open up, old man. I want to see you particularly.”

It was a bedraggled depressed-looking Finch that finally opened his door. Deering pushed it back and entered. “Now, what’s the trouble?” he asked. “I know something’s up, because Wilson just now said he had—had put you out of his room. What were you there for?”

“He did put me out,” gasped Finch. He hesitated, then lied desperately. “I wanted to borrow some paper. I thought of asking you, but Wilson had the kind I wanted. He wasn’t in, or at least I thought he wasn’t in, so I went to his desk, and began to pull some sheets off his pad, and he jumped on me from behind a curtain or out of his bedroom, from somewhere, I dunno where.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much. He called me a sneak, and kicked me out.”

“How did the ink get spilled?”

“I knocked it over when he jumped at me. Somebody’s been rough-housing his room, I guess, and he thought it was me.”

“Well, it wasn’t you, Jake, was it?” asked Tony, fixing him with a keen hurt glance.

“No, Deering, ‘pon my honor, it wasn’t.”

“Had you ever been to his room before?”

“Never alone.” His eyes shifted back to meet Tony’s wondering glance. “Don’t you believe me, Deering?” There was a wail of despair in his voice.

“Yes, Jake, yes; of course, I believe you. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Cheer up, I’ll try to get Wilson to listen to reason.”

“Oh, don’t—!” Jake stopped, aghast at his possible mistake. “I don’t want you to do anything for me, Deering, you’ve done enough. I’m just always getting you in trouble.”

“That’s all right, Jake; helping a friend out isn’t trouble.”

And with that Tony went on. He stopped again at Wilson’s room. The door was still open, and Kit was still fussing about his desk. He looked up at the knock, and scowled a little as he bade his visitor come in.

Tony came in and closed the door behind him. “Look here, Kit,” he said, trying hard to keep control of his voice. “I want to speak to you about Finch. I think you have done him a wrong. He came in here to borrow some paper——”

“Oh, is that the song and dance he gives you? Well, I know what he came in for. If you want to know, I kept still behind those curtains for a couple of minutes while he started his dirty work, and I caughthim right in the act, with that ink-well in his greasy fingers smearing my exercises with it. He has been rough-housing this room for two or three weeks.”

“Well, he says he hasn’t, and I don’t think he’s a liar. Will you give him a chance to explain?”

“I’ll be hanged if I will. I know he’s a liar. I know it, man. Don’t talk to me any such blamed rot about his coming in here to borrow paper; he’s a sneak and a toad, and if he comes near me again I’ll lick the life out of him.”

“Go ahead, bully a chap that can’t defend himself.”

“Look here, Tony. I hate to quarrel with you, but it’s got to come. I thought you were wrong about that kid from the first; he ain’t fit for help, and ’s for the Dealonian,—well, save the mark! But it’s come to this—you and I can’t be friends, if you are going to take that little sneak’s part against me. We’ll just break for good and all. You can’t be a friend of mine, and take the attitude toward him that you’ve been taking. I might have got over the other business; but I can’t get over to-day’s dirty work, and for you to come in here, and tell me the pack of lies he’s made up, is too much. Let’s cut it out, and have done with each other.”

“Oh, all right; if that’s your point of view, I’m willing. You’re unreasonable and hot-headed, Kit. So long, old man, I’m sorry you can’t be just.”

“So long,” said Wilson, as Tony stalked out.

For a moment or so Kit fumed about, pulling things out of their places and thrusting them viciously back. Suddenly he put his head down on the table, and burst into tears.

