HITTING THE LINE

By Ralph Henry Barbour

Purple Pennant Series

• The Lucky Seventh
• The Secret Play
• The Purple Pennant

Yardley Hall Series

• Forward Pass
• Double Play
• Winning His Y
• For Yardley
• Around the End
• Change Signals

Hilton Series

• The Half-back
• For the Honor of the School
• Captain of the Crew

Erskine Series

• Behind the Line
• Weatherby’s Inning
• On Your Mark

The “Big Four” Series

• Four in Camp
• Four Afoot
• Four Afloat

The Grafton Series

• Rivals for the Team
• Winning His Game
• Hitting the Line

Books not in Series

• The Brother of a Hero
• Finkler’s Field
• Danforth Plays the Game
• Benton’s Venture
• The Junior Trophy
• The New Boy at Hilltop
• The Spirit of the School
• The Arrival of Jimpson

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, Publishers, New York

[The footsteps pounded behind on the frosty turf.]

HITTING
THE LINE

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF “RIVALS FOR THE TEAM,” “THE PURPLE PENNANT,”
“DANFORTH PLAYS THE GAME,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
NORMAN ROCKWELL

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1917

Copyright 1917, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HITTING THE LINE

CHAPTER I
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

Two boys alighted from a surface car in front of the big Terminal in New York and dodged their way between dashing taxicabs, honking motor cars and plunging horses to the safety of the broad sidewalk. Each boy carried a suitcase, and each suitcase held, amongst the more or less obliterated labels adorning it, a lozenge-shaped paster of gray paper, bearing, in scarlet, the letters “G. S.,” cunningly angulated to fit the space of the rhombus.

If I were Mr. Sherlock Holmes I should write, as a companion work to the famous monograph on tobacco ashes, a Treatise on the Deduction of Evidence from Hand Luggage. For one can learn a great deal from a careful scrutiny of, say, a suitcase or kit bag. As for example. Here is one bearing the initials “D. H. B.” on its end. It is quite an ordinary affair, costing when new in the neighborhood of six dollars perhaps. Its color has deepened to a light shade of mahogany, from which we deduce that its age is about three years. While it is still in good usable condition, it is not a bit “swagger,” and we reach the conclusion that its owner is in moderate circumstances. There are no signs of abuse and so it is apparent that the boy is of a careful as well as a frugal turn of mind. A baggage tag tied to the handle presumably bears name and address. Therefore he possesses forethought. The letters “D. H. B.” probably stand for David H. Brown. Or possibly Daniel may be the first name. We select David as being more common. As to the last name, we frankly own that we may be mistaken, but Brown is as likely as any other. The letters “G. S.” on the label indicate that he belongs to some Society, but the G puzzles us. It might stand for Gaelic or Gallic—or Garlic—but we’ll let that go for the moment and look at the other bag.

This bears the initials “J. T. L.,” not in plain block letters but in Old English characters. It is of approximately the same age as the first one, but cost nearly twice as much, and has seen twice as much use and more than twice as much abuse. The handle is nearly off and those spots suggest rain. There is no tag on it. The initials probably stand for John T. Long. The gray label with the scarlet letters indicate that the owner of the suitcase is also a member of the mysterious Society. Other facts show that he is wealthy, careless, not over-neat, fond of show and lacks forethought. There!

And just at this moment “J. T. L.” lays a detaining hand on his companion’s arm and exclaims: “Wait a shake, Dud!” And we begin to lose faith in our powers of deduction and to fear that we will never rival Mr. Holmes after all!

Dud—his full name, not to make a secret of it any longer, was Dudley Henry Baker—paused as requested, thereby bringing down upon him the ire of a stout gentleman colliding with the suitcase, and followed his friend’s gaze. A few yards away, in a corner of the station entrance, two newsboys were quarreling. Or so it seemed at first glance. A second look showed that one boy, much larger and older than his opponent, was quarreling and that the other was trying vainly to escape. The larger boy had the smaller youth’s arm in a merciless grip and was twisting it brutally, eliciting sharp cries of pain from his victim. The passing throng looked, smiled or frowned and hurried by.

“The brute!” cried Dud indignantly, and started across the pavement, his companion following with the light of battle in his eyes. But the pleasure of intercession was not to be theirs, for before they had covered half the distance a third actor entered the little drama. He was a sizable youth of about their own age, and he set the bag he carried down on the ledge of the step beside him, stuffed a morning paper in his pocket, seized hold of the larger boy with his left hand, placed his right palm under the boy’s chin and pushed abruptly backward.

Needless to say, the smaller boy found himself free instantly. The bully, staggering away, glared at his new adversary and rushed for him, uttering an uncomplimentary remark. The new actor in the drama waited, ducked, closed, crooked a leg behind the bully and heaved. The bully shot across the sidewalk until his flight was interrupted by the nearest pedestrian and then, his fall slightly broken by that startled and indignant passer, measured his length on the ground. At the same instant a commotion ensued near the curb and the rescued newsboy sensing the reason for it, exclaimed: “Beat it, feller! The cop’s coming!” and slid through the nearest door. His benefactor acted almost as quickly, and when the policeman finally pushed his way to the scene he found only a dazed bully and an irate pedestrian as a nucleus for the quickly-forming crowd.

Dud and his companion, grinning delightedly, followed the youth with the bag. The newsboy had utterly vanished, but his rescuer was a few yards away, crossing the waiting-room. On the impulse Dud and his companion hurried their steps and drew alongside him, the latter exclaiming admiringly: “Good for you, old man! That was a peach of a fall!”

The other turned, showing no surprise, and smiled slowly and genially. “Hello,” he responded. “What did you remark, Harold?”

“I said that was a peach of a fall.”

“Oh! Were you there? I guess we’d have had some real fun if the cops hadn’t butted in. Is this the way to the trains, Harold?”

“Yes, but my name isn’t Harold,” answered the other, slightly exasperated. “What train do you want?”

The boy observed the questioner reflectively for a moment. Then: “What trains have you got?” he inquired politely.

“Come on, Jimmy,” said Dud, tugging at his friend’s sleeve. “He’s too fresh.”

“Thought you might be a stranger, and I was trying to help you,” said James Townsend Logan stiffly. “You find your own train, will you?”

They had emerged into the concourse now and the stranger stopped and put his bag down, facing Jimmy with a quizzical smile. “I guess you’re an artist,” he said. “Making believe to get mad would fool most any fellow. What is it now? Eskimo Twins? Or——”

“That’ll be about all for you!” said Jimmy hotly. “If I’m an Eskimo you’re——”

“Back up, Harold! You don’t savvy. Far be it from me to take a chance on your nationality——”

“Oh, dry up!” growled Jimmy, turning away.

“Well, but you’re not going, are you?” called the stranger in surprised tones. Jimmy was going, and Dud was going with him. And on the way to the gate they exchanged short but succinct verdicts on the youth behind.

“Flip kid!” sputtered Jimmy.

“Crazy!” said Dud, disgustedly.

The subject of the uncomplimentary remarks had watched them amusedly as long as they were in sight. Outraged dignity spoke eloquently from Jimmy Townsend’s back. When the two boys were hidden by the throng about the gate the stranger chuckled softly, took up his bag again and moved toward a ticket window. He had a long, easy stride, and the upper part of his body, in spite of the heavy kit-bag he carried, swung freely, giving the idea that he was used to much walking and in less crowded spaces.

“One of your very best tickets to Greenbank, please,” he said to the man behind the window.

“Any special Greenbank?” asked the latter, faintly sarcastic.

“Which one would you advise?”

The man shot an appraising look at the boy, smiled, pulled a slip of cardboard from a rack, stamped it and pushed it across the ledge. “Two-sixty-eight, please.”

“Thank you. You think I’ll like this one?”

“If you don’t, bring it back and I’ll change it.”

“That’s fair. Good-morning.”

At the news-stand he selected two magazines, paid for them and then glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes past eleven exactly. He drew a watch from his pocket and compared it with the clock. “Is that clock about right?” he asked the youth behind the counter.

“Just right,” was the crisp reply.

“Honest? I make it three minutes slow.” He held his own timepiece up in evidence. The youth smiled ironically.

“Better speak to the President about it,” he advised. “He just set that clock this morning.”

“Wouldn’t he be too busy to see me?” asked the other doubtfully.

“Naw, he never does nothin’! He’d be glad to know about it.”

“Well, I’m sure I think he ought to know. I guess he wouldn’t want folks to be too early and miss their trains!” He smiled politely and moved away, leaving the news-stand youth to smile derisively and murmur: “Dippy Dick!”

The sign “Information” above a booth in the center of the concourse met his gaze and he turned his steps toward it. “Will you please give me a timetable showing the train service between New York and Greenbank?” he asked gently.

“Greenbank, where?” demanded the official bruskly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come on! Greenbank, Connecticut? Greenbank, Rhode Island? Greenbank——”

“Which do you consider the nicest?” asked the boy anxiously.

“Now, look here! I haven’t got time to fool away. Find out where you want to go first.”

“I’m so sorry! I saw it said ‘Information’ here and thought I’d get a little. If I’m at the wrong window——”

“This is the Information Bureau, son, but I’m no mind reader. If you don’t know which Greenbank you want—Yes, Madam, eleven-thirty-two: Track 12!”

“Maybe this ticket will tell,” hazarded the boy, laying it on the ledge. The man seized it impatiently.

“Of course it tells! Here you are!” He tossed a folder across. “You oughtn’t to travel alone, son,” he added pityingly.

“No, sir, I hope I shan’t have to. There’ll be other people on the train, won’t there?”

“If there aren’t—Yes, sir, Stamford at twelve, sir—you’d better put yourself in charge of the conductor!”

“I shall,” the other assured him earnestly. “Good-morning.”

“Just plain nutty, I guess,” thought the man, looking after him.

Eleven-twenty-four now, and the boy approached the gate, holding his bag in front of him with both hands so that it bumped at every step and fixing his eyes on the announcement board, his mouth open vacuously.

“Look where you’re going!” exclaimed a gentleman with whom the boy collided.

“Huh?”

“Look where you’re going, I said! Stop bumping me with your bag!”

“Uh-huh.”

The gentleman pushed along, muttering angrily, and the boy followed, his bag pressed against the backs of the other’s immaculate gray trousered knees. “Greenbank, Mister?” he inquired of the man at the gate.

“Yes. Ticket, please!”

“Huh?”

“Let me see your ticket.”

“Ticket?”

“Yes, yes, your railway ticket! Come on, come on!”

“I got me one,” said the boy.

“Well, let me see it! Hurry, please! You’re keeping others back.”

“Uh-huh.” The boy set down his bag and began to dig into various pockets. The ticket examiner watched impatiently a moment while protests from those behind became audible. Finally:

“Here, shove that bag aside and let these folks past,” said the man irascibly. “Did you buy your ticket?”

“Huh?”

“I say, did you buy your ticket?”

“Uh-huh, I got me one, Mister.”

“Well, find it then! And you’d better hurry if you want this train!”

“Huh?”

“I say, if you want this—Here, what’s that you’ve got in your hand?”

“This?” The boy looked at the small piece of cardboard in a puzzled manner. “Ain’t that it?” he asked. But the man had already whisked it out of his hand, and now he punched it quickly, thrust it back to the boy and pushed him along through the gate.

“Must be an idiot,” he growled to the next passenger. “Someone ought to look after him.”

“All aboard!” shouted the conductor as the boy with the bag swung his way along the platform. “All aboard!”

“Is this the train for Greenbank?”

The conductor turned impatiently. “Yes. Get aboard!”

“Pardon me?” The boy leaned nearer, a hand cupped behind his ear.

“Yes! Greenbank! Get on!”

“I’m so sorry,” smiled the other. “Would you mind speaking a little louder?”

“Yes, this is the Greenbank train!” vociferated the conductor. “Get aboard!”

“Thank you,” replied the boy with much dignity, “but you needn’t shout at me. I’m not deaf!” Whereupon he climbed leisurely up the steps of the already moving train and entered a car.

CHAPTER II
THE BOY FROM OUT WEST

Jimmy Logan and Dud Baker discussed the eccentricities of the obnoxious youth they had encountered in the waiting-room for several minutes after they were seated in the train. (By arriving a good ten minutes before leaving time they had been able to take possession of two seats, turning the front one over and occupying it with their suitcases.)

“Know what I think?” asked Jimmy, his choler having subsided. “Well, I think he was having fun with us. There was a sort of twinkle in his eye, Dud.”

“Maybe he was,” agreed the other. “He was a nice-looking chap. And the way he lit into that big bully of a newsboy was dandy!”

“Guess he knows something about wrestling,” mused Jimmy. “Wish I did. Let’s you and I take it up this winter, Dud.”

“That’s all well enough for you. Seniors don’t have anything to do. I’m going to be pretty busy, though. Say, you don’t suppose that fellow is coming to Grafton, do you?”

“If he is, he’s a new boy,” was the response. “Maybe he’s a Greenie. A lot of Mount Morris fellows go back this way. It’s good we got here early. This car’s pretty nearly filled. I wish it would hurry up and go. I’m getting hungry.”

“How soon can we have dinner?” asked Dud.

“Twelve, I guess. They take on the diner down the line somewhere. Got anything to read in your bag?”

Dud opened his suitcase, lifted out several magazines and offered them for inspection. He was a slim boy of sixteen, or just short of sixteen, to be exact, with very blue eyes, a fair complexion and good features, rather a contrast to his companion who was distinctly stocky, with wide shoulders and deep chest. Jimmy’s features were a somewhat miscellaneous lot and included a short nose, a wide, humorous mouth, a resolutely square chin and light brown eyes. His hair was reddish-brown and he wore it longer than most fellows would have, suggesting that Jimmy went in for football. Jimmy, however, did nothing of the sort. In age he was Dud’s senior by four months. Both boys wore blue serge suits, rubber-soled tan shoes and straw hats, all of a style appropriate to the time of year, which was the third week in September. The straw hats were each encircled by a scarlet-and-gray band, scarlet and gray being the colors of Grafton School, to which place the two boys were on their way after a fortnight spent together at Jimmy’s home. The similarity of attire even extended to the shirts, which were of light blue mercerized linen, and to the watch-fobs, showing the school seal, which dangled from trousers’ pockets. It ended, however, at ties at one extreme and at socks at the other, for Jimmy’s four-in-hand was of brilliant Yale blue, and matched his hosiery, while Dud wore a brown bow and brown stockings.

Jimmy turned over the magazines uninterestedly. “Guess I’ve seen these,” he said, tossing them to the opposite seat. “I’ll buy something when the boy comes through. I wonder what the new room’s like, Dud.”

“It’s bound to be better than the old one. I’m sorry we didn’t get one on the top floor, though.”

“Guess we were lucky to get into Lothrop at all. That’s what comes of leading an upright life, Dud, and standing in with Charley and faculty. Bet you a lot of fellows got left this fall on their rooms. Gus Weston has been trying for Lothrop two years. Wonder if he made it. Hope so. Gus is a rattling good sort, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Do you suppose he will be the regular quarter-back this year?”

“Not unless Nick Blake breaks his neck or something. Gus will give him a good run for it, though. Still, Bert Winslow and Nick are great friends, and I guess Nick will naturally have the call.”

“Winslow never struck me as a fellow who would play a favorite,” objected Dud.

“Of course not, but if you’re football captain and there are two fellows who play about the same sort of game, and one is a particular friend and the other isn’t, and——”

“Here we go,” interrupted Dud as the conductor’s warning reached them through the open window.

