The inhabitants of the east well of Hale became lovers of peace. Mr. Alsop had not full confidence in the change, scenting something ominous in the unnatural calm. The rumor that had spread among his colleagues that Alsop was having a sad time in his dormitory touched that gentleman in a sensitive spot. Ability to get on with pupils is considered a most desirable quality in a teacher, even in an institution like Seaton, in which the headsman’s axe is the chief disciplinary weapon, and the fear of it the great persuader to the quiet life. Trouble with his boys meant that Mr. Alsop was not in all respects a success; and the teacher, while forced to confess this fact to himself, did not wish it unpleasantly noised abroad. He was suffering for his own conscientiousness and keenness of perception; he knew Fowle and Archer as dangerous boys, while other teacherswere still dull-witted or misguided enough to defend them.
One morning, as Mr. Alsop, thinking gloomy thoughts about the waste of himself which a talented man commits when he takes up the life of a teacher, swung sharply round the corner of his dormitory, he beheld a most exasperating sight.
Wally Sedgwick had been loafing in 7 Hale that morning, keeping both Sam and Duncan from work which neither wanted to do. Wally’s hat lay on the window seat. Duncan, concluding that Wally had overstopped his leave, lifted the window and pushed the hat gently from its resting-place. Then he calmly informed Wally that his “dip” had fallen out. Both peered over the sill to see where the hat had fallen.
John Fish, in the room below, had caught sight of the object falling past his window, and leaned out to investigate. It occurred to him immediately that (as the physicians say) water was indicated; so he brought his pitcher and began pouring upon the hat. Duncan, observing this manœuvre from above, was seized with a brightidea. He too fetched a pitcher and poured his libation upon John Fish’s unprotected head as it projected from the window below. It was this spectacle of pitchers and streams of water and heads and an all-suffering hat which greeted Mr. Alsop’s gaze and outraged his sense of propriety as he emerged into view before the front of Hale.
Fish did not pour long. The chilling grip of the water upon the back of his neck quickly reminded him that his conduct was unbecoming. Duncan stopped when Fish stopped, but neither before the teacher got a good view of the offenders.
“Gee, there’s Alsop!” cried Duncan, jumping back into the obscurity of the room. “My name is mud.”
“I guess I’ll go,” said Wally, quickly, “before some one pinches the hat.”
Wally scuttled downstairs, dashed past the teacher at the door, seized his hat and sped away from danger. Mr. Alsop mounted directly to Number 7, and knocked vigorously. Sam opened the door.
“Peck, it was you who were pouring water out of your window upon the head of a boy below?”
This Spectacle of Pitchers and streams of water and heads greeted Mr. Alsop’s gaze.—Page 164.
This Spectacle of Pitchers and streams of water and heads greeted Mr. Alsop’s gaze.—Page 164.
“Yes, sir,” said Duncan, promptly, “but it was in self-defence. You see, the hat fell out, and before we could get it, some one downstairs began to dump water on it. I had to do the same thing to him to make him stop.”
“I suppose there was no other way of stopping him,” answered Mr. Alsop, with angry sarcasm. “You knew very well that all throwing of water from dormitory windows is forbidden. I shall report you at the office as on study hours.”
“That’s a pretty note!” said Duncan in disgust as soon as the enemy was out of hearing. “Put me on study hours for that! It was nothing at all. Fellows do it all the time in Sibley and Wentworth and don’t get even a call-down. That’s a way to run a dormitory, isn’t it? He probably won’t do anything to Black Hand Fish!”
Therein Duncan was wrong. Mr. Alsop stopped on his way downstairs to give Fish the same punishment, but he did it with reluctance, in fact almost apologetically, and he took the penalty off at the end of a week. Duncan, being of a proud spirit and showing evident resentment in his manner, the instructor disciplined by alonger period of restraint. During this season of penance, when Duncan was at home morning, afternoon, and evening, cut off from all visitors, the two room-mates were inevitably much together. Some of this time Duncan wasted in maledictions on his unjust fate and on all those whom he held responsible for his sufferings; some he spent profitably in studying, and in getting acquainted with his room-mate. The experience of this period, which proved effectively the value of Sam’s friendship, destroyed the last shreds of the prejudice which Duncan had nursed so long. He signalized his conversion by suggesting to Archer that it was time they addressed each other by their first names. He made atonement, not by falling on his friend’s neck and beseeching his pardon for misjudging him, but by treating him with frank cordiality at home and commending him abroad.
“Black Hand” Fish, released from the ban at the end of a week with a gentle recommendation that he restrain his sprightliness, returned most subservient thanks and went his old way. Fish’s old way was not a good one from the point of viewof morality or of the happiness of his neighbors. He was the “bad boy” of the well, a natural Ishmaelite. His hand was against every one. He borrowed money without the slightest intention of paying; he rough-housed recklessly in the rooms of those not strong enough to eject him, smashed furniture, threw books, spilled ink, played hair-dresser with the shoe-brush. And withal, so strong was the code of honor among his victims, so suave and respectful was his demeanor toward Mr. Alsop, so craftily did he choose his hours of molestation, that the teacher had no suspicion of his character. When Mr. Alsop passed Fish’s room on a visit of reproof to Fowle, and saw on the door a threatening demand for money emphasized by the drawing of a black hand, he reflected sadly upon the persecution which an orderly student must suffer at the hands of the disorderly. Indeed, he felt tempted to call a meeting of the well to protest against the cowardice of anonymous threats.
Fish himself was not greatly disturbed by the sight of these manifestoes. He was not to be frightened into disgorging by the threat of aBlack Hand. When, however, a similar notice appeared on the blotting-paper on his desk, he began to suspect his long-suffering room-mate Moorhead, and made him the special object of his attentions. Moorhead was a studious youth, an honor man, very ambitious to keep his rank. Fish hid his books, poured away the water from his pitcher, pulled his bed to pieces, inked his exercises. A favorite diversion was to sing Moorhead to the verge of madness when the boy wanted to study. This was especially effective when a “dec” had to be learned, or lines memorized for English.
With the occupants of Number 7 Fish took no liberties. They “wouldn’t stand for it,” and they were capable of defending themselves. The weaker inhabitants of the well safeguarded themselves and their possessions as best they could by keeping their doors locked. Even with this precaution there were times when the pest found admittance. Being debarred from outside disturbance by the serious threats of the trio, he was in a way thrown back upon the rooms for amusement.
Spring came, if a muddy windy March has any right to the name of spring. Sam, whose reputationwas better with other teachers than with Mr. Alsop, sometimes got permission to go off with his gun. He returned one Wednesday night, empty-handed, as usual, but eloquent of the grandeur of the heavy surf as it broke over the rocks at the foot of Great Boar’s Head. He wrote a theme on the subject before he went to bed, and read it to Duncan.