CHAPTER XVIILEAVE-TAKINGThe short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, had come and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routine of the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of all concerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speak to each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly terms with them both.The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were come again when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and the mounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. The fields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseball teams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavily manned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the little harbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews, went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past Deigr Light into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys and masters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part the stress of the long winter term problems and discipline was wholly relaxed.Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, worked fairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happy and contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams on the north field, so that they did not come in contact with him very frequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but he came no more to Number Five study.Kit had said nothing about his affair with Finch; but, as he expected, his rooms were disturbed no more. Finch, terrified by discovery and the fear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. His conscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but less perhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. There was on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in their friendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believed of course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode in Wilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’s open break with him, he saw no way to set things right.This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of that bright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Each boy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both were impulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quick by the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.One day in Fifth English they were readingAs You Like It, and it fell to Kit to read the lines of Amiens’ song in the second act:“Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:Most friendship is feigning, most love merely folly.“Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,Thou dost not bite so nighAs benefits forgot:Though thou the waters warp,Thy sting is not so sharpAs friend remembered not.”As he got toward the end of the lines, his voice almost broke. Stenton, realizing with quick sympathy that the song had taken on for him some keen personal meaning, passed on the reading immediately to another boy. Tony sat in his seat flushed and uncomfortable; for him also the verse had intense meaning. He longed to look up and catch Kit’s eye, and then join him after class and say boldly how foolish he felt their coolness was. But he did not do so. He felt he never could do so. Kit had been too unfair, too bitter—the advance must come from him.Suddenly one day, in the midst of all this intense life and activity of school so absorbing to our boys, there came a word to Tony that was rudely and without warning to take him out of it. The message came in the form of a letter from his grandfather bidding him come home at once.“It will be bad news to you, my dear boy,” he wrote, “but your unfortunate father’s business venture has been an absolute failure; he has been very ill and is only just now on the road to recovery, and your poor mother has fallen a victim at last to the worry and strain. She wants you, and the doctor and I think it best for you to come. So you must do so at once, as I am writing to the Head Master. I don’t know, Anthony, whether we shall beable or not to send you back next year. We poor people of the south, when Fortune turns against us, are pretty well down and out. You have made a good record at school, and I do not doubt but that Doctor Forester will promote you to the Sixth Form next year, should we be able to send you back, even if you do lose these two months. But you must come now, and at once. Telegraph me the day and hour and I will have Sambo meet you at the Junction.“Your affectionate grandfather,“Basil Deering.”Poor Tony read this letter over and over before he could clearly take it in. He knew something of old of his reckless father’s terrible propensity to indulge in wild-cat speculation, of the disaster and trouble it had brought upon the family at Low Deering before. And now too his mother was ill! Of course, of course, he must go home. He fumbled in his drawer and found a time-table. Yes, he could leave that night. And yet—he paused, with the letter in his hand—it was like a sentence of banishment: to leave school now in the middle of the best term of the year, and with so many things in which he was interested at loose ends! He could not believe it really meant that; it could not be true. And perhaps never to return! He looked again at his letter, and the old general’s words made him sick at heart. Never again to race up and down that hillside, to look out upon that splendid sea; never again to swagger about the campus with his chums in the old glad, happy, self-important way! No, no, he could not bear that it should mean that! The hot tears welled in his eyes,—but he brushed them away. Of course, his mother needed him. He had gone through before those agonizingfamily crises, had seen his tender patient mother struggle bravely against his father’s bad moods and dark despair. He knew that indeed she must have collapsed when his grandfather sent for him and she permitted it.He ran over to the Rectory and found the Doctor in his study. He too had just been reading a letter from General Deering.He clasped Tony’s hand in his strong affectionate grip. “I am sorry for you, my boy.... Yes, I have just been reading a letter from your grandfather. There is no choice but for you to go at once.”“I can leave on the ten o’clock from Monday Port, to-night, sir,” said Tony, “and catch the midnight express at Coventry, which will get me home the next evening.”“Doubtless that is the best plan,” the Doctor agreed. “I don’t think, from what the General tells me, that you need worry about your mother’s immediate condition. But undoubtedly you are needed. I am very sorry that you should lose these two months, but you can keep up your work at home and there is no reason why you should not make the Sixth comfortably in September.”“I think I could do that, sir,” replied Tony, “but my grandfather says there is some doubt about—about their being able to send me back next year.”“Yes, yes, he writes that to me; but you are to come, nevertheless. We will arrange that. I hope the financial difficulties will straighten out satisfactorily, but if worst comes to worst and they should not, why there are any number of ways that we canprovide for you. There is always a scholarship fund rusting in the bank,—ripening, I had better say, for just some such occasion. I fancy, even, that the school would be willing to trust you for your tuition. But one thing is quite settled: youareto return. And I will make that clear to Basil—to your grandfather.”