“Good work! That’s what I meant, you see. Bert will naturally favor Nick. No reason why he shouldn’t. Besides, Nick was quarter last year and he was a peach, too. Bet you we have a corking team this fall, Dud. Look at the fellows we’ve got left over! Nick and Bert and Hobo and Musgrave——”

“Look!” exclaimed Dud in a low voice, nudging his companion. The train had begun to move. Following the direction of Dud’s gaze, Jimmy’s eyes fell on the form of the boy he had accosted in the station. The latter was coming leisurely down the car aisle, looking on each side for a seat. But the weather was warm and the passengers who were so fortunate as to be sitting alone were loathe to share their accommodations. The newcomer, however, displayed neither concern nor embarrassment. Something about him said very plainly that if he didn’t take this seat or that it was only because he chose not to, and not because he was intimidated by scowls or chilly glances.

“Maybe,” began Dud, looking about the car, “we’d ought to turn this over, Jimmy.”

But before Jimmy had time to answer the boy had paused in his progress along the aisle and was smiling genially down on them.

He was, first of all, an undeniably good-looking youth. Even Jimmy was forced to acknowledge that, although he did it grudgingly. In age he appeared to be about sixteen, but he was tall for his years and big in a well-proportioned way. He had brown hair that was neither light nor dark, and eyebrows and lashes several shades paler. His face was rather long and terminated in a surprisingly square chin. His brown eyes were deeply set and looked out very directly from either side of a straight nose. The mouth was a trifle too wide, perhaps, but there was a pleasant curve to it, and at either end hovered two small vertical clefts that were like elongated dimples. Face, neck and hands were deeply tanned. For the rest, he was square-shouldered, narrow-waisted and deep-chested, and there was an ease and freedom in his carriage and movements that went well with the careless, self-confident look of him.

“Hello, fellows!” he said. “Mind if I sit here?” Whereupon, and without waiting for reply, he lifted Jimmy’s suitcase to the rack above, piled his own bag on top of Dud’s and settled himself opposite the latter. “Warm, isn’t it?” he observed, removing his soft straw hat and putting it atop his bag. As he did so his gaze traveled from Jimmy’s hat to Dud’s, and: “Belong to the same Order, don’t you?” he said affably. “Is it hard to get in?”

“School colors,” answered Dud stiffly.

“Oh! Thought maybe you were Grand Potentates of the High and Mighty Order of Kangaroos or something.”

“You’re chock full of compliments, aren’t you?” asked Jimmy. “Called us Eskimos a few minutes ago, I think.”

“No, you got that wrong, Harold. What I meant——”

“Cut that out! My name isn’t Harold.”

“Oh, all right. I couldn’t know, could I?” asked the other innocently. “About the Eskimo Twins, though. It’s like this. You see, this is my first visit to your big and wicked city and the fellows out home told me I’d surely be spotted by the confidence men. Well, I’ve been in New York since yesterday afternoon and not a blessed one of them’s been near me. Made me feel downright lonesome, it did so! And when you fellows came along I just naturally thought someone was going to take a little notice of me at last. You didn’t look like con men, but they say you can’t tell by appearances. Sorry I made the mistake, fellows. Dutch Haskell—he’s Sheriff out in Windlass—got to talking with a couple of nice-looking fellows in Chicago once and they invited him to go and see the Eskimo Twins, and Dutch fell for it and it cost him four hundred dollars. That’s why I mentioned the Twins. Wanted you fellows to know I wasn’t as green as I looked, even if I did come from the innocent west.”

“That’s rot,” said Jimmy severely. “You didn’t mistake us for confidence men. You only pretended to.”

Dud was secretly rather amused at Jimmy’s ruffled temper. This breezy stranger was the first person Dud had ever seen who was capable of causing Jimmy to forget his highly developed sense of humor.

“Well,” answered the boy in the opposite seat, smilingly, “I dare say you are a little too young for a life of crime.”

“I guess we’re not much younger than you are,” replied Jimmy, with the suggestion of a sneer.

“No, about the same age, probably. I’m sixteen and seven-eighths. Is there a parlor car on this train?”

“Yes, it’s about two cars forward,” answered Dud.

“Oh, that’s why I didn’t see it. Back home we generally put them on the rear of the train.”

“You can find it easily enough,” said Jimmy meaningly. “Don’t let us keep you.”

The boy smiled amusedly. “Thanks, Harold, I won’t. But I guess——”

Jimmy tried to stand up, but the confusion of legs and a sudden lurch of the car defeated his purpose and his protest lost effect. “Cut that out, Fresh!” he said angrily. “You do it just once more and I’ll punch your head.”

“My, but you fellows in the East are a hair-trigger lot,” said the other, shaking his head sadly. “Maybe you’d better tell me your name so I won’t get in trouble. Mine’s Crail.”

“I don’t care what it is,” growled Jimmy, observing the other darkly. “You’re too flip.”

The boy opposite raised a broad and capable-looking hand in front of him and observed it sorrowfully. “Monty,” he said severely, “didn’t I tell you before you left home you were to behave yourself? Didn’t I?” The fingers crooked affirmatively. “Sure I did! I told you folks where you were going mightn’t understand your playful ways, didn’t I?” Again the fingers agreed, in unison. “Well, then, why don’t you act like a gentleman? Want folks to think you aren’t more’n half broke?” The fingers moved agitatedly from side to side. “You don’t?” The fingers signaled “No!” earnestly. “Then you’d better behave yourself, Monty,” concluded the boy sternly. “No sense in getting in wrong right from the start. Going to be good now?” The fingers nodded vehemently, and the boy took the offending right hand in his left and placed it in his pocket. “We’ll see,” he said, with intense dignity.

By that time Dud was laughing and the corners of Jimmy’s mouth were trembling. The stranger raised a pair of serious brown eyes to Jimmy as he said gravely: “I have to be awfully strict with him.”

Jimmy’s mouth curved and a choking gurgle of laughter broke forth. “Gee, you’re an awful fool, aren’t you?” he chuckled. “Where do you come from?”

The boy brought the offending hand from the pocket and clasped it with its fellow about one knee and leaned comfortably back. “Windlass City, Wyoming, mostly,” he replied. “Sometimes I live in Terre Haute.”

“Where’s Terre Haute?” asked Dud.

“Indiana. Next door to Wyoming,” he answered unblinkingly.

“No, we know better than that,” laughed Dud. “Indiana’s just back of Ohio, and Wyoming’s away out beyond Nebraska and Oklahoma and those places. Do you live on a ranch?”

Crail shook his head. “No, there isn’t much ranching up our way. It’s mostly mining. Snake River district, you know. Windlass City’s about a hundred miles northwest of Lander. Know where the Tetons are? Or the Gros Ventre Range? We’re in there, about ten miles from where Buffalo Fork and Snake River join. Some country, Har—I mean friend.”

“Is it gold mining?” asked Jimmy interestedly.

“No, coal. That’s better than gold. There’s more of it.”

“And you live there, Creel?”

“Crail’s the name. Only in summer. I’ve been there pretty late, though. Winters I go back east to Terre Haute. Last year I was at school, though. Ever hear of Dunning Military Academy at Dunning, Indiana?”

The boys shook their heads.

“It’s not so worse, but they teach you so much soldiering that there isn’t much time for anything else. And you have to live on schedule all day long, and that gets tiresome. I kicked myself out last May. Couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“Kicked yourself out?” echoed Dud questioningly.

“Yes, they wouldn’t do it so I had to. I tried about everything I could think of, but the best they’d do was to put me in the jug and feed me bread and water. I spent so much time in ‘solitary’ that I got so I liked it. It gives you a fine chance to think, and I’m naturally of a very thoughtful disposition. Say, I used to think perfectly wonderful thoughts in the jug, thoughts that made a better boy of me!”

Jimmy grinned. “What did you do to get punished?” he asked with lamentable eagerness.

“What little I could,” sighed Crail. “There wasn’t much a fellow could do. You see, you’re dreadfully confined. The last time I set a bucket of water outside the commandant’s door and rang the fire gong. He came out in a hurry and didn’t see the bucket and put his foot in it. He was awfully peeved about it. I told him he ought to blame his own awkwardness.”

“And they fired you then?”

“Oh, no, they jugged me again. Six days that time. Six days is the limit.”

“What did you do when they kicked you out?” asked Dud.

“They didn’t kick me out. I gave them all the chance in the world, but they wouldn’t part with me. Stubborn lot of hombres. So I held a court martial on myself one afternoon, found myself guilty of gross disobedience and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman and sentenced myself to dishonorable discharge. Then I wrote down the finding of the court, tucked it under the commandant’s door and mushed out of there. They came after me but I doubled back, and swapped clothes with a fellow I met on the road—he didn’t want to swap, but I persuaded him to—and then walked back to Dunning and took a train for home. Military academies are all right for some fellows, but they irk me considerable.”

“Where are you going now?” asked Jimmy.

“School. I told Jasper—Jasper’s my guardian since dad died—that I wanted to go to Mexico and be an army scout or something, and he said an army scout ought to know a heap more than I did and he reckoned I’d better find me a school and go to it. I thought maybe there was a heap in what he said and decided I’d hike east here where learning comes from. So here I am, Ha—fellows. I don’t know what sort of a place this Mount Morris is, but I don’t have to stay if I don’t like it.”

“Mount Morris!” exclaimed Dud and Jimmy in one breath.

“Yes. Know it?”

They nodded.

“Aren’t going there yourselves, are you?” asked Crail.

Jimmy snorted with disgust. “I should say not! We’re Grafton fellows.”

“Are you? What’s Grafton, another school?”

“No, it’s not ‘another’ school,” replied Jimmy with great dignity. “It’s the school, the only school.”

“Think of that! Then this place I’m going to doesn’t stack up very high, eh?”

“Oh, Mount Morris is all right,” replied Jimmy, carelessly condescending, “if you aren’t particular. A lot of fellows do go there.”

“Just like that, eh?” asked Crail, grinning. “Well, aside from that it’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

“We naturally like Grafton a good deal better,” said Dud seriously. “And I guess it really is better. But Mount Morris is good, too. That is so, isn’t it, Jimmy?”

“Oh, it’s good enough, I suppose,” answered Jimmy without enthusiasm. “We generally manage to beat it at about everything from chess to football, and we have a lot more fellows, and better buildings and better faculty, but it’s fair.”

“I savvy. This place you go to and Mount Morris are rivals, eh? Play football together?”

“Sure.”

“And you fellows always win?”

“Well, not always,” granted Jimmy, “but pretty generally. We won last year and——”

“First call for dinner in the dining car!” announced a waiter, passing through the car. “Three cars forward!”

“Me for that!” exclaimed Crail. “You fellows eating?”

“You bet! I’m starved. Hurry up before the seats are all gone.” Jimmy struggled heroically and finally disentangled his legs and stood up. “Get a move on, Dud! Maybe if we go now we can get three seats together.”

CHAPTER III
MONTY CRAIL CHANGES HIS MIND

Three minutes later they were established at a table and had ordered the first two courses, oysters and soup, accompanied by such trifles as celery and olives and mango pickles. They were already consuming bread and butter with gusto, or, at least, Jimmy and Dud were, for they had breakfasted very early. Crail was less enthusiastic about food, and while the others ate he took up the interrupted subject of Mount Morris School.

“The way I came to know about this place was seeing an advertisement in a magazine,” he confided. “It certainly did read well, fellows. I sort of got the idea that it was the leading educational institution of the country. Maybe I was wrong, though.”

“You certainly were,” said Jimmy, speaking rather indistinctly by reason of having his mouth very full. “Mount Morris never led in anything. Why didn’t you pick out a good school while you were picking?”

“I suppose it’s a mistake to believe all the advertisements tell you,” said Crail. “Well, I guess it’ll be good enough for me. I’m not very particular. If they give me enough to eat and treat me kindly and beat a little algebra and history and a few languages through my skull I won’t kick. Know whether I have to take Latin, fellows?”

“Depends on what class you enter, I suppose,” replied Dud, helping himself to Jimmy’s butter, to that youth’s distress and muffled remonstrances. “I guess you’ll have to take one year of it, anyway.”

“Snakes!” said Crail. “That’s sure disappointing. I never did have any luck with Latin. Sort of a half-baked language, I call it.” His sorrow was dispelled by the appearance of the waiter with the oysters, and he beamed approval and beckoned with his fork. “Sam,” he said confidingly, “you bring in six more of these little birds. I haven’t eaten a real nice fresh oyster for a long time.”

“Can’t serve no more, sir,” replied the waiter. “Only one order goes with a dinner.”

“That’s all right, Sam,” said Crail untroubledly. “You don’t have to sing when you bring them in. Just do it unostentatiously.”

“Can’t be did, sir. I’d like to oblige you, but——”

“I know you would,” interrupted Crail earnestly. “I just feel it, Sam. Say no more about it, but get busy. And put them right here when you bring them. Try for the plump ones, Sam. These look sort of—sort of emaciated.”

“You won’t get them,” laughed Dud. “The steward would take them away from him.”

“I’ll get them all right,” was the reply. “Say, fellows, they sure are good! I used to think I’d like to live by the ocean and raise my own oysters. A fellow could, eh?”

“Where do they find oysters?” inquired Jimmy. “In the ocean or rivers or where?”

“Both,” said Dud. “They sow the young oysters and——”

“Sow them!” exclaimed Jimmy. “Oh, sure! Just like wheat or oats, I suppose. Where do you get that stuff?”

“They do, don’t they, Creel?”

“It’s still Crail. Search me, though. I never saw an oyster field. Ah, that’s the good old scout, Sam. Place them right here and remove this devastated affair.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry those wasn’t good, sir.” The waiter uttered the regret loudly, evidently for the benefit of the near-by diners, or, possibly, the eagle-eyed steward.

“Couldn’t eat them, Sam,” replied Crail cheerfully. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“No, sir. Now what can I bring the rest of you gentlemen?”

“Do you always get what you want like that?” inquired Jimmy enviously after the waiter had departed with their order. “If I’d asked for a second helping of oysters they’d have thrown me off the train!”

“The main thing to do,” answered Crail, holding an oyster up on his fork and viewing it approvingly, “is to think you’re going to get what you want and let the other fellow know you think it. That gets him to thinking so too, you see. How’s that soup?”

“Punk,” said Dud.

“I’ll pass it. Say, have you fellows got any names?”

“A few,” replied Jimmy. “His is Baker and mine’s Logan.”

“Thanks. I was afraid I’d call you Harold again and get beat up.” Crail didn’t look vastly alarmed, however, and Jimmy secretly congratulated himself on not having to carry out his threat of punching his head. Crail didn’t quite look like a fellow who would stand around idle during such a process! “I know a fellow named Baker out in Wyoming. He’s foreman on the Meeteetse Ranch. Might be kin to you, eh? He comes from back here somewhere. I don’t know what his first name is, though. He’s generally called ‘Soapy.’ Any of your folks out my way?”

“Not that I know of,” replied Dud. “Why do they call him ‘Soapy’?”

“Search me! You get all kinds of names out there. Up at the mines there’s a choice collection: ‘Pin Head’ Farrel, ‘Snub’ Thompson, ‘Tejon’ Burns, ‘Last Word’ MacTavish: a bunch of them. Sometimes they sort of earn their names and sometimes they just stumble on them, I guess. ‘Pin Head,’ he’s a big, tall chap with a head six sizes too small for him, and MacTavish is a Scotsman who is always saying ‘If it’s my last wor-r-rd on airth!’ But I don’t know why Thompson is called ‘Snub.’ Nor where Burns gets his nickname.”

“What were you called?” asked Dud.

“Just Monty. That’s my middle name, or part of it. The whole of it’s Montfort. That was my mother’s name. She was French.”

“What’s your first name?” Dud inquired.

“A.”

“A?”

“Yes, A Montfort Crail.”

“But—but doesn’t the A stand for anything?”

“Not a thing. Snakes, fellows, if I eat all this truck I’ll pass in my chips! Where’s this Grafter School you tell about at?”

“Grafton, not Grafter, if you please. Grafters is what the Greenies call us.”

