THAT burglars had broken into Dickey’s, but had been frightened away by the constable, was the story that got over town. Gale was heard bragging of how courageously he had acted in scaring them off, and how one of the burglars, hard pressed, had shot at him.
Chip Merriwell and his friends kept their own counsel. As the days passed,they watched for the Hindu and watched Kadir Dhin. If the fussy and important constable were to be believed, other burglarious attempts had been forestalled by him, and he was as busy as a man with five hands.
The normal routine of the academy was for a time outwardly unbroken. Study and lectures, winter sports, work and play in the gymnasium, went on as usual, under the rather rigid semimilitary discipline which Gunn and the faculty enforced.
But it could be seen that the Duke and his friends were hard at work lining up against Chip Merriwell every man they could. The apparent result was small. Chip had a host of friends who were disposed to stand by him loyally. And of that closer and more intimate band consisting of such fellows as Clan and Kess, Jelliby and others, that they would stand by Chip through thick and thin on any and every occasion, was, of course, known to every one.
Some hockey matches on the cleared ice of the lake were exciting enough to thrill the whole school and bring a mob of spectators out from the village. Twice Chip led scrub teams against the regular Fardale team, once going to victory and another time to defeat.
That Rhoda Realf and her brother were at Fardale Chip knew from Kess’ report; and it was not long before he met them. Chilled a bit by Rose Maitland’s championship of Kadir Dhin, Chip was in a mood to be moved again by the beauty and charm of the younger and slighter girl.
Yet, having a good memory, Chip could not forget even while he was out on the lake in the full swing of enjoyment, skating with Rhoda Realf, that whatever break there had ever been between them had been produced solely because he could not endure the insufferable qualities of Rhoda’s brother.
But when Chip went over to Gunn’s for a talk with Rose Maitland on the subject which was constantly in her mind—her fears of the Hindu who had slain her father and who was believed by herself and Gunn to be in concealment at Fardale—the feeling again mastered him which had swayed him when he first saw her.
“I could wish you were an American,” he said, as he talked and jested with her; “and I don’t say that because I hold any feeling whatever against the English. Now I have offended? I’m sure I didn’t intend it, and beg your pardon.”
She had flushed; but a slight heightening of the color in her cheeks made her only the more charming.
“It’s no offense,” she said. “You see, how can it be, when I am half American. I didn’t know but Colonel Gunn had told you. My mother was an American, from Baltimore. That is why I was so willing to come to America. And I mean to visit Baltimore as soon as I can.”
From this agreeable topic, the talk switched to the Hindu and Kadir Dhin, a change inevitable, as that had been Chip’s reason, or excuse, for making this call.
“Colonel Gunn is sure that Gunga Singh, the man who slew my father, is still here, and that he is committing these burglaries,” she reported. “Colonel Gunn believes he has found refuge with some of the low foreigners in the mill sections, and is burglarizing that he may have money to pay for concealment. He says, too, that Dickey would keep him, would keep any scoundrel, for money. I feel as if I were sitting on a volcano. I don’t go out any more.”
Then she spoke again of Kadir Dhin, declaring that it was too had the young Hindu’s career at Fardale had been shadowed as it was.
She added:
“It has come to Colonel Gunn, and he resents it, that you have been hintingthat perhaps Kadir Dhin isn’t so innocent as he seems—that he has been helping Gunga Singh.”
Chip had more than hinted that to his friends—but only to his friends; and he had believed it. He thought he had reasons for believing it.
“Somebody must be a mind reader,” he said.
“You didn’t say it?”
“I said it to Clancy and Kess and perhaps one or two more.”
“So it wouldn’t need mind reading to get out. You have wronged Kadir Dhin. I wish you would apologize to him. You haven’t apologized to him?”
“No—not yet,” said Chip. “I may, in time.”
Chip parried this subject off as well as he could. He was again too much in love with this girl to want anything like disagreement to come between them. Yet he was in no mood to apologize to the young Hindu. His belief was growing that Kadir Dhin was tricky; that he was imposing on the confidence of Colonel Gunn and Rose Maitland. He wanted proof of it, and meant to try to get it. So how could he go to Kadir Dhin and say to the young Hindu that he thought he had wronged and was wronging him? It had to be parried off. It was a dangerous subject.
There were ever so many pleasanter things to talk about, and Chip contrived to bring them forward; so that when he took his leave, it was with a sense of having had a pleasant time and of having made a good impression.
“I wonder if I am fickle-minded?” he thought, as he walked away, his mind turning to Rhoda Realf. “No, I don’t think I am. I like Rhoda—she’s fine; but Rose Maitland——”
Then he thought of Kadir Dhin.
“I can’t get it out of my nut that he is playing a double game. Of course, if he isn’t, and I see that he isn’t, I’ll apologize to him, and do it freely; though I’m afraid I can never like him.”