“Thank you, sir; you’ve been mighty good to me.”“You have been mighty good to us—mighty goodforus, I may say,—my boy.... Good-bye now, for the present.... And God bless you.”In a moment or so Tony was gone. He found Jimmie, Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing, and told them the news. And then, after a few hasty farewells, went to his rooms with Jimmie to pack. It was then late in the afternoon. The packing was a sad business, for he felt he must take everything. He would be away five months; perhaps, despite the Doctor’s kind prophecy, for good. As this possibility occurred to him, he would stand now and then in the middle of the room, with a coat or hat or what not in his hands, and feel it was simply impossible to go on. Tears would start in his eyes and trickle down his cheeks. He had always liked the school, even in his bad moods he had been loyal; but he had not known, he had not realized, as few boys do at the time, how the school had become a part of his very life, how intensely his affections were centered there. And then—Mr. Morris; the fellows, Jimmie, Teddy, Charlie, Kit—it would be hard to leave without saying good-bye to Kit—, Reggie!He turned to Jimmie who had come in at the moment with his arms full of Tony’s belongings thathe had collected from various parts of the school, locker rooms and the like. “Excuse me for a little while, Jimmie old boy; I’ve got to run over and see Reggie. I haven’t told him yet.” Tony had a pang of regret that he had seen so little of Reggie of late, “I’ll be back before long.”“All right,” said Jimmie dolefully. “I’ll go on with the packing, if you don’t mind. Don’t be long.”“I won’t,” said Tony.He found Carroll fortunately in his own room in the Old School. For once Reginald was studying, and Tony could scarcely remember when he had seen him so engaged. But the Sixth Former closed his Horace with relief as he recognized his visitor and kicked out a chair for him to sit down. “Well, I am certainly glad you have come. Heaven knows how long I would have kept at that futile exercise, if it had not been pleasantly interrupted. But what’s up, my boy, you look as if you had seen a ghost?”Tony sat down on the chair that Carroll had pushed out. “I have, Reggie,” he said, “I have just got a letter from home; worse luck. My mother’s ill, and I have to start south to-night.”“Jove, that is hard luck! When shall you get back, do you suppose?”“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother is dangerously ill, but she wants me. There’s been a mess about money too. The old governor has written, and says I may not get back at all—not this term any way.”“Not this term!” Reggie jumped up quickly, allthe habitual languor of his attitude and movements gone, and strode over to the window.“No, I’m afraid not, Reggie.”“Why—why—I’ll be gone next term, boy.”“I know, old man.”For a moment Carroll turned his back to Tony and looked out of the window into the deepening twilight, and was silent. There was a lump in his throat that kept him from speaking.“I’ve only a few minutes, Reggie, old boy,” said Tony, at last. “I am leaving in an hour and I am only half packed. I’ve got to say good-bye.”Carroll turned at this: a pathetic smile was on his lips. “It has come so suddenly, boy ... it’s kind of taken the wind out of my sails.” He came over then and took Tony’s hand in his. “Tonio, ... I can’t say good-bye.... You’ll write to me ... you will come back surely.... I’ll be at Kingsbridge and often back at school.”“I hope so, Reggie.”“You don’t know, boy,” Reggie went on, still holding Tony’s hand, “I can’t tell you what your being here has meant for me—you and Bill. We haven’t seen each other much this year, and I reckon I’ve often seemed to you a poor sort of friend ... but, to put it poetically, old chap, ... the light o’ my heart goes out with you.”Tony gripped the hand in his tightly at this. There was a lump in his throat too.“Good-bye, Reggie.... I will write, and you be sure to write to me. Tell me all that’s going on.... Have an eye on Finch, will you? Poor duffer!”“Poor duffer, indeed!” said Carroll, and then added, “Poor me!” Their hands clasped tightly, and then Tony was gone.Reggie stood for a long time just as Tony had left him. “One by one the lamps go out,” he murmured, quoting a line from one of his own verses. He sighed. “So runs, so runs the world away....” There was a queer sharp pain at his heart. He sat down at last and opened his Horace again, and began to read, but the words conveyed no sense to his mind. He threw his arms out once, and whispered softly, pathetically, “Oh, Tony, Tony.... God bless you, boy; God bless you!”Back in Number Five Jimmie and Tony were absorbed in the last stages of the packing. Morris, to whom Tony had explained the occasion of his going, had come in and was helping them. And his presence went a great way to cheer them up, for Morris refused for an instant, even in his own mind, to consider the possibility of Deering not coming back. He eased off their good-byes, and sent Lawrence over to cheer up Carroll, whom he knew would feel it more than the rest, for it was good-bye to Tony for him as he was in the Sixth and would be at Kingsbridge next year when Tony returned.Deering said good-bye to Finch, quickly, quietly, he had time for little explanation. Finch said nothing, but died of despair within.On the way down the corridor Tony passed Kit, a generous word was on his lips, their eyes met for a second, but Kit looked quickly away, and Tony passed on. The opportunity for a reconciliationwas gone. Morris drove in to Monday Port with the boy and saw him off on the way-train for Coventry. With persistent tact, he continued to treat the parting as only a temporary one, and refused himself the melancholy pleasure of saying much to his young friend that was in his heart and that Tony might have been glad to hear. It was better so, thought Morris. The kind things could be written, if the need came.There was a quick, short, strong grip of their hands at last, and Tony climbed into the train. He stowed his things in the empty car, and then went and stood on the rear platform and waved his hand to Morris as the train pulled out of the little station, and strained his eyes to see the last of the master’s patient, kindly friendly figure until darkness blotted out the vision. The train was rushing through the outskirts of the little town. Beyond the limits it ascended a steep grade and ran along a high level plateau for a way, and thence Tony caught a glimpse of the lights of the school shining brightly from the far-away hill, wafting him, it seemed, a friendly good-bye across the dark. Suddenly the train plunged into a narrow cut in a hill and Deering could see the lights of Deal no more.At Coventry he had a dreary wait for half-an-hour until the midnight express for the south lumbered in and stopped on signal. As soon as he had boarded the through train, he got into his berth, for he was worn out with the wearisome journey from Monday Port and with the excitement of the last seven hours. But he could not sleep for a long time. When at last he did fall into a fitful slumber, constantly disturbed by the jolts and jars of the rushing train, it was todream bad dreams. Once it seemed to him, in the dazed state between sleeping