“Who are the Greenies?”

“The Mount Morris fellows. Their color is green, you know.”

“Seems like it would be a good place for me,” chuckled Crail, transferring a large slice of roast beef to his plate and starting to work on it. (The others observed with interest as the meal progressed that their new acquaintance dealt with one thing at a time. He consumed his beef to the last portion before he paid any attention to the vegetables and then ate each vegetable by itself.) “Which comes first, Grafton or Greenbank?”

“Grafton, in everything,” laughed Dud. “We get to Needham Junction about half-past two. That’s where we change. You stay on and get to Greenbank about an hour later.”

“I didn’t know it took so long,” said Crail. “Tell me about your school, fellows. What’s it like? What do you do there? How many of you are there?”

“We had two hundred and sixteen last year,” replied Jimmy, “and I guess we’ll have a few more this year. I suppose the faculty would take more if we had dormitory room. We have three big dormitories and two small ones. Dud and I are in Lothrop this year. That’s the newest one, and it’s a peach. Then there’s Manning, where the younger fellows live, and Trow, the oldest one. And there’s Fuller and Morris, but they’re just wooden houses on the Green. They look after about twenty fellows altogether.”

“Don’t any of you live around?” asked Crail. “In the town, I mean?”

“No, the school’s about a half-mile from the town. Of course, we have some fellows who live in Grafton, you know, but not many.”

“I guess I’d rather live outside the school,” said Crail. “You don’t have to toe the mark so much, eh?”

“You won’t do that at Mount Morris,” said Dud, “because you’re nowhere near the village there. The school’s about three miles from Greenbank; and it’s up-hill all the way, too. I know, for I walked it once.”

“Oh, you’ve been there?”

“Yes,” answered Dud grimly. “Last June. Jimmy was with me. We got left at Webster and had to foot it most of the way. We found a handcar after awhile and did pretty well until a train came sneaking up on us and we had to throw the handcar down the bank. That was some journey, Jimmy.”

Jimmy smiled reflectively. “It certainly was! And say, Crail, what do you suppose this idiot did after we got to Greenbank? Well, he went in and pitched three innings and won the game for us!”

“Good leather!” Crail viewed Dud with new interest. “Pitched, eh? Say, that’s something I’d like mighty well to do. I tried baseball at Dunning last spring, but the captain and I had a falling-out and I got fired.”

“What position did you play?” asked Dud.

“First base—when I played. There was another fellow, though, that had me beat. Football is what I’m crazy about, though. What sort of a team do you have at Grafton?”

“Good enough to win from Mount Morris two years out of three,” answered Jimmy. “We’ll have a wonder this year, for we’ve got a lot of good men left from last season. Do you play?”

“I tried it a little last fall,” answered Crail, “but I didn’t make the team. I’d never seen football near-to until then. I guess it takes a pile of learning, that game. I’m sure fond of it, though, and I’m going to try it again this time.”

“You ought to make good at it,” said Jimmy, running an appreciative eye over Crail’s muscular body. “Guard is your place, I guess.”

“They had me trying for tackle, but I’m heavier now. I bought me a book about football and I’ve been studying it. Say, there’s a lot to it, isn’t there? Is it hard to get on the team at your school?”

“N-no, not if you show something,” answered Jimmy. “Of course, there are a good many fellows turn out every fall and you’ve got to work like an Indian to make it, but——”

“Work like an Indian, eh?” laughed Crail. “Say, did you ever see an Indian work? Well, I did, just once. He was plowing a piece of ground about eight times the size of this car and it took him three days to do it. It’s Mrs. Indian who does the work, partner. I guess I’d have to work a sight harder than any Indian to get a place on a football team. But I sure mean to do it, Har—I mean Logan. Sam, I’ll have a dish of ice cream and a man-size cup of coffee. Don’t fetch me one of those thimbles now! I suppose they make you study pretty hard, eh?”

“You bet they do!” said Jimmy feelingly. “And then some!”

“Harder than at this place I’m headed for?”

“N-no, I guess about the same.”

“Maybe it costs more money at Grafton?”

“Tuition, you mean? That’s about the same, too, I suppose. I don’t know how much it is at Mount Morris, do you, Dud?”

Dud shook his head, but Crail supplied the information. “A hundred and fifty,” he said. “Seventy-five down and seventy-five in January. And anywhere from two hundred to five hundred for board and lodging. Education sure costs a heap of money in this part of the world. I know a fellow went through college in Nebraska, and it cost him less than six hundred for the whole three years!”

“Two hundred and fifty is the least you can pay for a room at Grafton,” said Jimmy, “and that means either Trow or one of the houses. But the tuition is the same, except that we pay in three installments.”

“Well, I got two hundred and seventy dollars with me,” said Crail, “and I guess that would see me through for one term, eh? Only thing is, though, will they let me in?”

“Why, you’ve taken an exam, haven’t you?” asked Dud.

Crail shook his head. “No, they said at Mount Morris that I could do that after I got there. Won’t they let me?”

“Oh, yes, only fellows usually enter by certificate after the junior year. Let’s go back. We’ll be at the Junction in a few minutes.”

“What did you mean by entering by a certificate?” asked Crail, when they were once more in their seats in the day coach. “Where do you catch these certificates?”

Dud explained and Crail frowned a moment. Then his face cleared, and he laughed. “Well, I guess they wouldn’t have given me any kind of a certificate at Dunning that would have helped me much, fellows! I’ll just have to go up against the examination. Will it be hard, do you think?”

“I don’t believe so,” Jimmy reassured him. “They’ll probably let you in, and then sock it to you afterwards. I guess they want all the fellows they can get at Mount Morris.”

“Mount Morris, yes, but how about this Grafton place?” said Crail. “What about the examinations there?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I never took them. Neither did Dud. You’d be sure to pass for the lower middle, though, if you failed for the upper. They call them third and second at Mount Morris. We’d better get our bags closed, Dud. There’s the whistle.”

Crail arose and took his kit-bag out of the way, and set it in the aisle while Dud stuffed the magazines back into his suitcase, and Jimmy rounded up his own belongings. The train slowed down gradually, and finally came to a stop, and a trainman sent the stentorian cry of “Needham Junction!” through the car. “Needham! Change here for Grafton!”

“Well, I’m glad to have met you,” said Jimmy, holding out his hand to Crail. “And if you ever come to one of the games— Say, hold on! This isn’t your station! You’ve got another hour yet, Crail.”

But Crail, bag in hand, shook his head. “Fellows, I’m plumb tired of traveling,” he said, “and I sort of think I’ll get off right here.”

“But you’ll have three hours to wait, nearly!” Jimmy expostulated to Crail’s broad back. “There isn’t another train to Greenbank until five!”

Crail smiled over his shoulder as he pushed through the car door.

“Oh, I’ve changed my mind about that place,” he answered. “You see, I don’t know anybody at Mount Morris, and I sort of like you fellows, and I guess one school’s as good as another. Which side do we get off at?”

CHAPTER IV
“OUT FOR GRAFTON!”

“Do you really mean that you’re coming to Grafton?” demanded Dud when they had reached the station platform.

“If they’ll have me,” replied Crail, looking about him curiously. “What do we do now? Take another train?”

“Yes, that one there. But—but——”

“Shut up, Dud,” said Jimmy. “If he wants to, what’s the difference? He isn’t bound to go to Mount Morris if he doesn’t want to, is he? He isn’t entered there, you idiot. Come on, Crail. Talk about your brands snatched from the burning! Say, Dud, maybe they’ll give us a commission on him! Hello, Pete! I didn’t see you on the train. Who’s with you? All by your lonesome? You know Dud Baker, don’t you? And this is Mr. Crail. Crail, shake hands with Mr. Gowen. Crail has just been rescued from a horrible fate, Pete.”

Gowen, a big, good-natured chap, who played guard on the football team, smiled. “What was that, Jimmy?” he asked, as they climbed into the single coach of the branch line and found seats.

“Why, he was on his way to Mount Morris, and we spoke so eloquently of Grafton that he saw the error of his way, and decided to turn back into the path of righteousness.”

“I suppose Jimmy’s stringing me, Crail,” said Pete Gowen, “but I’m glad you’re coming our way. Football man?”

“Not much. I’m going to have a try, though. Say, I’d ought to get me a ticket, eh?”

“Never mind it. Pay the conductor,” said Dud. “It’s really a fact, Gowen. Crail was on his way to Greenbank and changed his mind, and decided to come with us.”

“It was our personal charm that did the business,” said Jimmy. “What do you think of him for a lineman, Pete?”

“If Dave Bonner sees him,” laughed Pete, “he will be eating dirt no later than tomorrow P. M.”

“Eating dirt, eh? Sounds fine, but what does it mean?” asked Crail.

“Tackling the dummy,” explained Pete. “We have very tasty loam in our pits. You’re sure to like it.”

“I’m willing. Only thing is, you fellows, I may get the gate when I run up against the examination. Think they’ll let me by, eh?” He appealed a bit anxiously to Pete, and Pete smiled.

“If Bonner and Bert Winslow were on the committee you wouldn’t have much trouble,” he replied, “but I don’t know how hard those entrance exams are. Hope you pass, though, Crail. We need a few fellows of about your build this fall. How did you happen to change your mind about Mount Morris?”

A Montfort Crail smiled. “Well, I’d made up my mind to go somewhere. You see, I’ve never had much schooling. I’m a good deal of a dunce, I suspect. I saw this Mount Morris Academy advertised in a magazine I picked up one day, and wrote to them and got a sort of a circular. That was last month. So I asked them could I get in if I came, and they said I could if I ‘met the requirements.’ I didn’t know just what those were, but I thought I’d take a chance. Then I ran across Harold and his friend——”

“Who?” asked Pete.

“I mean Logan and Baker here,” corrected Monty with an apologetic grin at Jimmy. “They told me about this place, and I thought ‘What’s the good of going to Mount Morris when Grafton’s an hour nearer?’ You see, I’ve had two days on the cars, and I’m sort of tired of them.”

“That’s one reason for coming,” laughed Pete. Then he added, more seriously, “I’d advise you to be prepared for a disappointment, Crail. I’ve an idea they’re pretty well filled up, and you may find that they can’t take you. In that case you could go on to Mount Morris, though.”

“Sure.” Monty nodded carelessly. “I guess there are plenty of schools in this part of the country, eh?”

“What ought he to do?” asked Jimmy. “Go to Pounder, and tell him he wants to enter, or—or what?”

“If it was me,” replied Pete, “I’d see Charley and tell him just what had happened. I have an idea Charley would think it was a kind of a joke on Mount Morris, and so he might stretch a point, and make it all right for your friend. Pounder might just say that they were filled up and all that, you know.”

“Think Charley would see him?” asked Jimmy doubtfully.

“Why not? Go to his house if he isn’t at the office. If there’s anything I can do, Crail, look me up. I’m in Trow; Number 16. Jimmy’ll show you.”

Monty thanked him, and the talk wandered to other subjects; such as who was coming back, and who wasn’t, the rumored changes in the faculty, the prospects for the football team, and what progress had been made by the squad that, following a custom of several years’ duration, had been practising at Grafton for the last week. Pete explained his absence from the preliminary session. He had spent the summer in the Southwest with a surveying party, and had only finished his work five days before. Evidently, the hardships, some of which he jokingly alluded to, had agreed with him, for the big fellow looked as hard as nails, and wore the complexion of a Comanche Indian. Monty Crail listened politely, and in silence for the most part, dividing his attention between his companions and the landscape moving leisurely past the window. Needham Junction is only four miles from Grafton, but the train doesn’t hurry, and somehow usually manages to consume the better part of twenty minutes on the journey, making five stops at cross-roads stations, and lingering socially at each. There were few other Grafton students amongst the passengers sprinkled through the car, for the train that Jimmy and Dud had selected was not a favorite with the fellows. The real influx would occur later in the afternoon when the two expresses came in. Dud and Jimmy had chosen to arrive early for the reason that they were to have a new room this fall, and there would be some work to be accomplished before they would be fairly settled.

Monty viewed the country with favor. It was all very different from both Indiana and Wyoming. There was a softness and a peacefulness that were attractive, and which, in spite of novelty, seemed to the boy very homelike. Only once before had he been in the east, and that had been when he was nine years of age, and his father had taken him on a hurried trip to Washington and New York. Monty couldn’t remember many of the details of that visit nor much of the places he had seen. As he recalled it now, much of the time had been spent by him awaiting his father in hotel rooms. From the train window his gaze fell on restful, still, green meadows, outlined by stone walls, on patches of woodland, on squatty white farmhouses that seemed rather to have grown than been built, on distant hills, hazy blue in the afternoon light, on fields of corn and blue-green cabbages, and potatoes and golden pumpkins.

Everything was very different, even the trees and the fences, and the faces he glimpsed at the little stations, but there was no feeling of loneliness in Monty. He was used to strange scenes, used to being by himself and looking after himself. Even before his father had died—he remembered nothing at all of his mother—he had been left a good deal to his own devices, and since then he had fended entirely for himself, for Mr. Holman, his guardian, attempted to exercise but slight control over the boy. Monty was practically incapable of ever being homesick, for the simple reason that for five years he had had no real home, spending his summers as it pleased him, usually at Windlass City, sometimes on a ranch, and his winters in or around Terre Haute. What had bothered him most the winter before, at Dunning Academy, had been the “staying put,” as he called it. Accustomed to moving about as, and when he pleased, being tied to a few acres had proved a new and unpleasant experience. Just now he was wondering whether he could accustom himself to similar conditions this winter. He meant to try hard, for here he was sixteen years old and with less “book-learning” than most fellows two years younger, and he realized that if he was to get an education he must buckle down to it, and restrain those restless feet of his. He didn’t want to grow up an ignoramus. And then, too, Dunning had given him a taste for the companionship of persons of his own age, something he had enjoyed but little. Until he had gone to the military school his friends and acquaintances had been, with few exceptions, men; Joe Coolidge, the mine superintendent; “Snub” Thompson, “Tejon” Burns, Garry Waters, who ranched on Little Horse Creek, “Soapy” Baker, of the Meeteetse outfit, and a few more commonplace and less picturesque gentlemen in Terre Haute. Monty had begun to feel the need of boy friends and boy interests, and perhaps it was as much that need as a desire for knowledge that had led him to fall in so readily with his guardian’s suggestion. So far as making his way in the world was concerned, Monty might have gone along with no more knowledge of Ancient and Modern Languages, higher mathematics, and the rest of the curriculum, than he possessed, for Mr. Crail had left a good-sized fortune in trust for the boy, and the Gros Ventre Coal Company, under present management, was doing better than ever, and that Monty would ever have to work for a living if he didn’t want to was inconceivable.

When he had said that he had decided to go to Grafton instead of Mount Morris, because it was nearer he had spoken only part of the truth. The chief reason had been that he had found in Jimmy and Dud a hint of the companionship he craved. An uneventful journey east and a night spent alone in a New York hotel had left him ready to make friends with almost anyone of his kind on slight provocation. He was always able to amuse himself very satisfactorily for awhile, as witness his efforts with the news vendor, the information bureau man and the conductor, but that sort of fooling palled eventually, and having made the acquaintance of Jimmy and Dud he felt it the part of wisdom to continue it. He might, he told himself, speaking from experience gained at Dunning, remain at Mount Morris a month before he would get on such friendly footing with anyone. And already he had increased his circle of acquaintances by one more, he thought, glancing appreciatively at Pete Gowen’s homely and kindly face, and that was doing pretty well. He had come east prepared for hard sledding in the matter of making friends, for he had heard all his life of the Easterner’s aloofness, but here, with scarcely an effort, he was already in possession of three—well, if not friends, at least friendly acquaintances! If, he said to himself as the engine announced the end of its leisurely journey by a shrill whistle, the rest of the Grafton fellows were as human and likeable as the three he had so far encountered he was going to like the place fine!