“Gee! but it must be worth seeing!” exclaimed Duncan. “If that beast of an Alsop hadn’t put me on study hours, I might go down and get a look at it.”
“Why don’t you ask him to take you off?”
“Ask him to take me off!” repeated Duncan, indignantly. “I wouldn’t ask him to take me out of a pit, if I were dying of thirst!”
“He probably wouldn’t do it anyway,” remarked Sam, recalling the humiliating refusal which he had himself received when he asked for a special make-up on French vocabulary.
Thursday and Friday the wind blew hard from the east. Saturday was clear. At nine, after his first recitation, Duncan came dashing in with the signals of exciting news flaming in eye and cheek.
“Alsop’s gone to Boston to-day to tell the Modern Language Profs how to do it. He won’t get back until to-morrow night.”
“What of it?” asked Sam, calmly.
“I’m going to take a holiday. I’m going to see the surf, that’s ‘what of it’!”
“You’d better not. You can’t get permission; and if any of them see you, they’ll report you, and it’ll be all up with you.”
“I’m not going to stay cooped up here all the time. I did nothing to be put on probation for, not as much as John Fish, and he was let off a week ago. I’m going to see the surf!”
“Supposing they see you?”
“They won’t see me. I’ll get something to eat early down at McLane’s; then I’ll take the one o’clock car outside the town. Nobody would leave as early as that, and if they do, Brucie, who’s got permission to go, will take the same car in town, and signal me at the right place if there’s any danger. Then I’ll jump off at Leavitt’s, skip over to the rocks, have a look at the waves, and take the same car back. I’ll be here by three.”
“It’s risky,” said Sam, thoughtfully.
“I’ll take the risk!”
All that morning, Duncan’s foolhardy scheme troubled Sam’s mind. There was danger in it—a danger quite out of proportion to the pleasure to be gained. The boy who leaves town without permission goes permanently. That was a rule to which the faculty rarely made exceptions. It was useless to expostulate with Duncan; he had made up his mind, and the resolution of a boy who had studied the ins and outs of Academy discipline for four years could hardly be expected to yield to the objections of a newcomer. And yet there was an objection which appeared to Sam to be serious.
“What are you going to do about the two o’clock car going down?” he asked Duncan, as the chums came together again at twelve o’clock. “There’s sure to be some one on that who would recognize you; it will pass you at the power-house.”
“That’s easy!” answered Duncan, confidently. “I’ll duck down when we pass the cars, going and coming. If you’re trying to scare me out of this, you’re wasting your breath. I’m going, anyway.”
This ended Sam’s attempts at interference.He hung around the room for a while after Duncan had gone, then hunted up Dr. Leighton and asked permission to go to the salt marshes or elsewhere, shooting. Dr. Leighton knew Mr. Archer and believed in the boy. As a result, we may say by way of parenthesis, the boy believed in Dr. Leighton, and, what is more to the point, strove to earn his esteem by honest work for him. Dr. Leighton’s permission was quickly obtained.
Sam boarded the two o’clock car in his shooting togs, without any clear idea as to his purpose. He didn’t care much about shooting that afternoon, and he did want to help Duncan, but how he could help Duncan he had but the vaguest notion. If there were teachers aboard, he might engage them in talk at the critical time, and so divert their attention. Two teachers did get in at the square, Professor Towle and Mr. Snow, both elderly men above the temptation of spying—the fault of overzealous youth—but quite as rigid in their sense of duty as their younger colleagues. If Duncan showed himself, his head was forfeit.
The car bowled rapidly along the desolate,water-soaked highway. Sam left his seat and went forward with the motorman to catch the first glimpse of the waiting car at the turnout. As they bore down upon the power-house, they saw ahead of them a group of workmen gathered about a heavily loaded service car which appeared to have broken down, obstructing both main track and turnout.
“Looks like a block,” observed the motorman, as he crowded down the brake.
“What will they do?” asked Sam, quickly.
“Probably swap passengers with the up car when it comes, and send us back.”
The car came to a stop. The motorman opened the door of his vestibule and leaned out. Sam peered over his shoulder.
“You’ll have to go back, Jim,” said an official to the conductor. “Transfer your passengers.”
Sam seized his gun, pushed by the motorman, and strolled along the track past the obstruction. As soon as he felt himself sheltered by the derailed car from the argus eye of the faculty, he jumped the wall, and in its shelter ran headlong for the curve round which the up car was expected.
Two minutes later a youth in khaki, armed with a gun, stopped the up car just around the curve beyond the power-house, called out a startled passenger, and let the car go on. Those who were curious enough to look back—including a shrewdly grinning conductor—saw the pair disappear over the fence into a clump of trees.
“What’s up?” demanded Duncan, as soon as his foot touched the ground.
“They’re going to transfer passengers at the power-house. Towle and Snow are there—” Sam stopped for breath; his run up the hill had winded him. “You’d have been caught like a rat in a trap.”
Duncan whistled, and gave vent to a variety of exclamations prompted by a variety of feelings. Sam cut into them abruptly.
“You can’t show yourself until after the carpasses here. By that time the other one will have gone, and there isn’t another for an hour.”
“And some one is likely to be on that,” said Duncan, gravely.
“Yes, and on the one after. If you want me to, I’ll stay down and watch to see who’s aboard, and give you a signal. Or—”
“Or what?”
“You might walk back. It’s only five miles.”
“In all this mud?” cried Duncan.
“It isn’t so bad on the track; and it’s the safest way. If any one sees you walking, it won’t hurt, because you’ve got a right to walk where you want to.”
“That’s true,” said Duncan. “Well, I guess I’ll walk. What are you going to do?”
“I got permission for the marshes. I suppose I ought to go.”
“Go ahead!” answered Duncan. “There comes your car. I’ll see you when you get home.”
Sam vaulted the fence, stopped his car, and got in. Professor Towle fastened on him a questioning glance as he sat down.
“We were wondering what had become ofyou,” said the teacher, kindly. “You went on ahead?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Sam, demurely.
“Rather unpleasant walking,” remarked Mr. Snow, looking at Sam’s muddy feet.
“I don’t mind the walking,” Sam hastened to say. “When you’re out with a gun, you go through so much mud that a little more or less doesn’t count.”
“I suppose so,” responded Mr. Snow. Professor Towle was thinking in a half-interested way that it was a queer freak for a boy to go ahead of a car on a day like this, and wondering vaguely what prompted the impulse. He did not wonder long. When one has been guessing more or less unsuccessfully at schoolboy conundrums for a quarter of a century, one gives up easily before a casual new one.
When Sam came back to 7 Hale that night, with game bag empty as usual, he found Duncan stretched out in an easy chair before the fire, arrayed in bath robe and slippers. His shoes, brown with mud and bleached at the tips with water, sulked, neglected, in a corner.