and waking, that he was lying in his little bed at Low Deering, that he was still a little boy of fourteen, and that the last four years at Deal had been only a dream....At Low Deering Tony found things almost as bad as he had feared. His father, a genial, charming, irresponsible creature—the unaccountable wild olive that grows now and then on the stock of the good olive tree—had rather more deeply than usual—for the same sort of thing had happened before—plunged his family into distress. He had ventured all his available capital and more that he had borrowed, on the security of his extravagant hopes and good intentions, from his wife; staked it in a case where he stood to win twenty-fold or quite overwhelmingly lose; and, as not unfrequently happens, had lost. Then had followed, as Tony could remember the horror of it all at an earlier period of his boyhood, a trying disappearance and a return in a mood of black melancholy and idle remorse.But the worst was over by the time he reached home. Victor Deering, thanks to his father’s stern but tender patience and his wife’s unfailing much-tried devotion, was slowly recovering his normal health, his irrepressible spirits, his habitual weaving of futile plans and nursing of quixotic hopes. But the process this time had cost his family a good deal more than its meager income could pay for and had sacrificed Mrs. Deering’s health to worry and distress. For weeks she had been lying in a state of nervous exhaustion, from which the physician at last thoughtshe might be rallied if her wish were granted and Tony, her only child, might be with her. And so he had been sent for.During those two hot months of the southern spring Tony devoted himself to his mother, a devotion that was only relaxed when later, the old general having scraped together enough for the purpose, the family removed for the summer to the cooler climate of a resort in the North Carolina mountains. The mother grieved not a little for her boy’s interrupted school days—she guessed at the sacrifice Tony’s cheerfulness hid,—but Tony and the General knew that his return had saved her health if not her life.Tony had been separated a great deal from his family since he had gone north to school, so that, after the first homesickness for Deal was over, he began to be deeply interested again in the old scenes and familiar friends of his early boyhood: the easy-going, ill-managed old plantation with its extensive sugar industry bringing in such income as they had; the little hill on which stood the house of Low Deering, low, white and great galleried; the sleepy bayou that stretched away below to the wild and beautiful jungle, a marshy live-oak forest, picturesquely hung with the heavy lace of the gray Spanish moss and the delicate purple of the wild wistaria; the inky black darkies, relics of ante-bellum days; the few families of similar decaying plantations in the neighborhood.Later in the summer at Bald Rock in North Carolina, at the hotel to which their diminutive cottage was attached, there were young people again—boys to play baseball and climb the near by mountainswith, girls with whom to dance at the Saturday night hops on the great gallery of the hotel. Then too there was his father. Despite an inner disapproval that Tony could not help feeling for his father’s irresponsible doings, for the trouble he now and then brought so deeply, perhaps unwittingly, upon them all, Tony enjoyed his father immensely. If he himself had inherited his strong sense of honor and his manly grip on life from his grandfather, and the inner patient tenderness we have sometimes noted in him from his mother, it was from his father that his charm, his quick and ready sympathy, his genial grace had come.After the terrible six months he had given them, Victor Deering could not have done more to atone than he was whole-heartedly trying to do. It was characteristic of him, for he deeply appreciated what Deal School had done for Tony, that his repentance should have caused him to suggest to the old general that his own patrimony, hoarded by the head of the house against a rainy day, should be made over to Tony at once, and the income, the capital if necessary, be applied to completing his education at Deal and later on at Kingsbridge. General Deering took his son at his word. Victor was only too eager to promise from then on steadfast attention to the plantation, which, better managed, was capable still of recouping their fortunes and furnishing them with a living. So it began to look bright, as Tony wrote to Jimmie Lawrence, for his return to school, and without any question of taking advantage of scholarships or such aid as the Head had so kindly offered. That offer rankled, unjustly as he knew, in the old aristocrat’smind. He was determined Tony should have no such humiliation to face.Of the school in these days of Tony’s enforced exile, a glimpse shall be had through the medium of Jimmie Lawrence’s letters, for, of course, the two boys had written each other with some regularity.“Deal School:May 10th.“Dear Tony:“Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be back next term....“I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about. I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work, and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry. From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate the pages of theDeal Lit. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now, despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again next year.“The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We havewon all our games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th. It’s a shame you won’t be here.“There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs and says nothing.“The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.“Ever affectionately,“Jimmie.”In June there came another letter that interested Tony very much.“Reggie has pulled both the Latin and the Poetry Prizes. Even the Gumshoe thawed a trifle and shook hands with him as he came down from the platform on Prize Day, with a set of Browning in his arms and the Jackson medal in his inside pocket. He’s so blamed clever that he has got acum laude. Bill beams with pride over him. The President of Kingsbridge, a funny old chap who talks through his nose and has a wit as keen as a razor, made us a bully talk, and the Doctor announced the prefects for next year—curiously enough he said the Head Prefect will not be appointed until the opening of school in September. We all suppose, of course, that that means you, and that it is only postponed until it is certain that you are coming back. The other prefects will be Teddy, Gordon Powel, Doc Thorn, Ned Clavering and myself. I had hoped Kit would be one, but he’s been too independent I guess. It’s a pretty good lot of fellows, I think, though I say it as shouldn’t, and with you at the head, we ought to run things very much as we want to next year....”Tony had scarcely thought of the Head Prefectship since he had left school. He believed that there were others better fitted for it than himself and whomore deserved it. The fact that he was President of the Dealonian made him an obvious candidate, of course; and certainly if the authorities thought him up to the position he would be glad to have it. The possibility from this time on added to the keenness with which he looked forward to his return in September.