A minute or two later they were out on the platform, bags in hand. And a minute later still they were, all four, together with nine other lads, settled in the queer vehicle that Jimmy called a “barge.” The barge was long and open all around, and had seats running lengthwise, seats upholstered in faded crimson plush. There was a crosswise seat in front for the aged driver, and the vehicle was drawn by a pair of likely-looking gray horses. Although the two long seats were designed to accommodate some two dozen passengers, thirteen boys and thirteen bags, with a sprinkling of golf-bags, tennis rackets, cameras and overcoats, used about all the space. The road did not enter the town of Grafton, but skirted it, and almost before Monty had begun to entertain any curiosity as to the school itself the barge swung around a corner into River Street, and the buildings and the campus were before him.

Dud, sitting beside him with his suitcase on his knees that Monty might have room for his kit-bag on the floor, pointed out the buildings. “That’s Lothrop, the one ahead there, nearest the street. Jimmy and I room there this year. It’s the best of the lot. Trow’s behind it. The next is School Hall, and Manning’s the last in the row. The gymnasium is back of Manning, but you can’t see it yet. The frame house at the other side of the campus, behind the trees, is Doctor Duncan’s. He’s the principal, you know.”

Monty listened and looked with interest. As the barge rolled down the freshly sprinkled macadamized street, through alternating patches of sunlight and shadow, he looked under the branches of the bordering maples and saw a wide expanse of turf across which marched a row of brick buildings, the newer ones graced with limestone trimming, the older one, School Hall this, saved from monotony only by the ivy that clothed its lower story. Gravel paths, shaded by tall elm trees, led across the turf, and a wide walk of red brick ran from one side of the campus to the other in front of the buildings. A fence of roughly squared granite posts connected by timbers enclosed the grounds. Further away, in the direction of the river whose existence Dud dwelt on, a second smoothly paved street proceeded at right angles with the one they were on, and beyond that was a second and narrower stretch of turf—“the Green,” Dud called it—with two comfortable, immaculately white dwellings nestling on the nearer corner of it. “Morris and Fuller Houses,” said Dud, waving a hand toward them. “They’re dormitories, too. Small ones. Some fellows like them, but I never thought I should. The Field’s on the other side. You can see the grandstand if you look quick.”

But Monty failed, for just then the barge turned in at the carriage gate, and the trees closed in on his view.

“Who’s for Lothrop?” asked the driver over his shoulder as he pulled up at the corner of the newest dormitory.

“We are,” announced Jimmy rather importantly, as it seemed to Monty. “Come on, Crail. We’ll leave the bags, and then go over to School.” Pete Gowen and two other boys followed them out, and then the barge rolled on to repeat the process at Trow, and, finally, Manning.

Monty gave a sigh of satisfaction as he stood on the edge of the turf and felt the grateful coolness of the shadow cast by the big dormitory. They had been cutting the grass that day, and the languorous warmth of the air was scented with the wonderful fragrance of it. In a near-by tree a locust rasped shrilly, and Monty gazed curiously in its direction. He would have asked what it was, but Jimmy was leading the way toward the nearer entrance, and so Monty took up his bag again and followed.

It was a wonderful building that, Monty thought. He glimpsed a wide carpeted hallway from which opened comfortably, even luxuriously furnished apartments, while, at the far end of the corridor, a bewilderingly long way off, wide-open doors afforded a view of white-draped tables with peaked napkins like tiny Indian teepees dotting them and the shimmer of polished silverware.

“Snakes,” murmured Monty, “this isn’t much like Dunning!”

But the others didn’t hear him, for they were chattering busily as they climbed the slate stairway to the floor above. A corridor slightly narrower than the one below ran the length of the building, and on either side numbered doors, some open, some closed, marched away.

“Here it is,” announced Jimmy, in the lead, and pushed open one of the portals. “Say, Dud, this is perfectly corking! And we’ve got a fireplace! And look at the view, will you? Maybe this doesn’t beat Trow, what?”

CHAPTER V
A ROOM AND A ROOMMATE

Monty Crail sat in a spindle-backed wooden armchair with his feet on the sill of the low window, and his hands clasped behind his head, and dreamily watched a solitary star—it happened to be Venus, but Monty wasn’t aware of the fact—brighten momentarily in the western sky. It hung just midway between the topmost branches of the two elms across the street, and it required little imagination to almost detect the wire that held it there! Supper was over, and the other inhabitants of Morris House, saving Mrs. Fair and the maids, had either wandered off to other scenes or were loitering outside on the steps. Monty could hear the voices from around the corner of the house. Monty’s room was numbered—or, rather, lettered—“F,” and was on the second floor. There were three windows in it, one looking down on a small patch of lawn, and then across River Street, and, finally, in the general direction of Grafton Village, and two others, side by side, staring rather blankly at this season against the leafy screen of a big horse chestnut tree. Later, when the leaves were gone, those windows afforded a fine view of Lothrop Field and the tennis courts, and the diamond and the gridiron and running track, and, further away, glimpses of the Needham River that wound its quiet way past the southern confines of the school property. The twin casements were dormered, and the small alcove so formed was occupied on one side by a washstand, and on the other, a long shelf, which, with the aid of bright-hued cretonne curtains, formed a supplementary wardrobe designed to eke out the meager accommodations offered by a tiny closet.

The room, though small, was attractive. There were two cot beds, one on each side of the chamber, a brown oak study table in the center, two chiffoniers to match, the aforementioned washstand, two arm chairs of the Windsor pattern, a like number of straight-backed chairs, and a small stand. The center of the floor was spread with a brown grass rug and smaller ones lay in front of the door, and in the alcove. And there were, of course, lesser furnishings, such as a green-shaded electric drop-light on the table, a waste-paper basket with the appearance of having been used at some time as a football, a scarlet-and-gray cushion, which, because there was neither window-seat nor couch, led a restless life. Four pictures of no importance, and a large Grafton banner adorned the walls, and on one chiffonier were several photographs, framed and unframed. The walls were covered with a paper of alternating white and buff stripes which gave a sunshiny effect to the room. On the whole, Monty’s new home was cheerful and comfortable, and, while he would have preferred a study and bedroom in one of the campus dormitories, he was not at all dissatisfied.

He had been at Grafton twenty-eight hours, and, to be exact, fourteen minutes, reckoning from the time he had stepped from the barge at the corner of Lothrop, and in that time much of a not exciting nature had happened. He was reviewing that period now, his gaze fixed intently on the star. He had been conducted by Jimmy Logan in the august presence of Doctor Duncan, the principal, and had told his story. The Doctor—the fellows called him “Charley,” but Monty had not achieved that familiarity yet—had been visibly interested and amused. In the end he had picked up the telephone and consulted the school secretary with the result that Monty, bag in hand, had presently followed Jimmy across the campus to Morris House.

There Jimmy had left him, after extracting a promise to return later to 14 Lothrop, and Monty had been conducted upstairs by a stout and short-breathed lady whom the boys called “Mother Morris,” but whose real name was Mrs. Fair. Mrs. Fair was the matron, and what the fellows termed “a good sort.” Left to himself, Monty had wandered about the room, hands in pockets, looked out the windows, and finally unpacked his bag. After that there had seemed nothing to do save look up Jimmy and Dud, and so he had returned to Lothrop. By that time the campus and the dormitories presented a quite different appearance, for another train had come in, and boys of all sorts were in evidence on walks and in doorways, and on the stairs and in the corridors. One fell over a bag at every turn. Jimmy and Dud were hanging pictures and arranging their belongings, their trunks having arrived, and Monty had helped to the best of his ability. Now and then a boy had wandered in to say “Hello,” pour out a rapid fire of questions and answers, shake hands with Monty and hurry out again. And finally supper time had come, and Monty had gone back to Morris House and partaken of cold lamb and chicken salad and graham muffins and pear preserve and three glasses of milk at a long table, and in the presence of eleven other youths of assorted ages, sizes and looks. Monty had been introduced to them all, but acquaintanceship had for the time ended there. After supper he had wandered off for a walk along the twilight roads, and across the campus and past the buildings and had returned to Morris tired enough to go to bed and sleep.

He had found Room F in possession of a tall, loose-jointed youth, with tow-colored hair plastered greasily to his head, and a pair of pale, near-sighted eyes under colorless lashes. This was Alvin Standart, the rightful owner of one-half of Room F. Monty had met him at supper, but had not thought of him as a roommate. Standart seemed anything but delighted with the idea of sharing the apartment with the newcomer, and Monty, for his part, was not sensible of any particularly joyous emotions. Standart hadn’t impressed him favorably. He didn’t yet, after a day’s acquaintance. Standart, in the first place, didn’t look clean. Monty seriously doubted that he was. And he had unpleasant manners. Standart was the one fly in Monty’s ointment this evening. Everything else had turned out beautifully. The examination, conducted by Mr. Rumford, the assistant principal, had been far less severe than Monty had feared. He and three other rather anxious looking youths had assembled in a classroom in School Hall that morning after breakfast, and had been questioned as to their previous studies. Two simple problems in algebra, a sight translation of a dozen lines of Ovid, a test in German grammar, and the ordeal was over. Two of the applicants were passed into the Junior Class, and two into the Lower Middle, Monty being one of the latter. He had not impressed the instructor very deeply, he concluded, for “Jimmy” Rumford had viewed him for several long moments with an expression plainly dubious.

“Passing this test,” said the Assistant Principal, in conclusion, “doesn’t mean very much, young gentlemen. It means only that the school is giving you an opportunity. Whether you remain with us or flit away to other fields depends entirely on you. We don’t encourage loafers here. If you’ll all remember that it may save you future sorrow and regrets. Hand these slips to Mr. Pounder, the secretary, please, and he will assign you to your classes. If there is anything you want to know, you will find me here between eight and nine in the morning, and from five to six in the afternoon. You, er—Crail, ought to be in the Upper Middle Class, sir, but I don’t see my way to placing you there. If you’ll take my advice you will do your best to make the jump at the beginning of the next term. I think you can do it. That is all. Good morning, young gentlemen. Success to you.”

Recitations that day had been short, the time in each case having been largely consumed in arranging for future work. Monty found that his schedule included Latin, Mathematics, English, German (he had selected it instead of the alternative Greek) and Physical Training. Dud had, however, informed him that Physical Training was only for those who did not go in for a regular sport. The studies footed up to twenty hours a week, and Monty wondered whether he would survive the first week! That afternoon he had joined Dud and Jimmy and a new acquaintance named Brooks, and with them watched football practice. The fact that his playing togs were in his trunk, and that his trunk had scarcely yet started from New York prevented him from joining the candidates that afternoon. He had purposely refrained from checking his baggage to Greenbank yesterday, preferring to make certain first that he was to remain there, and while he had delivered the check to the agent here in Grafton at noon with reiterated requests to have the trunk forwarded as soon as possible, it was not likely that he would receive it before the next afternoon.

Football practice at Grafton was quite different from the same thing at Dunning Military Academy, he decided. At Dunning the squad seldom exceeded thirty candidates, while here the field was literally thronged with ambitious youths. At Dunning only the “hefty” ones were encouraged, but at Grafton it seemed that any size or shape of a boy could have a try-out. Only the juniors were barred, Jimmy explained. Ed Brooks—Brooks was a catcher on the baseball nine, Monty learned later—estimated the number of candidates in sight as close on eighty, which was very nearly a third of the total enrollment.

“There won’t be so many next week, though,” he added, pessimistically. “They fade away fast! Say, Bonner’s got a peach of a tan, hasn’t he?”

Bonner, Monty gathered, was the coach, a middle-sized man of just under thirty, alert and quick, with a peremptory voice and a settled scowl. Or, at least, Monty concluded that the scowl was settled until “Dinny” Crowley, the assistant athletic director, had tossed a word to him in passing, and the coach’s face had lighted with a smile that chased the scowl away, and made Monty smile in sympathy. Practice was not very interesting that afternoon. Only the fact that nothing more exciting offered itself kept the spectators there until the squads were sent back to the field house. After that, Jimmy had suggested walking to the river, and they had done so, and Monty had had his first sight of a canoe in actual use, and had mentally registered a vow to become the proud possessor of one at the earliest possible opportunity, and spend all his spare time paddling up and down the little stream.

Still later, he had joined the Morris House fellows on the steps before the supper time, and, without taking much part in the talk, had in a way established himself as one of the crowd. Of the eleven youths, who, with Monty, made up the roster at Morris, seven were what Monty unflatteringly termed “Indians.” Monty would have had some difficulty in explaining just what he meant by the term, but it satisfied him. Perhaps when we remember that in the neighborhood of Windlass City, Wyoming, the noble Red Man is not held in high regard we may form a fair estimate of the seven. Further light is shed by the fact that Monty secretly dubbed Alvin Standart a “Digger.” I believe that the Digger Indian is considered especially low caste and subsists principally on such luxuries as wild roots!

Monty’s verdict regarding the seven was hasty, and later he revised it with regard to several of them. It is a mistake to judge others on the evidence of a day’s acquaintance, and so Monty found it.

After supper he had climbed to the room, Standart being out, and had seated himself in the chair, and propped his feet comfortably, if inelegantly, on the sill to think things over. He decided that he was going to like Grafton School; that, on the whole, he was glad he had substituted it for Mount Morris; that he would have to do some hard studying if he was to secure that promotion in January; that he would certainly “have a stab at it”; that Alvin Standart was a most undesirable roommate, but would have to be made the best of; and that if he got a chance to show this eastern bunch how to play tackle or guard, why, they’d learn something!

The evening sky grew a deeper blue. Somewhere afar off in the direction of the town a light glowed wanly. The air that entered the open window still held the heat of the sun, and, while fresher than before supper, gave no promise of a cool night. Sitting indoors until bedtime did not appeal to Monty, but neither did joining the crowd outside on the steps. He would have looked up Dud and Jimmy again, but didn’t want them to think that he meant to fasten himself on them for the rest of the school year. He supposed that it would be all right to pay a visit to Gowen, but Gowen’s invitation might have been more polite than sincere, and Monty still clung to his belief that easterners were stand-offish and resentful of anything that looked like “butting-in.” But not going over to Lothrop was not, after all, a great deprivation, for, while Monty liked Dud and Jimmy, and was grateful to them for their friendship, they did not fill the want that he felt. Dud and Jimmy had each other, and although they always made him feel that he was welcome, still he realized that he was by no means essential to their happiness, and that what liking they had for him was, so far at least, due to the fact that he was a bit different from the run of the fellows they knew, and that he amused them. What Monty really wanted was a chum of his own, someone he could talk to about the little, intimate things of life, someone who would like him because he was just Monty Crail, and not merely because he was “western” and amusing. It would, he thought; a trifle wistfully, be a wonderful thing to have a real chum. Well, that sort of thing just happened, he supposed. You didn’t go out and find a fellow whose looks you approved of and link arms with him and say, “Hello, hombre, let’s you and I be friends!” Monty grinned at the mental picture of what would happen if he followed such a course.

“Guess,” he muttered, as he dropped his heels from the sill, and heaved himself from the chair, “the poor fellow would drop dead of heart disease!”

He clapped his straw hat to his head—Monty’s hat had no regular position, but stayed wherever it happened to land, even if it happened to be over one ear—“cinched” up his belt another hole, and went downstairs. The group on the steps was reduced to a quartette now, and although no one said anything to the new boy each looked at him as invitingly as dignity permitted. But Monty failed to read invitation in their glances, and so passed on down the steps and turned into the well-worn path that led back between Morris and Fuller across the Green to Front Street and the athletic field. Set in the right-hand pillar of the ornamental gateway was a bronze tablet on which, enclosed by a border of laurel leaves, was the inscription: “Lothrop Field. In Memory of Charles Parkinson Lothrop, Class of 1911.” Monty wondered what deed Charles Parkinson Lothrop had performed to be so honored. And then the real portent of the phrase, “In Memory of” came to him, and his face sobered and the brick and stone pillars and the wrought-iron gates took on a new dignity in his eyes. And standing on the steps that led down to the broad path of the field, looking over the acres of level turf dotted with white figures where the tennis players were wresting a last hour of pleasure from the growing twilight, he thought that the boy could scarcely have had a finer memorial than this.