“Been to dinner?” inquired Sam, as he opened the door.
“Not going,” Duncan answered laconically. “When I got back about five, I was so dead hungry I couldn’t wait for dinner, so I filled up at McLane’s. You see I didn’t stop for much luncheon this noon. I had a whopping big steak with two orders of French fried, and half a lemon pie. I sha’n’t want anything more to eat this week.”
“What do you think about it now; was it worth while or not?” Sam talked from his bedroom, where he was busy peeling off his soaked clothes.
“No, it wasn’t,” responded Duncan, slowly. “I didn’t see much of the surf, and I came near getting into trouble.” He waited a minute and added as an afterthought, “From one point of view it was.”
“What’s that—exercise?”
“No. I found out what a good fellow I’ve got for a room-mate!”
A thrill of delight ran through Sam’s chilly limbs as he heard this unexpected acknowledgment. His own heart had long since declared itself. Yet an instinct of self-repression, inbredby many generations of Puritan ancestors, combined with the aversion to sentiment common to all boys, forced an almost flippant answer to his lips. “You’d better wait till the end of the year before you say that. Your opinion of me may slump.”
“I’ve waited long enough—too long. You got me sour on you at first when you turned me out of my room; then the way you let Mulcahy work you, made me sore.”
“I was pretty slow about Mulcahy,” confessed Sam, “but that was partly your fault. I thought you were unfair to him, and that made me hang on to him.”
“How did you come to go down there this afternoon?” asked Duncan, with an abrupt change. “You didn’t say anything about going when I started off.”
“I thought I might as well go,” Sam answered carelessly. He shied at confessing the real reason.
“You saved my neck, all right,” remarked Duncan. “I believe you went on purpose. I’m going to think so, anyway.”
Sam hurried his shower and his dressing and got over to dinner before the doors were closed. On his way back he stopped at Dr. Leighton’s rooms to tell him that he had returned within the time set. Dr. Leighton invited him in, and they talked together intimately for an hour, not as teacher and pupil, but as friends. They fell ultimately upon the subject of injustice in the school life; of boys who trotted and cribbed and got C, while boys who plugged and were honest got E; of lies that secured immunity when the truth brought punishment; of Duncan Peck kept on pro for three weeks when Fish got off with one for the same offence; of the troubles of mischievous Birdie Fowle, who, though by no means a bad boy, was considered a monster, while others were thoroughly corrupt and yet enjoyed an immaculate reputation; of hypocrites who joined the Christian Frat because it would help them with the faculty, yet showed no respect for the principles of the organization. Dr. Leighton did not deny the facts of injustice; he did not undertake to absolve either himself or his colleagues from all mistakes in their estimates of the boys.But he did try to show that injustice is not intentional or permanent, that immorality and dishonesty are sure to work their way to the light of day and receive their reward; that no boy can escape the responsibility for his own character and influence. Sam went home feeling that his own unimportant life, if lived cleanly and honorably, might have a value in the school world.
Mr. Alsop returned Monday morning, his sensitive and suspicious soul agitated by a dire discovery. He had distinctly seen, as he walked along a Boston street on Saturday evening, Duncan Peck with another, unrecognized boy entering a theatre—Duncan Peck, whom he himself had put on probation, and who could not, save by misrepresentation, get leave of absence from any one. He went immediately to Peck’s boarding place—Duncan had long since wearied of Alumni—to make inquiries, and learned that Peck had not been present at dinner Saturday night nor at breakfast Sunday morning. He visited the matron of the dormitory, and was told that the maid who had gone in to take careof Number 7 on Sunday had reported Peck sleeping soundly at nine o’clock, with shoes standing before the fireplace still wet, and muddy trousers hanging over a chair. Remembering the heavy downpour of rain which had occurred early that morning, Mr. Alsop felt that his case was complete. The rascal had broken his probation, had taken a six o’clock train to Boston Saturday night, attended the theatre in the evening, spent the rest of the night—no one knew how—and returned in fancied security by the paper train very early in the morning. It was a piece of tragic but most successful detective work. The circumstantial evidence supporting the testimony of his own eyes was complete.
Yet before he laid the scandal in all its appalling details before the faculty, Mr. Alsop decided to question Peck, and incidentally Archer. It should never be said that he had condemned a boy without a hearing. From Archer he expected no confirmation of his own true account of Peck’s movements on that fatal night, for in accordance with the notions of loyalty prevailing among the students, a room-mate would feel bound to hidethe facts, however heinous the guilt of the offender. Peck, of course, would not hesitate to lie, when he found himself trapped.
The two boys rose as the instructor walked solemnly into the room. He dismissed the offered chair with a wave of the hand and a chilly “Thank you,” and entered straightway upon his business.
“Peck, I have come to ask you about your absence from town on Saturday,” he began.
Duncan threw a look of dismay at his chum. “My absence from town!” he exclaimed, striving to appear wholly surprised, yet conscious of a traitorous blush suffusing his cheeks and a well-nigh irresistible inclination to avoid the instructor’s stern eye.
“Yes, from town,” repeated Mr. Alsop, with slow and distinct emphasis.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Duncan.
It would have been an interesting problem for a mediæval casuist to determine the moral character of this statement; whether a black lie, a white lie, or no lie at all. Duncan used it merely as a means of drawing the teacher out. He suspectedthat he knew only too well what the instructor meant. Yet, as a fact, he knew nothing. Mr. Alsop recognized it at once as the first of the expected chain of falsehoods, and sharpened his wits to detect its successor.
“Where were you on Saturday afternoon?”
“Knocking around,” answered Peck, vaguely, sure now that he saw Mr. Alsop’s meaning, and wondering how he had been found out.
“Were you out of town?”
Duncan was silent.
“Where were you in the evening?” went on the inquisitor, triumphantly. The weak line of defence was already breaking.
“Here,” replied the defendant, puzzled to understand the bearing of the question.
“Are you quite sure, Peck?” said the questioner, solemnly.
“Yes, sir.”
Sam stepped forward and opened his lips, “Mr. Alsop—”
He was interrupted by an uplifted hand. “I am questioning Peck, if you please.” Sam retired, abashed.
“Were you not in Boston Saturday evening, Peck?”
“In Boston!” Into this three-syllabled explosion Duncan compressed a heavy charge of wonder and relief.
“Yes, in Boston!” returned Mr. Alsop, with sharp emphasis. “You are doubtless an excellent actor, Peck, but please do not answer my questions with exclamations. Were you in Boston Saturday night or not?”
“Not!” replied Duncan, his eyes twinkling, and the corners of his mouth twitching in an incipient smile. He had recovered his self-possession completely.