LEAVE-TAKING

The short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, had come and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routine of the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of all concerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speak to each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly terms with them both.

The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were come again when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and the mounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. The fields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseball teams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavily manned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the little harbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews, went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past Deigr Light into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys and masters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part the stress of the long winter term problems and discipline was wholly relaxed.Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, worked fairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happy and contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams on the north field, so that they did not come in contact with him very frequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but he came no more to Number Five study.

Kit had said nothing about his affair with Finch; but, as he expected, his rooms were disturbed no more. Finch, terrified by discovery and the fear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. His conscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but less perhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. There was on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in their friendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believed of course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode in Wilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’s open break with him, he saw no way to set things right.

This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of that bright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Each boy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both were impulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quick by the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.

One day in Fifth English they were readingAs You Like It, and it fell to Kit to read the lines of Amiens’ song in the second act:

“Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:Most friendship is feigning, most love merely folly.

“Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nighAs benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharpAs friend remembered not.”

As he got toward the end of the lines, his voice almost broke. Stenton, realizing with quick sympathy that the song had taken on for him some keen personal meaning, passed on the reading immediately to another boy. Tony sat in his seat flushed and uncomfortable; for him also the verse had intense meaning. He longed to look up and catch Kit’s eye, and then join him after class and say boldly how foolish he felt their coolness was. But he did not do so. He felt he never could do so. Kit had been too unfair, too bitter—the advance must come from him.

Suddenly one day, in the midst of all this intense life and activity of school so absorbing to our boys, there came a word to Tony that was rudely and without warning to take him out of it. The message came in the form of a letter from his grandfather bidding him come home at once.

“It will be bad news to you, my dear boy,” he wrote, “but your unfortunate father’s business venture has been an absolute failure; he has been very ill and is only just now on the road to recovery, and your poor mother has fallen a victim at last to the worry and strain. She wants you, and the doctor and I think it best for you to come. So you must do so at once, as I am writing to the Head Master. I don’t know, Anthony, whether we shall beable or not to send you back next year. We poor people of the south, when Fortune turns against us, are pretty well down and out. You have made a good record at school, and I do not doubt but that Doctor Forester will promote you to the Sixth Form next year, should we be able to send you back, even if you do lose these two months. But you must come now, and at once. Telegraph me the day and hour and I will have Sambo meet you at the Junction.

“Your affectionate grandfather,

“Basil Deering.”

Poor Tony read this letter over and over before he could clearly take it in. He knew something of old of his reckless father’s terrible propensity to indulge in wild-cat speculation, of the disaster and trouble it had brought upon the family at Low Deering before. And now too his mother was ill! Of course, of course, he must go home. He fumbled in his drawer and found a time-table. Yes, he could leave that night. And yet—he paused, with the letter in his hand—it was like a sentence of banishment: to leave school now in the middle of the best term of the year, and with so many things in which he was interested at loose ends! He could not believe it really meant that; it could not be true. And perhaps never to return! He looked again at his letter, and the old general’s words made him sick at heart. Never again to race up and down that hillside, to look out upon that splendid sea; never again to swagger about the campus with his chums in the old glad, happy, self-important way! No, no, he could not bear that it should mean that! The hot tears welled in his eyes,—but he brushed them away. Of course, his mother needed him. He had gone through before those agonizingfamily crises, had seen his tender patient mother struggle bravely against his father’s bad moods and dark despair. He knew that indeed she must have collapsed when his grandfather sent for him and she permitted it.