He paused outside one of the back nets and watched two youths send the balls back and forth with what seemed to him miraculous ease and certainty. The players were in white flannel trousers and white, short-sleeved shirts open at the necks. They wore no caps, and their hair was damp with perspiration. Monty had never played tennis, had scarcely ever watched it played, and the way in which the contenders darted on silent, rubber-shod feet here and there about the court, always anticipating the ball correctly, struck him as surprising. He stood there for quite a while, nibbling a blade of grass, and watched. Other courts held two, three or four players, and through the deepening dusk came the soft pat of ball against racket, the swish of hurrying feet, the occasional voices of the players, mellowed, as it seemed, by the warm twilight. The boys before him played swiftly and silently. They seldom spoke. When they did it was only a few brisk words, as “Hard luck, Hal!” when the effort of one went for naught, or “I’m sorry!” when a ball rolled into an adjacent court and had to be chased. There was no announcing of the score between aces. A wave of a racket seemed to answer for speech in most cases. Probably, thought Monty, they were chums and knew each other so well they didn’t have to speak! He envied them as he turned away at last, and went on along the path between the courts and the curve of the running track. Against the purpling sky the football goals stood out like giant H’s.

The gravel path ended where a backwater of the river, known as the Cove, stretched into the field. It gave forth the stagnant, but not unpleasant, odor of rotting vegetation, and over its quiet surface the mosquitos hovered in swarms, and a dissipated dragon-fly who should have been at home long since darted and swooped above the still reflections. Two skiffs lay half pulled out on the muddy bank, and one held a pair of weather-stained, broken-bladed oars. Monty would have preferred a canoe, and there were plenty of them further down the Cove, as he knew, but canoes were liable to have jealous owners, whereas he couldn’t imagine anyone caring a whit whether he helped himself to one of the leaky skiffs. So he shoved one off, put his feet out of the way of the water that swished about in the bottom, and dropped the oars into the locks. Monty was not a skilled rower, and he ran into the mud twice before he succeeded in getting the craft into the wider part of the Cove. On his left a grove of trees came to the water’s edge, and a few yards of mingled sand and pebbles there had been ironically named The Beach. This was the bathing spot approved of by the faculty, but few except timid juniors used it. The others preferred the boathouse float further up the river. Under the trees, back of the beach, a dozen or more upturned canoes rested, and as Monty went past another was being put in place by returned mariners. Monty could see the boys’ forms only dimly in the gloom of the grove, but their voices and laughter came to him distinctly.

“Lift your end, Hobo! Ata boy! Where’s the other paddle? Oh, all right. I see it.”

“I say, do you know my arm’s lame, Nick? You wouldn’t think a chap would get out of practice, like that, eh?”

“Shows the enervating effect of the soft and flabby life you’ve led this summer. Everyone knows that your English climate is punk, anyway. Come on, and—Geewhilikins! I walked square into a tree!”

“’Ware timber!”

The voices diminished, and Monty’s skiff floated out into the river. The light was still good here. He turned the boat’s nose upstream and dug at his dilapidated oars. The left one had lost nearly half its blade, and so he had to favor it to keep from going aground. There was a faint breeze stirring now, just enough to ruffle the damp hair on his forehead and defeat the bloodthirstiness of the mosquitos. Behind him the wake of the skiff dissolved in coppery ripples. At his right the trees and bushes cast purple-black shadows on the surface and river and bank merged confusingly. The stream was evidently deserted, and he was glad of that, for his rowing was naturally erratic, and the oar with the broken blade was making it more so. Once he thought he heard a voice, but when he turned his head and looked upstream no one was to be seen, and he concluded that he had been mistaken. Possibly it had been a bird. A hoot-owl was crying in the distance, and somewhere, nearer at hand, a whip-poor-will was calling sadly and monotonously. Monty began to be conscious of a vague feeling of unhappiness, of loneliness. The quiet, shadowy river was strange, and seemed suddenly unfriendly. He wished he could look up and see the purple-gray peak of Mt. Leidy. He felt strangely homesick just then for his mountains. And so it was something of a relief as well as a surprise when, out of the silence and darkness, a warning cry arose, and was followed by the thump of colliding craft.

CHAPTER VI
BATTLE ROYAL

“Idiot!”

The voice, sharp, querulous, came from the gloom on the heels of the collision, and Monty half unseated by the shock, struggled around and peered surprisedly at the speaker. The skiff had wandered almost to the bank, and, since he was himself now in the darkness of the bordering trees, Monty had slight difficulty in making out the shadowy form of a canoe drawn close to the shore, and its lone occupant. The face of the latter was indistinct, only a grayish oval, but Monty was instantly convinced that he didn’t like it. In fact, he heartily disliked everything about the unknown canoeist, especially his voice.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demanded the other in tones that seemed to Monty deliberately insulting, and that, very naturally, roused his anger.

“Why don’t you give warning, Harold?” he retorted promptly. “Think I’m an owl?”

“You row like one,” sneered the other boy. “Blundering all over the river like that! Don’t you suppose there are other fellows around here besides you, you silly fool?”

The skiff had floated slowly away, scraping in the twilight against the overhanging branches, but now Monty pulled it back until it was once more alongside the canoe, and he could grasp the gunwale of the latter. “Say, partner, I can’t see your face,” he replied, in the drawl that came naturally to him when he was angry, “and so I don’t know whether you smiled when you said that.”

“What if I didn’t?”

“Nothing, except that I’ll reach over and grab you, Harold.”

“Try it, won’t you?” The voice sounded really eager.

“Sure!” answered Monty. As he got to his feet in the swaying skiff he thought that perhaps this cocky youth might not be such a bad sort after all. In Monty’s present mood a scrap seemed the most desirable thing in life, and that the other fellow was apparently of his way of thinking amounted almost to a bond of sympathy. But Monty didn’t take as much time for these reflections as I have taken to record them, for he was essentially prompt in his undertakings. So, too, was the boy in the canoe, for he also was on his feet now, and when Monty made a sudden lunge for him his fist shot out, and only Monty’s quick duck of the head made the blow harmless. The next moment, gripping each other across the sides of the craft, they were struggling mightily.

“Over you go, Monkey Face!” grunted Monty.

“I reckon—you’ll go—too!” panted the other.

Wrestling under such conditions is a precarious undertaking, and presents novel difficulties. As the boys leaned together their crafts in the most natural way in the world slowly parted until presently Monty was on his knees on the gunwale, and his adversary, no longer able to stand up, became a dead weight in his arms.

“Apologize?” demanded Monty grimly as the water poured in about his knees.

“No, you—you dirty Yank!”

“Yank, eh! I’ll Yank you, you—” But Monty’s powers of invention were handicapped, and he gave his thought and strength to tearing loose the grip of his opponent. It dawned on him then that there could be just one climax to the struggle, and he found time to grin before, the skiff tiring of the unusual task required of it, he slid gently forward into the river!

Fortunately, perhaps, there was a depth of only some three feet just there. Monty, still clasping his adversary, and still clasped, went sputtering and gurgling to the bottom, or, at least, as near the bottom as the body of the other, which happened to be underneath, would permit. The taste of the water suggested that they had disturbed the muddy sediment, and Monty was all for getting back to air again. But no such idea seemed to possess the other, for the death-like grip still held, and for a fraction of a second Monty had a horrid vision of drowning! Then, however, he found his knees, and, at last, his feet, and, with the other boy still clinging to him, managed to stand up.

“Had—had enough?” he gasped chokingly.

There was no verbal reply, but the adversary’s actions plainly intimated that he hadn’t, for, once out of the water, he began beating a clenched fist into the back of Monty’s head, the only point he could reach. Monty pushed his head as far out of the way of punishment as possible, and, floundering about in the water, slowly worked his right hand up under the boy’s chin. No one can stand the agony of having the head pushed back for long, and gradually the boy’s grasp loosened until, with a sudden effort, Monty wrested himself free, at the same instant straightening his right arm. His opponent staggered back, tried to recover, failed and disappeared.

Monty awaited his reappearance, smiling grimly. The humor of the thing struck him then, and the smile became a laugh, and the laugh broke out just as the other boy came out of the water again. With a rush he returned to the fray, his hands aiming blows at Monty’s face, which the latter had difficulty in avoiding, and which caused him to give back toward the bank. He was watching for an opportunity to close in, but the other afforded him none. A staggering left to Monty’s cheek sent him reeling on the rotting debris under foot, and he brought up against the branches of an alder, and then, losing foothold, sat down on the bank.

“Get up!” sputtered the other. “I’m just started!”

Monty was dimly conscious of a small clearing a few yards to the left, and concluded that he had had quite enough of aquatic battling. Hurling himself on the other, receiving a blow on the face that jarred but didn’t stop him, he got his arms around his adversary’s body, heaved, and staggered with his struggling, infuriated burden through the shallow water, and reached the bank. But to climb out was beyond him, and in the effort he fell and they rolled apart. Each got to his feet quickly, panting, ready. There was a little light in the small clearing, enough for each to see for the first time the features of the other, and, while they paused, as though by mutual consent to recover breath, they made use of the opportunity.

Monty saw a tall, lithe, well-built boy of possibly seventeen, with very dark hair—probably black, although he couldn’t be certain of that—big dark eyes in an oval face, a determined-looking mouth, a nose that was a trifle aquiline, and a chin that was at once pointed and strong. Monty’s first verdict was: “Great Snakes, he’s a good-looking hombre!” Then he added: “A regular dude, though!” The boy’s attire was, in fact, almost too picturesque, although his immersion had left it somewhat bedraggled. His dark head was bare—perhaps he had worn a hat and lost it, as Monty had—a negligee shirt of some pale tint that in the present uncertain light might have been blue or pink or lavender clung to his body beneath a well-cut jacket of some dark-gray material, his neck was encircled by a soft collar which now lay like a twisted rag, a flowing tie hung wet and stringy from beneath it, there was a belt at the waist and a metal buckle gleamed in the half-light, and his costume was completed by dripping white flannel trousers and discolored white buckskin shoes. Before the encounter, reflected Monty, he must have been a thing of beauty!

But, after all, there wasn’t much time for studying the enemy, for the enemy was clearly impatient for a renewal of hostilities. Monty was forced to acknowledge, albeit a bit grudgingly, that the black-haired chap had plenty of spunk. The recess lasted less than a minute, and then they drew together again, Monty stepping cautiously with guard down, and the other dancing lightly on nimble feet, hands up and moving impatiently, dark eyes snapping, mouth close shut, and with a little droop at one corner.

The space they had found was barely twelve feet in length along the river bank, and less than half that in depth, and the ground was hummocky. Small bushes, protruding roots and withered brakes made uncertain footing, and the light was going fast. It was very quiet, save for the gurgle of water where the river washed past a pile of driftwood, and for the deep breathing of the two boys and the brush of their feet through the low bushes and yellowing fronds. Then the black-haired youth rushed and Monty met the onslaught.

As a boxer, Monty was not clever, and while he managed to escape punishment for a moment or two, and to even land once against the enemy’s neck, he was presently giving back. His opponent fought like fury, but with a science that was something of a revelation to Monty. He had a most disturbing way of leaving his right side unguarded, and then, when Monty tried to reach his head, ducking aside and at the same instant swinging up with his right with disastrous effect to Monty’s left ear! And every time Monty tried to beat down his guard, and get his hands on him he was brought up all-standing. It was after his opponent had landed a fourth or fifth blow to the head that Monty’s temper gave way, and, utterly regardless of consequences then, he hurled himself on the other under a rain of blows, and wrapped his arms around his body. Then his right leg went back, his grasp fell to the other’s waist, and he bore backward. A shower of short-arm blows was ringing against the back of his head and neck, and he was growing dizzy under them when, with a sudden, quick heave, he lifted the other from his feet, and sent him crashing backward to the ground. Monty was on him before he could move, pinioning his arms to the earth.

“Coward!” gasped the other. “Fight fair!”

“That was a fair throw!” grunted Monty. “Give up, do you?”

“No! Get off me! Let me up!”

“Not much, partner!” answered Monty grimly. “You’ve made jelly of my ear, I guess. You’ll stay where you are now until you cry quits.”

“Coward!” taunted the other again, writhing under the weight that held him helpless. “Can’t you fight with your fists?”

“Not so well as I can wrestle,” replied Monty calmly. “Better stop kicking, you!”

“Let me up! Fight decently, you—you cad!”

“Look here!” Monty’s right hand traveled slowly up, bringing the boy’s left arm to his stomach. “Stop calling names!”

“Cad! Coward! Rotten Yank!”

“What’s to keep me from punching your face?” asked Monty grimly, drawing up one knee and setting it on the imprisoned wrist while his left hand strained at the captive’s right.

“Nothing! It’s what I’d expect of you, you—you——”

“Easy now! Be good or I’m likely to hurt you. It would be fierce if I made a mess of that pretty face of yours!”

He was having a hard time bringing that right arm around. Both boys were panting hard. Just how it happened, Monty never knew, but suddenly he found himself sprawled aside, and, although he tried desperately to hold his adversary, the latter eluded him like a cat and was on his feet. Monty had just time to spring erect before he was once more beset. A blow on the chest almost lost him his balance, and before he could recover the black-haired youth had landed again on that long suffering ear and had danced back. With a roar of rage Monty rushed, took a blow that almost dazed him and again wrapped his arm about the slim body of the opponent. For a moment they swayed, struggled, staggered about on the treacherous ground, and then went crashing to earth, Monty on top. But this time there was no need for him to grapple the other’s arms. The boy with the black hair lay still, with eyes nearly closed. Monty, suspicious, watched a moment and then got unsteadily to his feet.

“Stunned,” he muttered. “Great Snakes, I hope he isn’t hurt!” He went to the bank and dipped cupped hands in the water and splashed it over the boy’s face. He had to make three trips to and fro before the boy on the ground stirred, sighed deeply and opened his eyes. He viewed Monty at first blankly and then dubiously in the half-darkness.

“What happened?” he asked weakly.

“Guess you hit your head on a root or something,” answered Monty. “How do you feel?”

“All right now, thanks. What—oh, yes, I remember.” He frowned and closed his eyes tiredly. “Give me a minute or two and I’ll be ready,” he added apologetically.

[“Great Snakes, haven’t you had enough yet!” marveled Monty.]

[“Great snakes, haven’t you had enough yet!” marveled Monty.]

“Have you?”

“Gee, yes, minutes ago!”

“Oh! Well, all right. I reckon I have, too. Would you mind—” He struggled to sit up and Monty dropped on his knees and propped him in a sitting posture. “That was a fierce bump I got,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” said Monty cheerfully. “Didn’t mean to hurt you.”

To his surprise the boy laughed merrily if weakly.

“What’s the joke?” asked Monty, puzzled.

“Nothing, only—you said you didn’t mean to hurt me,” gasped the other. “It—it sounded funny!”

“That’s so,” Monty allowed with a chuckle. “I meant I didn’t mean to damage you, I guess. Look here, we’d better be getting back. It’s pretty nearly dark. Think you can make it?”

“Oh, yes, thanks. I’m all right.” With Monty’s help he got to his feet. But he swayed and fell against the arm that his recent adversary had put out. “I’m sort of dizzy,” he murmured apologetically.

“Take your time,” said Monty, feeling of his aching ear. “Say, where’d you learn to fight like that, hombre?”