“This is not a fit subject for jest, Peck.” Duncan’s face sobered immediately. “It is a very serious matter. I repeat my question once more and demand a frank answer. Were you in Boston last Saturday evening?”
“I was not,” answered Duncan, in a low voice, with his eyes fixed on the floor.
“It would be better to confess honestly than to persist in a lie, Peck,” continued Mr. Alsop, in a judicial manner.
Duncan did not reply. His head was turned away.
“The fact is bound to come out, whether you admit it or not.”
“What fact?”
“The fact that you were in Boston Saturday night. I saw you there with my own eyes just as you were entering the Colonial Theatre!”
Duncan drew a long breath, and waited an artistic interval before replying. “I suppose if you saw me—” he began.
“If I saw you, what, Peck?” prompted the teacher, gently.
“If I should confess, should I get off any easier?”
“I can make no promises. The faculty would doubtless give the fact consideration. You have been a long time in school.”
“Why, he has nothing to confess!” broke in Sam. “He was here Saturday evening. I can testify to it.”
To Sam’s surprise, Duncan turned roughly upon him. “It’s no use for you to say that. You’d better keep your fingers out of it.”
Mr. Alsop nodded approval. “I respect your desire to help your friend, Archer, but false testimony will only serve to hurt you without benefiting Peck.”
This calm assumption that he was prepared to act the part of a false witness wounded Sam’s self-respect and stirred his indignation. For the instant, however, he was dumb with astonishment. Before he could gather his wits to make protest, Duncan had turned away from Mr. Alsop and shot at his chum a beseeching look, emphasized by a vigorous side jerk of the head, that closed the boy’s opening lips.
Again silence, broken by Mr. Alsop.
“It is better to make a clean breast of it, Peck,” he said, in a persuasive voice.
Peck drew another long breath and lifted his eyes to the instructor’s face. He had evidently taken a deep resolution.
“Tell me everything frankly,” encouraged Mr. Alsop.
“I wasn’t in Boston at all,” declared Duncan, lapsing suddenly into a sullen manner. “I haven’t been in Boston for five weeks.”
Mr. Alsop’s face hardened. “You insist on that story, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So much the worse for you, then. The faculty will consider the case on Tuesday evening. I will give you until that time to come to your senses.”
Mr. Alsop closed the door of Number 7 behind him, more than ever convinced that he had caught an experienced and clever offender. Peck’s confusion when suddenly taxed with an absence from town which he had supposed totally unknown, his theatrical attempt to bluff, his apparent conflict in mind over the wisdom of confessing and throwing himself on Mr. Alsop’s mercy, his pains to keep an over-loyal room-mate from committing himself to a falsehood, his final decision to abide by the original denial—all this was the natural behavior of a conscious culprit. The unfortunate boy had been given an opportunity to confess and gain a possible mitigation of penalty. The instructor’s conscience was clear.
Inside Number 7 Duncan was dancing in transports of merriment. “Did you ever hearanything like it!” he cried. “Oh, but it’s great! If some fool doesn’t butt in and spoil it all before to-morrow night!”
“You’re a fool yourself!” said Sam, in disgust. “Why didn’t you let me tell him the facts? I could have cleared you.”
“Because I didn’t want to be cleared,” declared Duncan, joyfully; “because this is the chance of a lifetime to get back at him for all his spying at keyholes and sneaking round. If you’d blurted out everything you wanted to say, you might have made him doubt, and I don’t want him to doubt.”
“Do you want to be fired for what you didn’t do?” demanded Sam. “You weren’t in Boston. You were here.”
“I know I was here, but he doesn’t. He’ll bring it up before the faculty—and then!—”
“And then what?”
“He’ll get a fall, a nice, hard, dizzy fall that’ll make him see stars. He’ll rise a better man.”
Sam stared for some seconds and meditated. “I don’t see why you’re so sure about that,” he said at length. “I’m the only one who canprove you were here. If he doesn’t believe me, why should the rest?”
“You’re not the only one!”
“Were you out that night? If you were, you broke your probation.”
“I wasn’t out.”
“If you had fellows in here, you broke your probation just the same.”
“I didn’t have fellows in here. The laundryman brought my bundle and collected a dollar twenty. Better than the laundryman, Mr. Sedgwick came to invite you there Sunday night—I forgot to tell you about it.”
Sam’s face showed deep disgust. “You’re a fine man to leave a message with, aren’t you? Here it is Monday morning. They’ll think I’m a chump!”
“Never you mind! She’ll forgive you. You can go this afternoon and tell them how it happened. Maybe you’ll get another invitation. Anyway, Mr. Sedgwick makes a second witness. Alsop might suppose I’d fixed the laundryman, but they’ll have to believe Mr. Sedgwick. Then there’s Don.”
“What has Don to do with it?”
“Sammy, you’re positively thick. Who do you suppose Alsop really saw in Boston?”
“How should I know?”
“He saw Don!”
Then a light suddenly broke upon Sam’s slow mind. He had met Donald Peck, Duncan’s twin, on the morning of the Hillbury football game, and had been amazed at the close resemblance between the two brothers. Since then, various anecdotes of the pair, current in the school, had come to his ears, and Duncan himself had told him much about their experiences together.
“That’s just what happened!” Sam cried. “Don came in from Cambridge to go to the theatre, and Alsop saw him. I wonder why he didn’t think of Don.”
“He wouldn’t think of anything except that he’d caught me,” said Duncan. “He wasn’t looking for ways of proving me innocent.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Oh, yes, I am! I’m going to telephone Don, and if he says he went to theColonial Theatre that night, I’ll get him to write me a letter.”
The routine business of the faculty meeting on Tuesday had been disposed of. Petitions from various misguided students for an extension of the approaching spring vacation had been refused. It had been decided that the Mandolin Club might not give a concert in Haverhill, and that the Assembly Club under certain conditions might hold a dance on the evening of a certain Friday. The secretary was reading the alphabetical list of students to refresh the memories of those members of the faculty who had come to the meeting with questions to ask or charges to bring. Halfway through the catalogue of seniors, at the name of Peck, Mr. Alsop interposed.
“Stop there, please! Did any one give Peck permission to go to Boston on Saturday night?”
Silence effectually answered the question. “I thought not,” continued Mr. Alsop. “He is on special probation. I was in Boston over Sunday, and on Saturday night, a little after eight, I saw Peck just entering a theatre on Boylston Street with a companion whom I did not know. Assoon as I returned I made inquiries at his boarding place, and learned that he was absent from dinner on Saturday night and from breakfast Sunday morning. The chambermaid reported him in bed at nine o’clock on Sunday, his shoes standing before the fireplace still wet. There was a heavy rain early Sunday morning, as you perhaps remember. I am convinced that he left town by the six o’clock train Saturday and returned by the paper train Sunday morning. I questioned him about the matter and told him where I had seen him. He was confused in his answers, and at one time seemed on the point of confessing, but he finally decided to take the other course, and faced it out to the end.” Mr. Alsop paused.