He ran over to the Rectory and found the Doctor in his study. He too had just been reading a letter from General Deering.

He clasped Tony’s hand in his strong affectionate grip. “I am sorry for you, my boy.... Yes, I have just been reading a letter from your grandfather. There is no choice but for you to go at once.”

“I can leave on the ten o’clock from Monday Port, to-night, sir,” said Tony, “and catch the midnight express at Coventry, which will get me home the next evening.”

“Doubtless that is the best plan,” the Doctor agreed. “I don’t think, from what the General tells me, that you need worry about your mother’s immediate condition. But undoubtedly you are needed. I am very sorry that you should lose these two months, but you can keep up your work at home and there is no reason why you should not make the Sixth comfortably in September.”

“I think I could do that, sir,” replied Tony, “but my grandfather says there is some doubt about—about their being able to send me back next year.”

“Yes, yes, he writes that to me; but you are to come, nevertheless. We will arrange that. I hope the financial difficulties will straighten out satisfactorily, but if worst comes to worst and they should not, why there are any number of ways that we canprovide for you. There is always a scholarship fund rusting in the bank,—ripening, I had better say, for just some such occasion. I fancy, even, that the school would be willing to trust you for your tuition. But one thing is quite settled: youareto return. And I will make that clear to Basil—to your grandfather.”

“Thank you, sir; you’ve been mighty good to me.”

“You have been mighty good to us—mighty goodforus, I may say,—my boy.... Good-bye now, for the present.... And God bless you.”

In a moment or so Tony was gone. He found Jimmie, Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing, and told them the news. And then, after a few hasty farewells, went to his rooms with Jimmie to pack. It was then late in the afternoon. The packing was a sad business, for he felt he must take everything. He would be away five months; perhaps, despite the Doctor’s kind prophecy, for good. As this possibility occurred to him, he would stand now and then in the middle of the room, with a coat or hat or what not in his hands, and feel it was simply impossible to go on. Tears would start in his eyes and trickle down his cheeks. He had always liked the school, even in his bad moods he had been loyal; but he had not known, he had not realized, as few boys do at the time, how the school had become a part of his very life, how intensely his affections were centered there. And then—Mr. Morris; the fellows, Jimmie, Teddy, Charlie, Kit—it would be hard to leave without saying good-bye to Kit—, Reggie!

He turned to Jimmie who had come in at the moment with his arms full of Tony’s belongings thathe had collected from various parts of the school, locker rooms and the like. “Excuse me for a little while, Jimmie old boy; I’ve got to run over and see Reggie. I haven’t told him yet.” Tony had a pang of regret that he had seen so little of Reggie of late, “I’ll be back before long.”

“All right,” said Jimmie dolefully. “I’ll go on with the packing, if you don’t mind. Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” said Tony.

He found Carroll fortunately in his own room in the Old School. For once Reginald was studying, and Tony could scarcely remember when he had seen him so engaged. But the Sixth Former closed his Horace with relief as he recognized his visitor and kicked out a chair for him to sit down. “Well, I am certainly glad you have come. Heaven knows how long I would have kept at that futile exercise, if it had not been pleasantly interrupted. But what’s up, my boy, you look as if you had seen a ghost?”

Tony sat down on the chair that Carroll had pushed out. “I have, Reggie,” he said, “I have just got a letter from home; worse luck. My mother’s ill, and I have to start south to-night.”

“Jove, that is hard luck! When shall you get back, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother is dangerously ill, but she wants me. There’s been a mess about money too. The old governor has written, and says I may not get back at all—not this term any way.”

“Not this term!” Reggie jumped up quickly, allthe habitual languor of his attitude and movements gone, and strode over to the window.

“No, I’m afraid not, Reggie.”

“Why—why—I’ll be gone next term, boy.”

“I know, old man.”

For a moment Carroll turned his back to Tony and looked out of the window into the deepening twilight, and was silent. There was a lump in his throat that kept him from speaking.

“I’ve only a few minutes, Reggie, old boy,” said Tony, at last. “I am leaving in an hour and I am only half packed. I’ve got to say good-bye.”

Carroll turned at this: a pathetic smile was on his lips. “It has come so suddenly, boy ... it’s kind of taken the wind out of my sails.” He came over then and took Tony’s hand in his. “Tonio, ... I can’t say good-bye.... You’ll write to me ... you will come back surely.... I’ll be at Kingsbridge and often back at school.”