“I took boxing lessons for awhile. Did I get you much?”

“Did you! I’ve got an ear on me that feels as big as a football. Seems about the same shape, too!”

“You asked for it,” rejoined the other calmly. “You ought to keep your guard up. I’ll show you what I mean some time, if you like.”

“You’ve shown me quite enough, thanks,” answered Monty decisively. “I know when I’m satisfied. All right now? Say, what about those boats? And I lost a perfectly good hat!”

“I reckon the boats will run aground somewhere,” replied the other boy quite unconcerned. “If you want to look for your hat, though——”

“No, let it go. Do you know how to get out of here?” Monty surveyed the underbrush with misgiving.

“No, I was never here before. I reckon school’s up that way somewhere. We’ll just have to break through the bushes, I suppose. Shall we try it?”

“Have to, I guess. Gee, but it’s getting chilly!” Monty shivered as a little night wind caressed his damp form. “I’ll go ahead. I’ve done this sort of thing before.” He started into the bushes and pushed and crashed his way through them, his new acquaintance following at his heels. It was nearly pitch dark now and Monty had to guess at his direction, but the fringe along the river was not deep and presently, somewhat scratched by branches, they stood on the edge of the field and the lights of the school buildings twinkled across at them and a million stars blinked calmly down from a purple-black sky. To their right a darker shadow loomed and Monty guessed it to be the boathouse. He chuckled as he led the way across the turf.

“If we had gone a little further we’d have had a better place for our scrap,” he said. “The boathouse float would make a fine ring, I guess. Say, what were we fighting about, partner?”

“I called you a silly ass or something, didn’t I?” responded the other mildly. “And I think you called me monkey face, and said you would lick me. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Neither do I,” laughed Monty. “Fact is—er—I say, what’s the name, eh?”

“Desmarais.”

“Des—mer—er?”

“Des—ma—ray. It’s French.”

“Oh! Well, I was going to say that you happened along when I was in just a nice mood for a scrap, Des—Des——”

“Desmarais. Seems to me it was you who happened along, though. I was sitting there in that canoe doing a little thinking when you came out of nowhere and slammed into me. I reckon I was rather ugly about it, but I was feeling out of sorts just then——”

“So was I! Fact is, I was getting homesick, er— Say, what’s your first name? I can’t get the twist of that one.”

“Leon.”

“Leon, eh? Mine’s Monty Crail. There’s more of it, but that’s enough. What’s your class?”

“Upper Middle.”

“I’m in the Lower. I’m one of those backward chaps you read about, I guess. Old Whiskers, who put me through my paces this morning, says I can get into the Upper Middle next term if I try hard, and I mean to try, but, gee, I’m up against a tough proposition, I guess. About all I know of German is that you have to gargle when you talk it! You been here long?”

“About twenty-four hours.”

“What? Are you a new fellow, too? Say, it’s sort of funny our running across each other like this, isn’t it? I’m right cheered up about it, Lon. I guess they’re right when they say misery loves company. You don’t mind my calling you Lon, do you? I never was much good at French.”

“I’d prefer to have you put the ‘e’ in,” replied Leon, “if you don’t mind. Is Monty your real name or just an abbreviation?”

“Short for Montfort.”

“Why, that’s French, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my mother was French. But, I don’t remember her at all.” They went up the steps at the end of the path, passed through the gate, and crossed the road to the Green. “Say, you’d better come up to my room and fix up a bit, hadn’t you? I live in Morris, the house on the corner there. I don’t know what they think about scrapping here, but maybe if a teacher spotted you there’d be trouble.”

“Thanks, I will, if you don’t mind.”

“Not a bit. Hope my roommate isn’t in, though. He’s a regular Indian. Here we are.” The steps were deserted now, and although the open doors of several rooms proved their occupants at home, Number F was dark and empty. Monty switched on the light, closed the door and viewed his new friend. And Leon viewed Monty. And after a moment their lips began to curve upward, and then, quite suddenly, Monty had subsided on his bed, and Leon on Standart’s, and they were shouting and rocking with laughter!

CHAPTER VII
MONTY SHAKES HANDS

And, really, their appearance was cause enough for laughter. Their clothes, no longer dripping water but damp and creased and dirty, were spotted with leaves and twigs. Collars and ties hung like limp rags. Mud flaked from their shoes. They were, in short, two as disreputable looking youths as one could expect to encounter in a day’s march, and, to add to their sorry appearance, each bore evidence of the recent encounter. Leon had escaped somewhat lightly, only a bruise on one cheekbone showing, but Monty’s countenance was sadly disfigured. His nose had bled a little, his right eye promised to be purple by morning, there was a contused area around his chin, and that maltreated ear was, while not as large as the football he had likened it to, at least much bigger than the other one.

After a minute their laughter subsided into chuckles, and Monty said a bit sheepishly: “I guess we’re a couple of fools, partner!” But Leon shook his head as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “No, we’re not, Crail. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

Monty grinned. “Sure! And I guess I sort of needed exercise, for I was getting mighty glum and mean feeling. Do I look pretty bad?”

“You wouldn’t make a hit at a Peace Conference,” laughed Leon. “You’d better let me fix you up, Crail. I’m sorry I made such a mess of you. I was in a beast of a temper when you came along. Come on over to the stand here. Got a washcloth or something?”

The next ten minutes were spent in repairs. Monty discovered a bottle of witch hazel, presumably the property of Standart, and they made liberal use of it. A lump as large as a pigeon’s egg graced the back of Leon’s head, its presence making itself known when he leaned against the chair. However, it didn’t show unless you looked for it. Monty’s wounds were far more spectacular, although when the blood had been cleaned from his lip, and his other abrasions and swellings well bathed, and he had slicked down his hair with a brush, he looked fairly respectable once more. And presently the two were comfortably seated by the window, and were talking as intimately as old friends.

They had at least this much in common: both were new boys and felt strange, and both agreed that this part of the country in which they found themselves left much to be desired. Leon compared it to the south and Monty to the west, and neither comparison was favorable to this particular portion of New England. Leon, it seemed, came from New Orleans, and an awkward moment ensued when he casually announced himself a Creole. Monty gazed at him in a surprised manner. “A Creole!” he ejaculated. “But—but—I thought——”

“What?” demanded Leon stiffly.

“Nothing,” replied Monty confusedly. “I—I never met a Creole before.” But he continued to gaze with misgiving at Leon’s hair, which, although straight as his own, was undeniably black.

“You might as well say it,” challenged Leon. “You thought a Creole was a nigger, didn’t you? Most of you Yankees do think that, I reckon. It just shows what an ignorant lot you all are!”

“I’m not a Yankee,” defended Monty. “I was born in Indiana.”

“That’s what you thought, though,” sneered the other. “Now, wasn’t it?”

“N-no, not exactly. I guess I had a sort of notion that a Creole was something like a mulatto or a quadroon. I’m sorry if I said anything——”

“Oh, you northerners all have that crazy idea,” responded Leon, contemptuously. “A Creole is a person born in Louisiana of French and Spanish blood. We have the best blood in America in our veins, as anyone knows who has read history.”

“That’s why I didn’t know,” replied Monty humbly. “I never did read much history. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, old man.”

“You didn’t,” answered Leon not very graciously. “I don’t mind.” Then his face cleared, and he smiled. “I do mind, though, Crail, to be honest. You wouldn’t like it yourself if folks thought you were half negro. It’s almost as bad as being called a Cajun.”

“What’s a Cajun?” asked Monty.

“He’s a descendant of the refugees who came to Louisiana from Nova Scotia along about 1765. Acadians, they were called. Evangeline was a Cajun.”

“Was he?”

Leon laughed merrily. “I reckon you don’t know your Longfellow very well, Crail.”

“Oh, I remember. But I don’t think I ever read the whole poem. It—it’s sort of long!”

“Have you ever been in New Orleans?” asked Leon. He made it sound like “N’Orlins.” Monty shook his head, and Leon promptly started off on a glorification of that picturesque city, and Monty, listening at first only politely, but soon with real interest as Leon’s eyes glowed with fervor, and he pictured so plainly that his hearer could almost see them, the life and color and quaintness of a city so foreign to any that Monty had ever known, determined then and there to see New Orleans the very first chance he got, and, above all, to go shooting and fishing on the bayous below the city, those bayous, ablossom with floating water hyacinths and shaded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss, in which alligators and terrapin and snakes dwell amidst the swaying marsh grass, and where Filipinos fish for shrimp and Kanakas and Cajuns and Japanese and Italians and Indian half-breeds are mingled in a strange hodge-podge.

“It’s New Orleans, isn’t it,” asked Monty finally, “where they have Mardi Gras?”

But, to his surprise, Leon spoke belittlingly of Mardi Gras. “It’s all right enough,” he said, “or it used to be. But nowadays the railroads advertise it, and people flock there from all over the country and make nuisances of themselves. And they go away with the notion that all New Orleans is good for is just to hold carnivals. Which isn’t true, because we’ve got one of the livest cities in the country. Why, we export——”

And then Monty was treated to an exposition of the city’s commercial importance that bored him vastly, even if it impressed him, which, for Leon’s sake, I hope it did. And then it became Monty’s turn, and he sang the glories of Wyoming, and of his beloved mountains, and sang them so eloquently that Leon’s dark eyes warmed, and he made up his mind that he would visit that wonderful Jackson Lake country, and go hunting for elk and see the sunset on the snowy tip of Two-Horn Peak and snowshoe down Halfway Pass, and sit around the bunk-house fire with “Snub” Thompson and “Pin Head” Farrel, and the other engaging characters of Monty’s narrative! And then, Alvin Standart intruded his unpleasing presence, and introductions ensued, and Leon went his way. Monty accompanied him to the sidewalk, and promised to look him up the next morning. And at the last, as they were saying good-night, Monty put his hand out or Leon put his out—Monty never could remember which of them had made the first move—and they shook hands! Which is a most unusual thing for two healthy, normal boys to do, and which, remembered afterwards, brought something very like a blush to Monty’s tanned cheeks.

“Who’s your friend?” inquired Alvin Standart when Monty returned to the room.

“His name’s Desmarais,” answered Monty. “A new fellow. He’s in upper middle.”

“Southerner, isn’t he?”

“Yes, from New Orleans.”

“Thought so. You can generally tell by the way they talk. Sort of drawl their words, don’t they?”

“Do they? Can’t say I ever noticed it, Standart.”

“Sure, they do. They talk funny.” Considering that Standart himself talked through his nose, and flattened every vowel it was possible to flatten, it didn’t seem to Monty that criticism of Leon’s speech came well from him. But he only smiled. “You didn’t go to the reception, did you?” continued his roommate.

“What reception’s that?” inquired Monty.

“Why, Doctor Duncan’s. Didn’t you know about it?”

“I guess so, but I forgot it. What happened?”

“Just the usual things. We had a good feed, though; better than last year. Say, some of the new fellows are wonders, take it from me!”

“Very glad to. You ought to know a wonder when you see it, Standart. By the way, I used some of your witch hazel stuff. Thanks.”

“I should say you did!” exclaimed Standart, viewing the nearly empty bottle scowlingly. “I say, Crail, if you and I are going to get on, you know, you want to cut out that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” asked the other mildly. “Elucidate.”

“Why, I mean you’ve got to let my things alone, Crail. Of course, I don’t mind you using the witch hazel if you ask me, but you—you seem to have had a bath in it! It was a brand new bottle! I’d rather you asked me the next time, please.”

“Snakes! How much does the stuff cost you? And how the dickens could I ask you when you weren’t here?”

“You could have waited until I came, couldn’t you?”

“No, I couldn’t, Harold. I—I ran against something and bunged my eye up, and if I’d waited for you to trail into camp I’d have had a peach of an eye by now. It doesn’t look any too pretty as it is,” he added, observing it in the mirror.

“Stop calling me Harold,” said Alvin impatiently. “You’re always doing it. My name’s Alvin, and I wish you’d remember it.”

“I’ll try to,” Monty assured him. “Harold’s a perfectly good name, though. Guess I like it even better than Alvin.”

“I don’t care whether you do or not. It isn’t my name.” Alvin put down the witch hazel bottle with a frown. “That stuff cost me sixty cents,” he announced, meaningly.

“Sixty cents, eh? It’s fairly expensive, isn’t it? Guess I must have used about forty cents worth then.”

“I guess you did. You can get this bottle filled again at Thayers, in the village. Maybe they won’t charge more than fifty if you have the bottle.”

“Sounds fair,” said Monty. “Maybe they won’t. We’ll hope so, eh?”

“If you like, I’ll pour what’s in here into my tooth-mug, and you can get it filled tomorrow. I don’t like to be without witch hazel. It’s fine stuff for cuts and bruises and——”

“Also good on bread,” suggested Monty cheerfully. “For a cough or a cold there’s nothing like it. A prize goes with every package. The finest of these is a pearl-handled pocket-knife. Step up, gentlemen, and have your money ready!”

Alvin viewed him disgustedly. “Cut out the comedy, Crail,” he said, sourly. “Want this bottle now?”

“No, I think not. Maybe I’ll use a little more of it in the morning, since you say it’s good. You needn’t hurry about getting more, though, because I guess I won’t need it.”

“Me? I’m not going to get more! You are, aren’t you?”

“Oh, dear no! Not so’s you’d notice it. Why, if I went and had that bottle filled again I wouldn’t be under obligations to you, old man. It would be just like using my own witch hazel, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not funny,” grumbled the other. “You ought to pay me something for what you used. Give me a quarter and we’ll call it square.”

“Standart,” replied Monty severely, “you talk like a Piute. Anybody would think you didn’t want me to have that stuff. If I didn’t know you to be the soul of generosity I’d think you wanted me to pay for it!”

“So I do,” answered Alvin shrilly. “And I want you to quit being funny. You think you’re a regular comedian, don’t you? Well, you aren’t. You make me tired. And I want you to leave my things alone after this. And if you don’t pay for that witch hazel I’ll—I’ll get square with you for it some other way.”

“Listen to me, son.” Monty seated himself on the edge of his bed, and thrusting his hands in his pockets viewed his roommate gravely. “You and I have got to bunk together here. And we’re bound to see a good deal of each other, no matter how hard we try not to. Now, I’m a great believer in being happy whenever it’s possible. And I’m not going to be happy if you annoy me. I’m queer that way. I hate to be annoyed, Standart. It—it riles me. Savvy?”

“I guess I don’t annoy you any more than you annoy me,” sneered Alvin. “I don’t see why I had to have you wished on me, anyway!”

“I’ve wondered the same, son, and I’ve concluded that it’s probably because you needed someone to lead you gently, but firmly toward better things, Standart. You needed someone to cheer you up, I guess. Say, is this grouch of yours something you were born with, or did you just cultivate it?”

“None of your business,” growled Alvin. “You let me alone.”

“I guess it’s an heirloom, then; something that’s been in the family for generations, eh? Well, it’s a good one, only—only the trouble is that I’m likely to find it tiresome, old man. Far be it——”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Far be it from me to throw asparagus on a perfectly good heirloom, Standart, but I’d be awfully much obliged if you’d mislay it some time, and wreathe your features in a genial smile. Why, snakes, man, do you know that ever since I arrived here in your midst you’ve acted just like I wasn’t welcome?”

“You’re a beastly fresh guy,” exploded Alvin, “and someone’s going to hand you what you deserve before you’ve been here long! You make me sick!”

Monty grinned, and began to disrobe himself for bed. Alvin watched him gloweringly from across the room. Finally: “You must be proud of yourself,” he muttered, “being in the lower middle at your age! Yah! You’re a smart guy, aren’t you?”

“My education’s been sadly neglected, Standart,” replied Monty gently. “But I’m going to remedy that. I’m going to—” He paused, an expression of dismay came into his face, and looked toward the table. “Snakes! I plumb forgot to do any studying! What do you know about that?” He chuckled as he tossed his towel in the general direction of the rack, and turned down his bedclothes. “Bet you I make a big hit with the instructor tomorrow!”