“If you saw him,” said Mr. Moore, who was presiding, “I should say that it is a case for immediate dismissal.”
“I saw him distinctly.”
“Who is his room-mate?” asked Professor Towle.
“Archer.”
“What does Archer say?”
“Archer would probably pretend that Peck was in his room on Saturday evening. He was about to say something to this effect, but Peck, who evidently wanted to keep him from committing himself to a false statement, objected to his testifying.”
“That seems a strange proceeding,” remarked Professor Towle. “A boy who would run away from school for a night wouldn’t be likely to care whether his room-mate lied or not as long as the testimony was in his favor.”
“I should myself be very unwilling to believe either that Peck would leave town without permission or that Archer would lie about it afterward,” said Dr. Leighton, for the first time taking part in the discussion.
“It is a question of fact, not of opinion,” replied Mr. Alsop, tartly. “It might not seem to you so unlikely, if you had seen as much of the pair as I have.”
“Might it not have been Donald Peck whom you saw?” asked Dr. Leighton. “He is in Cambridge, and might very well have been in Boston that night.”
The effect of this question was first to stagger and then to anger Mr. Alsop. In his zeal to bring the guilty Duncan to punishment, he had put aside all thought of error in identification. This reminder of the existence of Duncan’s double came to him as a shock. He entertained the suggestion but a moment, however, dismissing it immediately as reflecting on the accuracy of his observation.
“I can only repeat,” he said with frigid dignity, “that I saw Duncan Peck in Boston Saturday night. The suggestion that the evidence of my own eyes is not trustworthy will not explain his two absences from meals, nor the condition of his room on Sunday morning, nor his very noticeable confusion on being questioned.”
“I am afraid we are spending time unprofitably,” broke in Mr. Moore. “May I suggest that the case be left to a committee, with full power to dismiss the boy if he is found guilty?”
Professor Towle moved that Dr. Leighton, Mr. Alsop, and Mr. Snow constitute such a committee. The motion was passed and the august body continued its review of the list, putting sixboys on special probation for an excess of five chapel cuts during the term, voting that notice be sent to three fathers that their sons must be withdrawn, ordering A. Jones to retire from the Assembly Club, and B. Brown to give up either French or German, and C. Smith to pay before Thursday for the damage done in his room or be suspended,—and so on for a ruthless hour of house-cleaning.
After his first recitation next morning, Dr. Leighton got to work on the task of his committee. He found Duncan and Sam together in 7 Hale. Sam retired at the suggestion of the teacher that he wished to talk with Peck alone.
“Was I fired?” asked Duncan, when Dr. Leighton had stated his errand. Duncan’s manner showed plenty of curiosity, but little deep concern.
“Your fate is in the hands of a committee,” replied Dr. Leighton. “If it is true that you were in Boston that night, I couldn’t keep you here if I would, and you may be sure that I should not try to do so. The question is one of fact. At present the presumption is against you.I want first your own word. Were you in Boston Saturday night?”
“No, sir,” responded Duncan, promptly, looking frankly into the teacher’s serious face. The boy’s expression was serious too, except as to the eyes. In them gleamed but half suppressed a glint of fun.
“Where were you?”
“Here.”
“Did any one see you here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?”
“Sam Archer.”
“His evidence might satisfy me, but not others. It is conceivable that a room-mate should feel in duty bound to defend his friend at the expense of a lie. Did no one else see you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?”
“The man who delivers for Jetteau’s laundry, a short, red-faced fellow. We call him Pete.”
Dr. Leighton wrote in his book: “Pete, Jetteau’s laundry.” “I wish it had been a better witness,” he said regretfully.
“There was a better witness,” said Duncan, his satisfaction now breaking forth into a broad grin, “Mr. Sedgwick.”
Dr. Leighton closed his notebook with a snap. “Did he see you here?” he demanded eagerly.
“Yes, sir. He came a little before eight to invite Sam to supper the next day.” Duncan’s face took on a rueful look as he added, “I forgot to tell Sam until this morning.”
“You ought to have given me his name in the beginning.” Dr. Leighton spoke reprovingly, but with evident relief.
“Mr. Sedgwick came last,” answered Duncan, demurely. “I was giving the witnesses in exact order.”
Dr. Leighton laughed, a frank, natural, unprof-like laugh. “You always were a joker, Duncan, but take care how you joke with the faculty. Some of us don’t understand jokes.”
Duncan grinned in silent comprehension.
“But why didn’t you tell this to Mr. Alsop?” pursued Dr. Leighton, now serious again. “It Would have saved all this misunderstanding.”
“He didn’t give me any chance,” said Duncan.“He spent all his time trying to make me confess I’d done what I hadn’t done.”
“But you prevented Sam from testifying.”
“Yes, I did,” declared Duncan, stoutly. “As Alsop was so sure I was bad, I thought he might as well find out the truth himself. I hoped it would come hard, for he’s treated me dirty mean.”
“How has he treated you meanly?” asked Dr. Leighton, quietly.
“Lots of ways. For one thing, he’s kept me on probation three weeks for throwing water out the window, when the fellow who started the thing only got one.”
“Go and get Archer,” commanded Dr. Leighton.
“Was Peck here Saturday night?” asked the instructor, as the two boys returned.
“Yes, sir,” answered Sam, eagerly. “He was here the whole evening from the time I came in a little after eight. We both went to bed about eleven. He was no more in Boston than I was.”
“One thing more, Peck,” said the teacher, turning abruptly on Duncan. “Where were you on Saturday afternoon?”
Duncan’s countenance fell. “Knocking around,” he answered cautiously.
“That’s indefinite. You were not at dinner.”
“No, sir. I got my dinner at McLane’s at about five.”
“And before five?”
Peck hesitated, looked at his room-mate, then out the window, then at his room-mate again, and at last into Dr. Leighton’s face.
“I’d rather not tell you; that is, officially. I’ll tell you personally, if you like. I didn’t do anything bad.”
“Personally then, if it must be,” said the instructor.
“I went to Hampton Beach to see the surf.”
“What!”
“I went down on the one o’clock car and came back on it. I walked up from the power-house.”
Dr. Leighton was silent, while Duncan shifted nervously from foot to foot, and wondered wildly whether he had made the great mistake of being confidential with an untrustworthy prof. Dr. Leighton, however, understood clearly the distinction intended; he had agreed to receiveDuncan’s confession, not as a member of the faculty, but as a friend of the confessor. Officially he could take no cognizance of the affair. He must speak as a friend and adviser, or not at all.