“I hope so, Reggie.”

“You don’t know, boy,” Reggie went on, still holding Tony’s hand, “I can’t tell you what your being here has meant for me—you and Bill. We haven’t seen each other much this year, and I reckon I’ve often seemed to you a poor sort of friend ... but, to put it poetically, old chap, ... the light o’ my heart goes out with you.”

Tony gripped the hand in his tightly at this. There was a lump in his throat too.

“Good-bye, Reggie.... I will write, and you be sure to write to me. Tell me all that’s going on.... Have an eye on Finch, will you? Poor duffer!”

“Poor duffer, indeed!” said Carroll, and then added, “Poor me!” Their hands clasped tightly, and then Tony was gone.

Reggie stood for a long time just as Tony had left him. “One by one the lamps go out,” he murmured, quoting a line from one of his own verses. He sighed. “So runs, so runs the world away....” There was a queer sharp pain at his heart. He sat down at last and opened his Horace again, and began to read, but the words conveyed no sense to his mind. He threw his arms out once, and whispered softly, pathetically, “Oh, Tony, Tony.... God bless you, boy; God bless you!”

Back in Number Five Jimmie and Tony were absorbed in the last stages of the packing. Morris, to whom Tony had explained the occasion of his going, had come in and was helping them. And his presence went a great way to cheer them up, for Morris refused for an instant, even in his own mind, to consider the possibility of Deering not coming back. He eased off their good-byes, and sent Lawrence over to cheer up Carroll, whom he knew would feel it more than the rest, for it was good-bye to Tony for him as he was in the Sixth and would be at Kingsbridge next year when Tony returned.

Deering said good-bye to Finch, quickly, quietly, he had time for little explanation. Finch said nothing, but died of despair within.

On the way down the corridor Tony passed Kit, a generous word was on his lips, their eyes met for a second, but Kit looked quickly away, and Tony passed on. The opportunity for a reconciliationwas gone. Morris drove in to Monday Port with the boy and saw him off on the way-train for Coventry. With persistent tact, he continued to treat the parting as only a temporary one, and refused himself the melancholy pleasure of saying much to his young friend that was in his heart and that Tony might have been glad to hear. It was better so, thought Morris. The kind things could be written, if the need came.

There was a quick, short, strong grip of their hands at last, and Tony climbed into the train. He stowed his things in the empty car, and then went and stood on the rear platform and waved his hand to Morris as the train pulled out of the little station, and strained his eyes to see the last of the master’s patient, kindly friendly figure until darkness blotted out the vision. The train was rushing through the outskirts of the little town. Beyond the limits it ascended a steep grade and ran along a high level plateau for a way, and thence Tony caught a glimpse of the lights of the school shining brightly from the far-away hill, wafting him, it seemed, a friendly good-bye across the dark. Suddenly the train plunged into a narrow cut in a hill and Deering could see the lights of Deal no more.

At Coventry he had a dreary wait for half-an-hour until the midnight express for the south lumbered in and stopped on signal. As soon as he had boarded the through train, he got into his berth, for he was worn out with the wearisome journey from Monday Port and with the excitement of the last seven hours. But he could not sleep for a long time. When at last he did fall into a fitful slumber, constantly disturbed by the jolts and jars of the rushing train, it was todream bad dreams. Once it seemed to him, in the dazed state between sleeping and waking, that he was lying in his little bed at Low Deering, that he was still a little boy of fourteen, and that the last four years at Deal had been only a dream....

At Low Deering Tony found things almost as bad as he had feared. His father, a genial, charming, irresponsible creature—the unaccountable wild olive that grows now and then on the stock of the good olive tree—had rather more deeply than usual—for the same sort of thing had happened before—plunged his family into distress. He had ventured all his available capital and more that he had borrowed, on the security of his extravagant hopes and good intentions, from his wife; staked it in a case where he stood to win twenty-fold or quite overwhelmingly lose; and, as not unfrequently happens, had lost. Then had followed, as Tony could remember the horror of it all at an earlier period of his boyhood, a trying disappearance and a return in a mood of black melancholy and idle remorse.

But the worst was over by the time he reached home. Victor Deering, thanks to his father’s stern but tender patience and his wife’s unfailing much-tried devotion, was slowly recovering his normal health, his irrepressible spirits, his habitual weaving of futile plans and nursing of quixotic hopes. But the process this time had cost his family a good deal more than its meager income could pay for and had sacrificed Mrs. Deering’s health to worry and distress. For weeks she had been lying in a state of nervous exhaustion, from which the physician at last thoughtshe might be rallied if her wish were granted and Tony, her only child, might be with her. And so he had been sent for.