Alvin viewed him balefully a moment. Then: “I hope you flunk everything!” he croaked triumphantly.

“Thanks for your kind wishes, Harold! Good-night!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW CHUM

Monty did not, however, come such a cropper the next day as he had predicted, partly because he put in the best part of two hours before breakfast in studying, and partly because the instructors were lenient. He had Latin the first hour, and scraped through, had German at ten o’clock, and managed to look wise enough to arouse no suspicion, had mathematics at eleven, and knew more algebra than most of his companions, and finished with English at two in the afternoon, having for instructor Mr. Rumford, the assistant principal, who was usually known as “Jimmy,” and whom Monty had disrespectfully alluded to yesterday as “Old Whiskers.” Monty, however, had intended no disrespect, any more than when, in German class, he had mentally dubbed Mr. Teschner “Google Eyes.” The school in general called him “Jules,” but Monty didn’t know that, and would have liked his own invention better, anyway. It was not until after dinner that he had an opportunity to keep his promise to Leon Desmarais and climb the two flights of stairs in Trow Hall, and demand admittance at the portal of Number 32.

Leon was out, but his roommate, a stout, bespectacled youth named Granger, insisted that he should enter and await Leon’s return from dining-hall. Granger, whose first name was Seymour, and who was known as “Sim,” was a senior, and a “dig” of the first water. Even now, when the sun was shining brightly, and there was a fine, faint nip of autumn in the air, Granger had chosen to immerse himself in “Johnston’s American Politics,” with a pencil sticking from a corner of his mouth, and a pile of notes at his side. Monty marveled and envied, and accorded Sim Granger then and there a respect which never diminished. Granger apologized for going on with his work.

“I’m taking four extras this year,” he explained, “and it keeps a fellow rather busy.” He looked across at Monty through his big spectacles with a tolerant, even kindly expression, and gave the latter the idea that he was speaking in words of one syllable for his guest’s better comprehension. Monty, for once in his life thoroughly awed, responded somewhat indistinctly that it was quite all right, and that he supposed it must, and please not mind him at all. And, Granger smiling benignantly—he had two perfectly developed chins, which made his smiles much more effective—composed his large, round face again, and became immersed. From time to time Monty dared a glance, but only a brief one. A fellow who would willingly remain indoors on such a September afternoon, and dig political history was far too noble and great to be made the subject of mere vulgar curiosity.

Number 32 was a very ordinary room, one of at least sixteen more just like it in Trow Hall. It combined the duties of bedroom and study—there were a few suites of two and three rooms in Trow, but only a few—and wasn’t very successful at it. Two windows looked across the back campus to Crumbie Street, and the slope of Mount Grafton beyond. The only thing of interest in view, aside from the fields and woods, was the little red brick, slate-roofed building that held the heating plant. As far as view was concerned, Monty much preferred his own room, but he wondered if it wouldn’t be more fun living in one of the big dormitories like Trow than in Morris House. There was a window-seat under the casements, covered with a rather hard looking cushion and holding many pillows. Otherwise the furnishings were much the same as those in Number F, Morris, although not nearly so new. In fact, about every article of furniture there appeared to have a long and honorable history behind it, especially the study table, which, covered in green felt, had accumulated so many ink spots, and so many names and initials and strange hieroglyphics that nowadays one had to take the original color for granted. Several pictures and unframed posters hung on the walls, and there was the usual Grafton banner, in this case much larger and dingier than usual. It wasn’t difficult to determine which chiffonier of the two was Leon Desmarais’s, for one held only a pair of battered military brushes, a broken-toothed comb, a button-hook and a row of unframed photographs, and the other boasted a traveling case laid open to expose its silver and ebony articles, three silver-framed photographs of rather foreign-looking persons, and a leather belt with a buckle that looked astonishingly like gold, and was engraved with a monogram. And, in case there might still exist the chance of mistake, from the upper drawer escaped the end of a wonderful four-in-hand tie with alternating bias stripes of dark blue and bronze. Monty was growing a bit restless when footsteps sounded outside the half-open door—there had been several false alarms previously—and Leon entered hurriedly and breathlessly.

“Hello, Crail,” he greeted. “I’ve been over to your house to find you. That roommate of yours said he didn’t know where you were, and, by George, it sounded very much as though he didn’t care! Look here, have you met Mr. Granger? Granger, this is Mr. Crail, the chap I told you about. Let me see how you look, Crail. Shucks, that eye isn’t so bad, is it?”

“My ear’s the worst,” answered Monty, investigating it with a careful finger. “How’s your bump?”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about it. It doesn’t bother any. I told Granger about our little set-to, so you needn’t talk in parables. Granger seemed to think it was unfortunate we didn’t both drown!”

“Silly kids,” murmured the stout one benignly, keeping his place in Johnston’s classic with one pudgy finger. “Ridiculous!”

Leon laughed gayly. “Everything’s ridiculous to him, Crail, except the accumulation of worthless knowledge. Let’s leave him to it, and get outdoors. You haven’t anything this hour, have you?”

Monty said good-by to Granger, and followed Leon out and down the stairs. On the front steps Leon hooked an arm through Monty’s, and led him along the brick walk toward the principal’s residence and the tree-shaded road beyond. “Do you know, Crail,” he said, “I believe I’m going to like this place after all? I didn’t think so yesterday or the day before, but it looks quite jolly now. I dare say I’ll freeze to death when the cold weather comes, but until then—” He broke off to search a pocket of a gray tweed Norfolk, and produce the half of a cake of sweet chocolate. “Have some?” he asked, stripping the tinfoil off, and dividing the treasure. “Look here,” he continued, when they had sampled the chocolate, “I’m going to call you Monty. Maybe Monte Cristo. Ever read it? Great, isn’t it? Let’s climb that rock up there, shall we? What’s the thing on top of it, do you suppose?”

“Just a tower. Observatory, they call it. I guess you get some view from there. Funny, though, to call that little old hump a mountain. Out at Windlass City it wouldn’t be more than an ant hill.”

“Look here, I’m going out there some day,” said Leon. “It must be great. I looked it up on a map in the library this morning. Your place is right next door to the Yellowstone Park, isn’t it? Do you ever go there?”

Monty shook his head. “I never have yet. It’s only about forty miles, and I’ve always meant to, but somehow I don’t get to do it. You come out there next summer, and we’ll go all over the place.”

“I’d love to! How did you happen to come away off here to school, Monty? Aren’t there any good schools in the west?”

“Piles of them, but I thought I’d like a change. I guess I got it, too,” he added dryly.

“Yes, I reckon Montana—no, Wyoming is a heap different from this. But Terre Haute is quite civilized, isn’t it? That is, a regular city.”

“Oh, we’ve got a trolley car there, and several business blocks,” laughed Monty. “How did you happen to come here?”

“It was father’s idea. He said I ought to know more about the north. Rather silly, I think. I’d rather have gone to a place nearer home. Still this isn’t bad, and there are quite a few southern fellows here. I wonder how we get up this hill.”

“There’s a path over there, isn’t there?”

There was, and ten minutes later they were climbing the steps of the lookout tower that rose from the granite summit of the hill. As Monty had predicted, there was “some view.” Almost at their feet lay the school grounds, dotted with buildings and intersected with gravel walks. Further away was the athletic field, with the freshly limed markings of the tennis courts showing dazzlingly white, and beyond, a narrow ribbon of blue, curved the Needham River. Across the river lay a strip of forest, and then came fields and winding roads, and here and there, a cluster of farm buildings. The village of Grafton seemed quite near with its three church spires and square-topped town hall tower. They could see the clock on the latter, and Monty, after a surreptitious glance at his watch, said that he could even tell the time, which was twenty-six minutes after one, and Leon believed him at first, and was appropriately surprised by his powers of vision. To the right of the village was the railway station, and they could follow the single line of track for some distance westward. On all sides the distance melted into the blue haze of a warm September day.

“It really is a very pretty country,” granted Leon, “and lots greener than it is at home. I’ve never been to England, but I reckon it must look a good deal like this. I suppose you’ve been there, Monty?”

Monty shook his head. “Never been outside the old U. S. A.,” he answered. “Jasper—he’s my guardian—won’t let me go alone, and never offers to take me with him. But some day—” His voice dwindled away into a thoughtful silence.

“‘Some day,’” half grumbled Leon, “lots of things will happen. There’s too much ‘some day’ to suit me. I want things now.”

“I know,” Monty nodded slowly. “But, at that, I guess it’s a lot better to have ‘some day’ to look forward to than—than have it behind you, eh?”

“You’re a philosopher,” laughed Leon. “I don’t like philosophy. Come along down. It must be getting on toward two. What are you doing at three?”

“Not a thing. I was going to report for football practice, but my trunk hadn’t come an hour ago, and I guess it hasn’t got here since.”

“Oh, shucks! Are you going in for that sort of bunk, Monty?”

“Bunk? I’m going to try for the eleven, if that’s what you mean. What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, it’s the way you look at it, I suppose. I never could see much sense in football or baseball. I like a game that I can play by myself and——”

“Solitaire?” asked Monty gravely.

“I mean like tennis. If you lose at that it’s your fault, and no one’s else, or if you win it’s your victory. But in football, why, you’re only one of a dozen——”

“Eleven, to be exact.”

“Dry up, Monte Cristo! Your playing well may not cut any ice in football, for some other idiot—I mean some idiot——”

“I get you, partner. It’s all the way you look at it. Are you going in for tennis, then?”

“Yes. I’ve got my name down for the fall tournament that starts next week. Do you play?”

“Nary a play. It’s a girl’s game.”

“What!” Leon was outraged, and all the way back to the campus he held forth on the merits of tennis, growing more and more earnest as Monty pretended to scoff. Monty found that it was a very easy matter to fool Leon, and indulged himself in the amusement quite frequently during the first weeks of their acquaintance. After that the southerner became wise to the fact that Monty didn’t mean all he said, and that when he looked the gravest he was always laughing in his sleeve. Monty allowed himself at length to become convinced by Leon’s eloquence of the many excellencies of the game of tennis, and the two parted in the corridor of School Hall after agreeing to meet after their recitations.

It was while in the middle of “Jimmy’s” English class that Monty remembered that he had not sought to find the runaway skiff in which he had embarked last evening, and consequently, when Leon met him at a few minutes past three he broached the subject and suggested that they go down to the river and have a look. Leon didn’t seem particularly concerned in the matter, but agreed to take part in the search. Monty waited while the other ran up to his room with his books, and then they strolled across the campus to Morris, where Monty, in turn, disposed of his burdens, and after that went on to the field. The courts were already busy, and Monty had hard work dragging Leon past them.

“That’s what I ought to be doing,” declared the latter concernedly. “I need practice like anything. I wish I knew some fellow who would take me on. Maybe if I got my racket and stood around someone would ask me. Do you know any fellows yet?”

“Only three or four. I don’t know whether they play tennis, Leon, but I’ll ask them if you say so.”

“I wish you would. Who are they?”

“A couple of fellows who room together in Lothrop, Logan and Baker, and another chap named Gowen. Gowen’s a football player. And then there’s that Indian, Standart, and two or three fellows at Morris. I dare say some of them must be tennis fiends, eh?”

“I wish you’d ask. I’d like to get used to those courts a little before the tournament. They look faster than the ones I’ve played on. Come along, if we have to, and let’s find those silly boats.”

That task proved very easy, for both skiff and canoe were pulled up on the beach, and Monty’s straw hat was awaiting a claimant on the end of an upturned oar. “I never thought I’d see that again,” said Monty, as he tried to pull the soft straw back into shape. “Looks sort of—sort of——”

“Echevelé,” suggested Leon.

“Honest? As bad as that, eh? Well, I suppose a hat that’s sat around in the water all night has a right to look ‘aish-flay,’ or whatever you called it. I suppose you talk French like a headwaiter, eh?”

“A little,” acknowledged Leon.

“And read it, too?”

“Not so much.”

“And—and think in it? Can you think in French?”

“Better than I can talk it,” laughed Leon.

Monty sighed enviously. “That must be great,” he said. “The only language I know is English, and Mr. Rumford is beginning to make me think I don’t know that! And I can talk enough Spanish to navigate a burro, and can tell German when I see it printed. There comes the football mob. Want to watch them for awhile?”

Leon good naturedly consented, and they found seats on the stand, and leaned luxuriously back in the sunlight, and waited to be amused. And there Pete Gowen spied Monty, and so came hustling across to him.

“Hello, Crail, how are you getting on?” he asked. “Why haven’t you been around to see me?”

“Thought maybe you had troubles enough of your own. Shake hands with Desmarais. Leon, this is Mr. Gowen. He’s the man they’re building the team around this year.”

Pete laughed as he acknowledged the introduction, and then asked soberly: “Why aren’t you out, Crail?”

“I am out. This is me.” Monty tapped his chest.

“Out for practice, I mean. Didn’t you tell me you played, and were going to try for a place?”

“Oh, that. Why, yes, but I haven’t any togs. My trunk hasn’t caught up to me, Gowen. I’ll be on hand tomorrow, though.”

“Be sure. Don’t put it off. I told Winslow I’d found him a guard, and he’s expecting me to make good on the promise. So long. Glad to have met you, Desmarais.” Pete didn’t exactly say “Desmarais,” but he said something that sounded nearly like it, and hurried off again.

“He’s a big brute,” commented Leon. “Can he play well?”

“So they say. He seems an awfully decent hombre.”

“What’s a hombre?” asked Leon.

“Man. I like the looks of that quarter, don’t you?”

“Which is the quarter? Oh, the fellow with the reddish hair. Yes, what’s his name? He looks as though he could play tennis.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s Weston. Say, they’re a likely looking bunch, aren’t they? Snakes! I hope my trunk gets here before tomorrow afternoon. I’m crazy to get my hands on a football.”

“Well, I wish you luck, Monty. Who’s the cross-looking man with the old flannel trousers?”

“That’s Mr. Bonner, the coach. They say he’s a dandy.”

“Glad he doesn’t boss me. He looks as though he could bite a nail in two this minute. There’s a chap speaking to you, Monty.”

The chap proved to be Jimmy Logan, and when Monty returned his greeting he climbed up to them. “Hello, Crail! Say, have you seen Dud Baker? The idiot promised to play some tennis this afternoon.” Jimmy was sweeping the scattered audience in the stand and along the edge of the field with a frowning gaze. “He’s a lazy guy, though, and had rather watch other fellows exercise than do it himself. He’s probably here somewhere about.”

Monty introduced Leon to Jimmy, adding: “If Baker doesn’t show up this fellow will take you on at tennis, Logan. He’s the champion of the southern states, Desmarais is, and has never been defeated.”

“Dry up, Monty!” protested Leon.

“Do you mean it?” asked Jimmy eagerly. “Do you really want to play, Des—er—I didn’t get the name, I guess.”

“Desmarais,” supplied Monty. “The accent comes on the antepenultimate syllable. The K is silent as in French.”

“Yah! And I suppose his first name’s Harold?” jeered Jimmy. “Maybe he’s another of those Eskimo Twins!”

“Yes, he’s the third of them. Go ahead and whack your little white balls around, Leon. I’ll come over after awhile.”

“I’d like to play very much, thanks,” said Leon, “if you don’t find your friend, Mr. Logan.”

“I’m not going to look for him any longer. Have you got your racket here?”

“No, but it won’t take me a minute——”

“All right. I’ll wait for you here. Payne is keeping a court for me, so don’t be long.” Leon hurried off to Trow, and Jimmy turned inquiringly to Monty. “Who is the raven-tressed youth, Crail? What the dickens did you say his name was?”