“Duncan,” he said with slow seriousness, “in going to Hampton you were leaving town without permission just as much as if you had gone to Boston, as Mr. Alsop thought you did. That Mr. Alsop treated you unfairly, or that your visit was for an innocent purpose, is no excuse whatever for the act. You broke a rule on which the school wisely insists, and the punishment for which you well knew. In that you were totally wrong.”
“Yes, sir,” said Duncan, humbly.
“You understand that if your absence is discovered and the fact brought before the faculty, I cannot say a word in your defence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now I want you to promise, and promise honestly, that for the rest of the year you will try to keep well within the school rules.”
“I will, sir.”
“Good!” Dr. Leighton held out his hand, and turned to go. At the door he spoke again. “One more word of advice—as a friend. You have the advantage over Mr. Alsop in this Boston affair. Use it to come to a better understanding with him, and not to annoy him. Remember that there is a very weak spot in your own armor.”
When the teacher was gone, the two boys remained for a time in silence. Duncan’s malicious joy in the prospect of Mr. Alsop’s humiliation had given place to a serious mood. “Leighton’s a square man!” he said at length. “You’d do right for a man like him when you’d rather do wrong; while as for Alsop, why, you’d do wrong for him when you’d rather do right, just to spite him.” And therein Duncan Peck showed a knowledge of the essential traits of an inspiring teacher which is rarely possessed by school trustees.
Later in the day Mr. Alsop came to apologize for his error, and the interview left a pleasant impression with both participants. Duncan had special reason to be satisfied with it, as the instructor, to make amends for his false accusation,removed the annoying probation. Through Dr. Leighton’s influence the special committee made no report to the faculty, and Mr. Alsop was spared the pain of an official verdict on his blunder.
For a few days after Duncan’s acquittal, Mr. Alsop seemed really to have profited by his lesson. It is no slight humiliation to make a theatrical charge of falsehood against two boys, and then be compelled to eat one’s words in sackcloth and ashes. The tale circulated among the students in a variety of versions, none of which was inferior to the truth in picturesqueness. Members of the faculty smiled significantly as they passed on the word that the committee on Peck would not report, even while they deplored their colleague’s misfortune and expatiated on his devotion to duty. The discomfited instructor had to draw on his whole fund of self-esteem to save himself from confessing that some of his methods needed mending. As he treated Sam with unwonted consideration in recitation for the nextfew days, and Sam, as a result, made more conscientious preparation of lessons, it began to look as if Sam, at least, was to be the gainer.
Birdie Fowle was left alone to bear the weight of Mr. Alsop’s particular suspicion, and Birdie dropped as naturally into trouble, as a fly into the milk-pail. Taylor and Sam, with Birdie, had one evening been enjoying a most exhilarating game of ball in Birdie’s room. They used a baseball and a bat. Sofa cushions piled in the corner constituted the field. To hit the Harvard cushion was a base hit, the Yale cushion counted for two bases, the pillow with the girl’s head on it three, and the S cushion a home run. To miss the cushions altogether was an out. The sport was great; the cries of the trio floated out through the open windows, and the floor trembled with the lunges of the players. Mr. Alsop, who had latterly resolved not to interfere with the boys in their rooms unless the disturbance was serious, growing impatient under the strain, tramped his study, nervously asking himself, with each crescendo from above, whether the time had not now come when he really must interfere. Then thenoises ceased, and he went back to his work relieved.
The game was at its height when a knock at the door sent the guests scurrying to the closets. Poor Birdie, bound to obey the summons, tossed the cushions back upon the sofa, ran his fingers through his disordered hair, threw on his coat, and hurried to open the door. Without stood Brantwein with his basket of “hot dogs.”
“You old fraud!” exclaimed Birdie. “I thought sure it was Alsop.”
“You ought to be so glad it isn’t that you’d want to buy me out,” observed Brantwein, as he pushed in. “I’ll sell you the whole stock for an even dollar.”
“Come out!” yelled Fowle. “It’s only Brandy!” The hidden players emerged. “Who wants a dog?”
“I’ll give you a dime for three,” offered Taylor. “That’s all they’re worth.”
“They’re the best I ever sold, specially fine breed of dog,” returned Brantwein, seriously. “They’re really worth ten apiece, but I’ll let you have ’em for a nickel.”
“Hot?” asked Sam, thrusting his hand into the basket.
“Two hundred twelve degrees,” answered the vendor, as he pulled his basket well out of Sam’s reach. “Don’t handle the pups.”
Fowle treated the crowd, and the three were soon munching the sandwiches and crying down their quality.
“How’s socialism, Brandy?” asked Fowle, winking at his nearest neighbor. “I hear it’s a back number nowadays.”
“The socialists are the party of the future,” said Brandy, solemnly. “The time is coming when the government will own and operate all railroads and public utilities, together with all mines and great industrial plants, and the product and advantages derived from the resources of the country will be enjoyed by the people, to whom they belong, not by the few greedy monopolists who sit with their feet in the trough at home—and send their fat-witted sons to Seaton Academy.”
“Good!” cried Taylor. “That’s me! But look here, Brandy, will the government run thehot-dog business too? If it does, where’ll you be?”
Brandy threw at the interrupter a glance which was meant to express pity for Taylor’s ignorance.
“Those that are qualified will hold the important positions, not those who have a pull. I shall be chief government inspector of hot dogs.” Brantwein turned again to his main audience. “The United States is to-day fifty years behind Europe in the matter of socialism, but we’re learning fast now. We must make a beginning with the coal mines and the great trunk lines—”
“That’ll be bad for you,” cut in Birdie. “You can’t beat your way from Chicago to Boston, then.”
“I shan’t need to,” retorted Brandy. “The state will pay for every man’s education. Fellows like you, of course, the state won’t waste much time on. You’ll be used for road-menders and crossing-sweepers.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Taylor, lacking for the moment a more effective reply.
“It will be another golden age, won’t it, Brandy?” interposed Sam, “like that one Virgiltells about, when the pastures were speckled all over with sheep of different colors, each one producing wool of just the right tint, so that there was no need of dyeing it. All the lazy will become hustlers and all the crooks honest, and everybody will have what he wants to eat and go to the theatre every night.”
“Once a term was more than enough for Duncan Peck,” said the socialist, most irrelevantly. “That was a hot old bluff he put up on Alsop, wasn’t it?”
“It was no bluff at all,” answered Sam, warmly. Just then the door was pushed open and Fish lunged in, gave a general nod that was meant to include all present, and made a dive for Brandy’s basket. The socialist proved quite able to defend his property. He met Fish’s onset with a hard shove that sent the intruder into the desk, then picked up his stock in trade and made for the door. “I can’t waste any more time on you fellows,” he said. “Fish has come to make a rough-house and there are about twenty starved Alumni Hall boarders to be warmed and fed out of this basket. So long!”
