In all Yale no man felt as bad as Hock Mason. He was proud, and he knew he was almost universally blamed for the loss of the game. Thinking the matter over, he could see that he was responsible. If he had caught both flies but one man could have scored off each of them, at most, and that would have left the score eight to six in Yale’s favor.
“I was a fool to try to play baseball!” he bitterly thought. “I’d never have tried it if it hadn’t been for Merriwell. He wanted me to do it.”
Then it occurred to him that such a thought was selfish in the extreme, and he was ashamed of himself.
“You’re a mighty mean chap, Mason,” he grimly declared, to himself, “to think such a thing about a man who has done as much for you as Merriwell! Don’t try to lay the blame on him!”
No shouting crowd met the returning players at the station and escorted them in triumph up Meadow, Church, and Chapel Streets. No band turned out to thrill them with its music. No shouting, cheering students surrounded them and strove for the glory of a hand-shake. On the campus no bonfire blazed andflared and reddened the foliage of the elms, its light being reflected back from the windows of the quad.
“There seems to have been a funeral somewhere,” said Jack Ready. “How sad it is! La! la! Makes me feel like weeping large, fat, briny tears. Oh, me! oh, my! How different this time is from some other times!”
“Keep your face closed!” grunted Browning. “Every time you open it, there’s such a rush of wind that I have to hold my cap on.”
“Some things are awfully sad to contemplate,” persisted Ready, who could not be easily suppressed. “It is said that in ’steen billion years the sun will burn out, and we’ll all freeze to death for want of heat. Isn’t that awful? And what would you say if I were to tell you that all our rivers would soon dry up?”
“I’d sus—say,” stuttered Gamp solemnly, “gug—go thou and dud—do likewise.”
Whereupon Browning shook with suppressed laughter, for all of the feeling of disgust that had possessed him ever since the ending of the game in Princeton.
Mason went straight to his room, where he spent a most bitter night, scarcely closing his eyes in sleep. All night long he dreamed that he was pursuing flies that got away from him, or that ten thousand eyes were turned on him in withering scorn and contempt, seeming to glare at him as one great eye of fire.
His Southern pride had been touched to the quick. He felt that he could not endure the sidelong contemptuous glances of those who must look on him with scorn for what had happened. If it had not seemed cowardly, he would have contemplated getting away from college somehow for a while.
“But I can’t play ball any more!” he told himself. “I can’t! I can’t do it! Gamp would have caught that fly—both of them! He always catches anything he can get his hands on. He’s a Yankee, and everything sticks to a Yankee’s fingers! They can hold onto money harder than any class of people I ever saw.”
Mason was homesick. He did not confess it to himself, but he longed for a sight of his South Carolina home, with the red road winding past and running away into the pine woods. He longed for a sight of the negro cabins, with the old mammies smoking by the doors and the pickaninnies romping and playing and rolling their white eyes up to the passing stranger. He longed for the peaceful quiet that pervaded the air and the genial warmth of the bright Southern sunshine. He felt that the North was cold and heartless, and he wished himself away.
And so he tossed and turned till the gray light of morning sifted in at his window and reached his bed. In the morning light he slept dreamlessly for the first time, and there was a smile on his face, for at last he was at home and his misery was forgotten. Throughhis dreaming he seemed to hear the joyous singing of colored laborers in the fields, and the sound was sweet as the chime of heavenly bells.
It was six minutes of eight when Mason awoke. He came out of bed with one great leap. It was his habit to take a sponge bath in the morning, but there was no time for anything of the sort this morning. He flung on his underclothing, tore open his wardrobe door, yanked out a mackintosh and a pair of rubber boots, jumped into the boots, pulled on the mackintosh, seized an old hat, and tore out of his room.
In this rig, Mason appeared at chapel in due time, and he was not the only student present who was dressed in a wild and weird fashion.
To Hock it seemed as if the eyes of all present were on him. He did not dare look up, but felt his face burning. His sensitive nature suffered extreme torture until he could escape, when the service was over, and hurry to his room.
Merriwell had observed Mason, and Frank fancied he understood how the proud fellow felt.
It was somewhat remarkable that Hock Mason, a man who had once been a bully, should have such a sensitive nature; but of late Frank had been studying the chap, and he found the Southerner a very queer character.
When he came to Yale, Mason had regarded himself as far superior to the majority of the studentsthere, just as he fancied a man born in South Carolina must naturally be superior, everything considered, to a man born anywhere else. It had irritated him when he found that in the democratic atmosphere of Old Eli there was none to bow down and acknowledge him a superior. Then he had started out knocking into the heads of his associates the conviction that he was “the real thing,” but this policy had not worked very well. He became more and more disliked until he ran against Merriwell, who gave him a sound thrashing and took some of the growing conceit out of him.
But it was Merriwell’s interest in Mason while the latter lay ill in a hospital that completely won Hock. Not another soul came to inquire how Mason was getting along. Those who pretended to be his friends remained away, but daily Frank Merriwell called, and Frank it was who came first to the side of Hock’s cot when a visitor was permitted to see him.
When Mason left the hospital he was completely cured of his bullying inclinations. More than that, he had become a stanch friend of Merriwell.
Mason never anticipated that he would be accepted as a member of Merriwell’s “flock.” That was too much for him to dare to hope. All the same, he was stanch and true. He did not obtrude himself on Merry or Merry’s friends, and he conducted himself modestly and quietly.
By some it was thought that the spirit of the Southerner had been broken, which, however, was not the case. He had simply learned his lesson, and learned it well. When the time came he showed that he had quite as much spirit as of old. And he could fight better when forced to do so, for he knew he was fighting in a just cause.
But for all that Mason had once seemed to be a bully, there was not much of the bulldog about him. He was not a quitter, but he felt always that it was best to get out of a thing before he was kicked out.
Not till he was pulled into Merriwell’s set did he become one of the circle. Even then he was rather quiet, although his quietness was that of pride, instead of modesty. Sometimes this sort of retiring pride is mistaken for modesty.
After chapel Hock had plenty of time to think. He kept away from his eating-club, finding breakfast at a lunch-cart. He knew it would do him little good to study that day, but he tried to apply himself. As he was leaving his room some time after breakfast, he paused at the head of the flight of stairs. At the foot of the flight, three men were talking.
“It was just a case of bad judgment on Merriwell’s part,” said one. “Mason can’t play ball.”
“Everybody is kicking about it,” declared another. “Mason must be dropped from the team.”
“He’d never made the nine in the first place, if hehad not been one of Merriwell’s friends,” declared the third.
Then they moved away together, still talking baseball.
Hock Mason stood quite still, his face rather pale.
“So that is what they’re saying!” he muttered. “They are blaming Merriwell for taking me onto the nine. Well, I’ll get off it at once.”
And he started to find Frank.