During those two hot months of the southern spring Tony devoted himself to his mother, a devotion that was only relaxed when later, the old general having scraped together enough for the purpose, the family removed for the summer to the cooler climate of a resort in the North Carolina mountains. The mother grieved not a little for her boy’s interrupted school days—she guessed at the sacrifice Tony’s cheerfulness hid,—but Tony and the General knew that his return had saved her health if not her life.

Tony had been separated a great deal from his family since he had gone north to school, so that, after the first homesickness for Deal was over, he began to be deeply interested again in the old scenes and familiar friends of his early boyhood: the easy-going, ill-managed old plantation with its extensive sugar industry bringing in such income as they had; the little hill on which stood the house of Low Deering, low, white and great galleried; the sleepy bayou that stretched away below to the wild and beautiful jungle, a marshy live-oak forest, picturesquely hung with the heavy lace of the gray Spanish moss and the delicate purple of the wild wistaria; the inky black darkies, relics of ante-bellum days; the few families of similar decaying plantations in the neighborhood.

Later in the summer at Bald Rock in North Carolina, at the hotel to which their diminutive cottage was attached, there were young people again—boys to play baseball and climb the near by mountainswith, girls with whom to dance at the Saturday night hops on the great gallery of the hotel. Then too there was his father. Despite an inner disapproval that Tony could not help feeling for his father’s irresponsible doings, for the trouble he now and then brought so deeply, perhaps unwittingly, upon them all, Tony enjoyed his father immensely. If he himself had inherited his strong sense of honor and his manly grip on life from his grandfather, and the inner patient tenderness we have sometimes noted in him from his mother, it was from his father that his charm, his quick and ready sympathy, his genial grace had come.

After the terrible six months he had given them, Victor Deering could not have done more to atone than he was whole-heartedly trying to do. It was characteristic of him, for he deeply appreciated what Deal School had done for Tony, that his repentance should have caused him to suggest to the old general that his own patrimony, hoarded by the head of the house against a rainy day, should be made over to Tony at once, and the income, the capital if necessary, be applied to completing his education at Deal and later on at Kingsbridge. General Deering took his son at his word. Victor was only too eager to promise from then on steadfast attention to the plantation, which, better managed, was capable still of recouping their fortunes and furnishing them with a living. So it began to look bright, as Tony wrote to Jimmie Lawrence, for his return to school, and without any question of taking advantage of scholarships or such aid as the Head had so kindly offered. That offer rankled, unjustly as he knew, in the old aristocrat’smind. He was determined Tony should have no such humiliation to face.

Of the school in these days of Tony’s enforced exile, a glimpse shall be had through the medium of Jimmie Lawrence’s letters, for, of course, the two boys had written each other with some regularity.

“Deal School:May 10th.

“Dear Tony:“Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be back next term....“I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about. I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work, and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry. From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate the pages of theDeal Lit. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now, despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again next year.“The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We havewon all our games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th. It’s a shame you won’t be here.“There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs and says nothing.“The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.

“Dear Tony:

“Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be back next term....

“I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about. I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work, and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry. From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate the pages of theDeal Lit. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now, despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again next year.

“The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We havewon all our games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th. It’s a shame you won’t be here.

“There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs and says nothing.

“The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.

“Ever affectionately,

“Jimmie.”

In June there came another letter that interested Tony very much.

“Reggie has pulled both the Latin and the Poetry Prizes. Even the Gumshoe thawed a trifle and shook hands with him as he came down from the platform on Prize Day, with a set of Browning in his arms and the Jackson medal in his inside pocket. He’s so blamed clever that he has got acum laude. Bill beams with pride over him. The President of Kingsbridge, a funny old chap who talks through his nose and has a wit as keen as a razor, made us a bully talk, and the Doctor announced the prefects for next year—curiously enough he said the Head Prefect will not be appointed until the opening of school in September. We all suppose, of course, that that means you, and that it is only postponed until it is certain that you are coming back. The other prefects will be Teddy, Gordon Powel, Doc Thorn, Ned Clavering and myself. I had hoped Kit would be one, but he’s been too independent I guess. It’s a pretty good lot of fellows, I think, though I say it as shouldn’t, and with you at the head, we ought to run things very much as we want to next year....”

Tony had scarcely thought of the Head Prefectship since he had left school. He believed that there were others better fitted for it than himself and whomore deserved it. The fact that he was President of the Dealonian made him an obvious candidate, of course; and certainly if the authorities thought him up to the position he would be glad to have it. The possibility from this time on added to the keenness with which he looked forward to his return in September.

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