Fish took a newspaper from the desk, punched a hole through it, and proposed that Fowle wear it as a collar.
“Get out, won’t you!” pleaded Fowle. “I don’t want any rough-house here.”
“We’ll put him out, if you say so,” offered Sam.
“No, don’t!” expostulated Birdie. “That’ll make a row and Alsop will be down on us. He’ll go.”
Sam and Taylor drifted home to save the balance of the evening. Fish seized the long-handled hearth brush which Birdie’s mother, in the trustfulness of her heart, had sent to her son with admonition that he keep his fireplace tidy. “Let me brush your hair,” urged Fish, advancing on his unwilling host.
“Keep away with that!” Birdie commanded, but Fish persisted. Each clutched the handle of the brush and struggled against the other, Fish to accomplish his purpose, Birdie to ward off the attack. In the fracas the stick parted; Fish retained the handle end, Birdie the brush.
“Now see what you’ve done, you hoodlum!” cried Fowle, indignantly. “Get out of here!”
As Fish showed no inclination to yield to this order, Birdie threw wide his door, got inside his enemy, and with a hard buck, given suddenly and low, tried to rush him out the door. Fish caught by the casing, pulled himself back, and ultimately escaped, with a jeer of defiance, to the farther side of the room. Here Fowle attacked him again, and by superior strength dragged him to the door, where Fish by the skilful use of hands and feet once more blocked his opponent’s game. By this time Birdie had undeniably lost both temper and caution. He grasped the interloper’s wrist with one hand, his neck with the other, and twisting the wrist and pressing the neck hard between thumb and fingers, urged him to the door.
“Stop! stop!” cried Fish, quickly. “I’ll go.”
“I won’t trust you,” shouted Fowle. “I won’t let up an ounce till you’re outside that door!”
Fish stood not on the order of his going. Outside Birdie gave him a final push and paused, panting and dishevelled, in the doorway. Fish had hardly stretched his cramped neck andshaken out his aching wrist, when he suddenly lifted his head in an attitude of attention, and darted up the next flight of stairs. While his ascending head was still visible over the banisters above, the angry visage of Mr. Alsop appeared from below.
“At it again, Fowle! Disturbing the whole well for your own amusement, regardless of the rights of others and my repeatedly expressed wishes! There’s a limit, I wish you to understand, even to my patience.”
“Yes, sir,” stammered the boy, “but this time it wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is, according to your statements,” declared the instructor.
“What would you do if a fellow came into your room, tried to brush your hair with a hearth brush, broke your things, and refused to leave? You wouldn’t stand round and let him rip the room to pieces, would you?”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you, sir.”
“If you prefer to shield him, you can’t blame me for holding you responsible. Whoever theothers may be, you are certainly one. If boys trespass on your room, you should keep your door locked.”
“I do, usually,” answered Birdie. “Sometimes I forget.”
“For the rest of the term you are on probation,” continued the instructor, severely. “At the next faculty meeting I shall report your case and ask that a notice be sent to your parents that unless you can come back to live an orderly, quiet life in the dormitory, we do not wish you back at all.”
Overcome by a deep sense of injury, Birdie next morning confided his troubles to Sam. In consequence, feeling that the fuel for Mr. Alsop’s ire must have been provided by the ball game in which they had had a share, and grasping at a vague hope of bettering the condition of the luckless boy, Sam and Taylor visited the teacher and tried to deflect to themselves some share of Birdie’s punishment.
“Which of you was the one that forced himself into Fowle’s room and broke his fire brush?”
“Neither of us,” said Sam.
“But you both played with bat and ball in his room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you may both write out for me before Saturday night ten pages of French. I ought to put you on probation, but I will reduce the punishment in consideration of your confession.”
Sam and Taylor withdrew in gloom. “That’s what you get for being honest!” groaned Taylor. “Write out ten pages! That means five hours’ work!”
“And we didn’t help Fowle any, either,” commented Sam, sadly.
Sam was so depressed by the erratic course of school justice that he went over to Dr. Leighton’s that evening and told him the whole story, in which Fish figured only as “a fellow in the well.” Dr. Leighton listened with sympathy and gave what comfort he could. A certain amount of injustice, he said, is inevitable in our lives; when we can’t prevent it, it is better to bear it bravely than to whine over it. Sam went home resolved to take his punishment without grumbling, and to hope for better things.
After the boy left, Dr. Leighton drew out his catalogue of students and ran rapidly down the list to discover who belonged in the east well of Hale. At the name of Fish his pencil rested. “That’s the black sheep,” he said, as he put away the pamphlet. “I’m afraid he’s not what Alsop thinks him.”
The day after Birdie Fowle reached home for the spring recess, a letter arrived from the Seaton authorities containing a printed blank, filled in with an alternation of D’s and E’s. There was likewise enclosed a short note from the school secretary, giving the startling information that the boy’s conduct in the dormitory had been so reprehensible that he would not be permitted to return except on trial from day to day; and that any further complaint from his dormitory master would be followed by immediate notice to withdraw.
The Fowle household was burdened with sorrow during the six days which Birdie spent at home. Mr. Fowle was taciturn and grave, Mrs. Fowle wept, and Birdie (properly named James), after a day or two of aggrieved expostulation, settled into a mood of deeply despondent fatalism.He knew that he was not a bad boy; he did not follow the evil ways of some of his schoolmates; he did not drink nor play poker nor run in debt nor cut recitations. Other fellows who did these and worse got off clear, while for a little rough-housing, much of which had been forced upon him by others, he was to be branded as a criminal. Of what use was it to try to be good, if he got the punishment of the worst? He might as well be bad and have the fun of it.
So Birdie returned to school, his ears still tingling with the stern warnings of his father and the tearful entreaties of his mother, his heart saddened by a presentiment of failure. He was like an unwilling soldier marching to expected defeat.
Sam and Duncan came back in a very different state of mind. They had spent the week at the Archers’ in Portland, where Duncan, who was on his best behavior, by his deferential politeness and open-hearted cordiality made amends to the parents for his early churlish treatment of the son. The family were charmed with him.
“We are so glad to have had you here,” Mrs.Archer confided to Duncan on the day of their departure. “We always like to know Sam’s friends, and we have been interested in you since Sam first wrote about you.”
At this Duncan looked a trifle conscious, and shot a swift glance at Sam, whose face was turned away. “It’s very good of you to let me come,” he said politely, trying to escape the unpleasant reminder of the past by dwelling on the agreeable present.
“He used to write us, you see,” went on Mrs. Archer, smiling, “that he liked you, but that you had other friends and did not care for him. I knew it would be different when you got to know each other.”
“Was the carriage ordered, mother?” broke in Sam, most abruptly.
“Yes, for two o’clock,” Mrs. Archer rejoined, and turned again to her guest. “I was disappointed when Sam proposed to bring down Mulcahy, whom I did not know at all, and not you whom I had met and wanted to see more of. Is Mulcahy one of your friends, too?”
“Not a very intimate one,” replied Duncan.
“He must be a very remarkable young man.” She addressed herself again to the uneasy Sam. “But you haven’t said much about him lately, Sam. What has become of him?”
“Oh, he’s around,” answered the son of the house, unpleasantly reminded of the superlatives which he had used in his early letters in describing Mulcahy. “Didn’t you say you were going to hand over some of that cake to take back with us, mother?”
“Katy’s doing it up now. Shall I tell her to put in some strawberry jam?”
Mrs. Archer rustled out on her errand, leaving the boys alone. Sam picked up a magazine which lay on the table, and turned the pages of advertisements.
“I did treat you pretty rocky that fall term,” remarked Duncan, as if their differences during Sam’s first months in school had been the topic of conversation. “I acted like a mick.”
“Don’t think of it,” returned Sam, without looking up. “I was a fool.”
And this was all the reference ever made to their early disagreement.
Birdie Fowle’s melancholy fatalism lasted abouta fortnight. By the end of that time, having been successful in keeping his door locked and having received two C’s on half-hour exams, he began to feel better. His old cheerfulness returned, and with it a measure of carelessness. Sam, who was trying to help him, had urged him to avoid John Fish and give the dormitory scourge no excuse for enmity. It was clear, even to our inexperienced young man, that Fish’s cunning was not keeping pace with his effrontery. Success in deceiving his dormitory master had stimulated the fellow’s audacity to the point of recklessness; sooner or later he would expose himself.
Birdie, though accepting readily this rule of conduct, was hardly capable of carrying it out. On April first, the day of fools, he was tempted and fell. It happened in this wise. As he started down toward the post-office after his morning recitation, he saw John Fish sauntering in the same direction a dozen yards ahead of him. Obedient to the advice of his counsellor to keep out of Fish’s way, Birdie checked his own pace and trailed along behind. In front of the post-office stood a dozen fellows gossiping and looking outupon the street. When Fish was two-thirds across, Birdie’s good resolution yielded in an instant to the inspiration of the opportunity. He opened his mouth, hardened his throat muscles, and forced out two harshly resonant syllables.
Birdie’s “honk! honk!” was a masterpiece of mimicry for which he was justly famous. No one in school could perpetrate anything approaching it in effectiveness. Barney and Litchell had developed a fair imitation that would deceive the inexperienced; Fowle could frighten the elect. Fish, whose mind was intent on the question of how best to spend a certain expected check—if he repaid the money he had borrowed from various boys, he would have nothing left—gave a great clumsy plunge forward, like a startled dray-horse. His cap flew from his head; his books dropped from his hand. Safe at the curbstone, he turned to throw a malediction on the reckless motorist, and looked into Fowle’s gleeful face.
“April fool!” sang Birdie, cheerfully.
The fellows on the sidewalk hooted. Fish went back to gather up his property. “You’rea clever child,” he said, smiling contemptuously. His look was more significant than his words.
In five minutes Birdie was aware that he had committed a sad error. Fish in good-nature was always a menace to peace; Fish offended would be an unscrupulous enemy. Disheartened, Fowle took his troubles again to Sam.
“You were a fool to do that,” expostulated Sam. “I told you to let him alone.”
“I tried to,” mourned Birdie, “but it was such a slick chance!”
“Well, as long as you can keep him out of the room, it’ll be all right. You aren’t afraid to tackle him in the open.”
“I guess not,” returned Fowle, emphatically. “If I could get him outside, I wouldn’t put up with anything from him!”
“Then if he gets in, order him out; if he won’t go, tell him you’ll hold him responsible for everything he does in the room, and get out yourself.”
“A lot of good that will do! He’d plug the gas jets, pour water in the bed, write things on my collars, and spoil things generally. And if I stayed, he’d be likely to do something to makeme mad, and I’d wade into him. Then rough-house, noise, and home I’d go.”
It was indeed a hard problem that poor Birdie faced: if he defended himself against aggression, he committedlèse-majestéagainst Mr. Alsop by having a rough-house, and the sentence hanging over him would be executed; if he endured in patience, his possessions would be wrecked before his eyes; if he reported the facts, he transgressed the one law of which all schoolboys, good and bad, despise the breaker.
“Come down here the next time he gets in,” proposed Sam, at length, “and let me go up and settle him. You can prove an alibi if anything happens, and I’m not on probation.”
A fortnight passed. Sam, busy with studies and track practice, had ceased to think of Birdie as in immediate danger. Moorhead, Fish’s unfortunate room-mate, had proposed to room with Sam the next year, and Sam, feeling that it would be better for him to live with the quiet, studious scholar than with some more lively but less helpful chum, had consented. The interests of the present and plans for the future absorbed his attention.He was gaining in French and in Mr. Alsop’s esteem; he was really beginning to hope for a recommendation in the subject for the college preliminaries. Collins kept him encouraged in the hurdles. Unless some better man appeared, he seemed sure of a place on the track team as Fairmount’s understudy. Altogether he felt satisfied with himself and at peace with the world.
But it is hard to keep at peace with the world, if the world makes unjust war upon one’s friends. Fowle, returning to his room from Greek one morning, neglected to secure his door. He hadn’t been in his desk chair ten minutes when some one pushed the door open, looked in, and cried, “Honk, honk!” It was Fish!
“Keep out!” called Fowle. “I’m on pro.”
“That don’t scare me,” said Fish, as he shut the door behind him and sauntered across the room.
On the table lay the first sheet of a theme, neatly copied. Fish dipped a pen in the ink, and shook a blot on the outspread page.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I was going to correct it;” and he dropped another blot beside the first.
“Look here, Fish!” spoke Fowle, sharply, “I don’t want you here. Clear out!”
“You’re not very polite,” returned the visitor, unabashed, as he threw the pen, point downward, at the table, and picking up a couple of magazines and a book, began rearing a triangular steeple on the lamp chimney.
Birdie’s ire was waxing. He felt that he could not control himself much longer. “Will you go or not?” he demanded hotly.
“I’ll go when I get ready,” answered Fish, watching closely to see how high Birdie’s temperature was rising, taking care meanwhile to keep the table between them. He did not want to get Fowle into a dangerously pugnacious state; he merely wished to incite a good lively rough-house, in which the smashing of a few trifles would be unavoidable.
Instead, however, of reaching over the table for his tormentor or chasing him round it, Fowle took an unexpected course. He turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.