“Desmarais. The accent——”

“Yes, but never mind that, laddie. Southerner, isn’t he? Won’t do to get him angry with me, will it? They’re a fiery lot, those southerners. Believe, though, southron is the proper word. How are you getting on? Sorry yet that you changed your mind about Mount Morris?”

“Not a bit, thanks. And I’m getting along very comfortably so far. I think I’m going to get downright fond of this place, Logan.”

“You bet you are,” said Jimmy seriously. “You’ll never regret following my advice and side-stepping Mount Morris, Crail.”

“Oh, did I do that?” asked Monty politely.

“Sure!” responded Jimmy without a quiver. “Don’t you remember? If you don’t you’re the only one,” he added with a chuckle, “because all the fellows I’ve told remember!”

“That’s all right,” Monty laughed. “You’re welcome to the credit.”

“Why haven’t you been around to see us? We’ve got the old sty fixed up corking now. Come and see it, and bring your friend Dejeuner, or whatever his name is. Listen; give me another lesson, will you? Go ahead: Des—Des——”

“Des—ma—ray. Say it quick and you won’t mind it.”

“I shan’t remember it five minutes,” said Jimmy sadly. “Here he comes now, on the dead run. Say, if you see Dud Baker tell him I hope he chokes. Good-by! My love to the Eskimo Twins!”

CHAPTER IX
SOAP AND WATER

The next day Monty appeared, appropriately clad, on the football field at a few minutes before three-thirty, and gazed inquiringly around. Most, if not all, of the candidates were on hand, and the rest were dribbling along the path from the direction of the field house. Mr. Bonner, however, was not in sight, nor was Pete Gowen, and Monty wondered whether he was supposed to simply stroll out and join the nearest squad or to report to someone and get instructions. He decided to make inquiries as to the usual methods pursued in such cases, and walked up to a youth of eighteen or thereabouts, who, dressed in football togs that had apparently never been worn before, presented an immaculate and almost unapproachable appearance. He was a tall, finely-built, and very good-looking youth, but his good looks were somewhat marred by an air and expression of arrogance.

“Say, partner,” observed Monty, “I want to get into this. What do I do?”

Starling Meyer turned slowly and viewed the questioner with languid surprise and contempt, or so it seemed to Monty. Meyer’s eyebrows went up and a flicker of amusement showed in his eyes as his gaze traveled deliberately from Monty’s head to the tips of his scuffed shoes and back again. Finally: “Really,” he replied, “I don’t care what you do. But I’d suggest that you have your hair cut.”

Monty’s eyes narrowed a trifle, but he only smiled pleasantly. “You don’t understand,” he said gently. “What I wanted to know was about getting on the football team. You see, I’ve decided to play, and I don’t know whether I ought to tell the captain about it or—or what. And you looked as if you might be the coach or something.”

Meyer frowned suspiciously, but the other boy’s smile was so innocent and placating that the frown vanished, and the look of amusement deepened. Meyer even chuckled a bit. “Oh, so you’ve decided to play football, have you?” he asked. “That’s fine, isn’t it? What position have you selected?”

“I think I’d like to be one of the fellows who take the ball and run with it,” responded Monty almost shyly. “You call them halfbacks, don’t you? I can run pretty fast, I can. But Alvin Standart, who’s my roommate, says that maybe they won’t use more than two halfbacks this year, and if they don’t, I wouldn’t get to be one, because they’ve got two already. Do you know if they’re going to have more than two?”

“Three or four, I understand,” answered Meyer gravely. “If I were you I’d see Mr. Bonner, the coach, and tell him I had decided to be third halfback. Better do it before some other fellow asks for the place. He’s coming now. Better get right at it.”

“I will,” declared Monty brightly. “And I’m ever so much obliged to you. Are you one of the players?”

Meyer nodded. “I’m right and left guard,” he replied. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Crail. What is yours, please?”

“Heffelfinger. If you like, you may use my name to the coach. Just tell him Heffelfinger, Walter Heffelfinger sent you.”

“Oh, thank you! I—I think I’ve heard of you. I guess everyone has! You’re sure you don’t mind if I just say that you—you——”

“Not a bit.” Meyer waved a hand courteously. “Go as far as you like, Crail. Remember now; third halfback is what you’re after.”

“Third halfback, yes. Or maybe fourth, if someone has chosen to be third? Anyway, I’ll ask to be third first. Thank you so much, Harold.”

“No, not Harold; Walter; Walter Heffelfinger. Good-by, and don’t take any wooden money.”

Monty showed clearly that the latter advice puzzled him, but he nodded gratefully, and turned away. Meyer chuckled as he watched the other’s progress along the line in the direction of Coach Bonner. Then something in the boy’s swinging stride, or, perhaps, something in the capable poise of the head, brought suspicion back again, and the chuckle died away in his throat.

“I wonder if he—” But he didn’t go any further. Instead, he shook his head impatiently, banishing the unwelcome suspicion, and watched Monty approach the coach, speak to him, shake hands and engage in conversation for a minute before Mr. Bonner, pointing into the field, dispatched the new candidate to join one of the squads. Starling Meyer smiled. He wished he could have heard that conversation.

A half-hour later, when the squads had been cleared from the gridiron, and a first and second eleven were trotting out for the initial scrimmage of the year, Meyer, consigned with many others to a rôle of watchful waiting, approached Mr. Bonner, who was at the moment alone, near the side line. “Did that new fellow get the position he wanted, Mr. Bonner?” he asked with a chuckle.

The coach turned. “Hello, Meyer. What was it you asked?” Meyer repeated the question, and the coach looked puzzled. “What fellow was that?” he asked.

“Crail, or some such name. He wanted to be third or fourth halfback. Asked me if you were going to use more than two this year. I told him he had better see you before some other fellow got ahead of him,” laughed Meyer.

The coach frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. “The only Crail I know of is a candidate for guard. I’m afraid,” he added, as he turned away, “someone’s been stringing you, Meyer.”

And Meyer, his self-conceit horribly jolted, was afraid so, too!

Nothing especially notable occurred that afternoon, either to the new guard candidate or to anyone else. A tentative first squad went through two ten-minute periods against an equally tentative second, and neither scored. Substitutions were frequent, but neither Monty nor Meyer left the bench again until the practice was over. Monty had given his name and other particulars to a youth named Burgess, the manager, and later on, in the field house, he had stepped on the scales and tipped up a hundred and forty-one pounds. A little Welshman who went by the name of Davy, and whose official capacity was still a mystery to Monty, informed him that he was several pounds over weight. Monty refused to argue the matter, although Davy had the aggressive look of one who would have liked an argument better than his supper! Subsequently, Monty discovered that Davy Richards was the trainer. And subsequently, too, he made the acquaintance of Mr. Sargent, the physical director, and of Mr. “Dinny” Crowley, his assistant. These gentlemen controlled the physical, and, in a way, moral welfare of the football candidates, while Coach Bonner confined himself wholly to implanting in them as much knowledge of the game as his ability to teach and their ability to learn made possible. Football at Grafton School was taken seriously, and pursued systematically and efficiently. Compared to the happy-go-lucky methods in vogue at Dunning Military Academy, the Grafton system impressed Monty immensely. The only feature of it that he couldn’t quite approve of was the apparent disposition to lose sight of the individual. As Monty put it to Leon on one occasion, they threw every fellow into the same pot and boiled them all together! But that criticism came later. During the first fortnight of his stay at Grafton Monty formulated no criticisms. He was, perhaps, too busy getting shaken down into his new existence.

In those two weeks his preconceived ideas of boarding school life were much altered. He had unconsciously expected to hang up his hat, say “Howdy,” and instantly take his place in the school world. Rather to his surprise, he had discovered that there was no place awaiting him, that if he wanted a place he would have to make it. As far as he could see, no one bothered the least bit about him, neither principal, faculty nor students. If he didn’t want to study there was no one to insist on his doing so. He merely flunked, and nothing happened. At least, nothing happened for a considerable while. Eventually, though, something did happen. He went on probation, and was given a ridiculously brief space of time in which to recover his standing. If he didn’t he packed his trunk and disappeared. Many fellows did just that during the year. That Monty wasn’t among them was mainly because he asked questions, and reasoned things out and had the sense to see that the broad and easy path of idleness led eventually to the gulf of disaster. Besides, he wanted to study, anyhow. He wanted to know things. He wanted especially to get out of the lower middle class into the upper middle, for Alvin Standart’s jeer still rankled. As to making a place for himself, well, Monty meant to do that, too, and was only wondering how to go about it. The end of that first fortnight found him wiser, somewhat disillusioned, and quite resolved to make good.

On the football field he was still an unknown candidate for a guard position, working hard when he was given the chance, and making no spectacular success of it. But he learned a good deal. At Grafton they were extremely particular about the little things. Details that were scarcely considered at Dunning were held here of great importance. Mr. Bonner seemed to have a perfect passion for drilling the candidates in the rudiments. Monty sometimes wondered how the fellows had the courage and perseverance necessary to survive that first three weeks. For that matter, some of them didn’t. The eternal grind killed their ambitions, and they disappeared. Usually such defections passed unmourned, for it was the coach’s belief that those who couldn’t survive the grind and hard labor of that preliminary season were not of the quality he wanted. Gradually the number of candidates dwindled from some sixty-odd to around fifty, and this in spite of the fact that a call for more candidates had brought out a handful of late arrivals. The first cut in the squad came ten days after the beginning of the school year, and reduced the total to about forty. Monty survived that cut, but he had fears of the next, for it seemed to him that there was no place for his services. For the two guard positions there were to his certain knowledge six candidates besides himself, and each of the six were fellows who had played last year on either the first or second teams. Kinley and Gowen were the first-choice men, with Hersum, Bowen, Little and Williams struggling hard for substitute positions. Monty couldn’t see where he came in, and he began to consider his chances of finding a place on the second team which was due to be chosen in another week.

Grafton played her first game the second Saturday of the term, and defeated the Grafton High School eleven with no difficulty by the score of 21 to 0. The Scarlet and Gray played pretty raggedly, in spite of a team composed very largely of experienced players, and the four ten-minute periods provided scant interest for the audience. Leon declared that it was a sin to adjourn the tennis tournament for such a silly proceeding, and Jimmy Logan agreed with him. The tournament was three days old, and had reached the semi-final stage, and Leon was among the survivors. He had won two matches, one by default, and was looked on as certain to fight it out with the present champion in the last round. Jimmy, entered in the doubles with Brooks, had pulled out a victory that morning, and was due to play again Monday afternoon. But Jimmy had no expectation of surviving the next match. Jimmy’s particular chum, Dud Baker, had met his Waterloo in the first encounter, and was now rooting hard for Leon to come through.

Jimmy and Dud had taken Leon up with enthusiasm. Jimmy had fallen victim to Leon’s skill in that first game of tennis, and Jimmy had a worshipful admiration for anyone who could play good tennis. Later Jimmy suspected that Leon had purposely let him down easy on that occasion, since in subsequent encounters Leon had, to use Jimmy’s expressive description, “simply wiped up the blooming court with him.” Within a few days Jimmy and Dud and Leon and Monty had established a four-cornered friendship that bade fair to last, unless, as sometimes seemed possible, they fell out over the question of school societies. Jimmy was a member of the Literary and Dud of the Forum, and each sought to get Monty and Leon pledged for his own favorite. There were some rare arguments in Number 14 Lothrop, with Monty and Leon playing the rôle of audience. When discussion waxed too warm it was Monty’s way to announce that, for his part, when it became necessary to decide between the merits of the two societies he meant to toss up a coin! In the end, which wasn’t until the next term, the matter was settled in quite another fashion, but that doesn’t enter into this story.

Leeds High School was defeated, 39 to 0, the next Saturday, by which time Grafton had found herself to some extent. Monty got into that game for a very few moments toward the end, and perhaps because by that time the Leeds line was largely a substitute affair, did well enough at left guard. Both the Grafton High and Leeds High contests were looked on as merely practice games, and the first real encounter was that with St. Philip’s School, a week later. In preparation for that event, the first squad was started in on the development of an attack and Mr. Crowley rounded up his second team and began to put it through its paces. Rather to his surprise, Monty was neither drafted to the second nor banished from the first, but continued to adorn the bench during the scrimmages, sometimes being called on to substitute at one side or the other of Ned Musgrave or Brewster Longley, first and second choice centers. In those days the haughty Starling Meyer, or Star, as he was generally called, usually kept him company. Star, however, treated Monty with silent contempt, something that bothered Monty not at all. Star was trying for a back field position and was said to have designs on Ordway’s job at right half. Sometimes Monty surprised Star looking at him with a puzzled expression as though wondering where innocence left off and guile began. On such occasions Monty always smiled expansively and Star removed his gaze with much dignity.

But before the Leeds game arrived Leon had won honor and renown by capturing the Fall Tennis Tournament with ease. In the final match he won from Ainsworth, holder of the title, 6–1 6–3, 5–7, 6–4, and had shown a brand of tennis that was nothing short of a revelation at Grafton. That Leon would succeed to the Tennis Team captaincy in the spring was a foregone conclusion. The Campus devoted quite a half column to him in the November issue and predicted a decisive victory over Mount Morris next May. In such manner Leon became almost overnight a person of importance at Grafton, and especially amongst a fairly large tennis element. The result was that he viewed the fate which had exiled him to the cold and inhospitable north much more kindly and no longer seized every opportunity, as had been his custom, to compare New England unfavorably to his beloved south. Leon had made a place for himself, in short, and was fitting nicely into it.

Monty was still jostling around on the fringe of things, trying hard to convince himself that he “belonged,” and not succeeding. Two things were worrying him about then. He was having difficulty with both German and English and was not getting on at all smoothly with his roommate. He told himself that whether Alvin Standart liked him or whether he liked Alvin were matters too small to bother about, but nevertheless rooming with a chap who spent all his time nagging or glowering was not pleasant. Monty saw as little of Alvin as he could manage, but it wasn’t possible to avoid him entirely. Alvin, it seemed, was capable of nursing a grouch for ever and ever, and Monty had the feeling that the tow-headed youth was watching and waiting for an opportunity to revenge himself for the loss of that forty cents worth of witch hazel. Sometimes Monty wished he had replaced the precious fluid as Alvin had demanded. At the time the latter’s peevishness had seemed too childish to merit serious attention, and Monty had refused recompense, not from stinginess, but, as he put it to himself, to teach Alvin the virtue of generosity. Meanwhile Alvin had himself replenished the bottle at least once. Monty sometimes thought the boy bathed in it, for, as near as he could determine, Alvin seldom bathed in that more usual element, water. It was his dislike of water, and soap as well, that brought about the first physical encounter between the occupants of Number F.

One morning in the second week in October Alvin was in the process of performing his usual style of morning toilet, that process consisting of dabbing a moist washcloth over his eyes, nose and chin, and rubbing a toothbrush very sketchily across his teeth. Monty had witnessed like performances many times without protest, but this morning he lost patience.

“Don’t you ever wash yourself, Standart?” he asked contemptuously.

“What am I doing?” asked Standart, peering scowlingly over the folds of his towel.

“Search me! It’s what I’d call a lick and a promise, though. Why don’t you pour another spoonful of water into the bowl and use the soap and go after the dirt? Honest, Standart, I couldn’t tell from looking at the back of your neck whether you were a blonde or a brunette!”

“Oh, dry up! I wash myself as clean as you do,” muttered the other. “You think the more water you splash around the room the cleaner you are. And my neck isn’t dirty, either. You mind your own business, you—you cowboy!”

“It’s my business if I have to live with you, hombre,” replied Monty. “Go ahead now. Just try it once. It won’t hurt you. You might grow to like it.”

“Don’t you call me dirty!” cried Standart shrilly. “I’ll wash the way I want to, and if you don’t like it you can lump it!”

Monty glanced at the closed door and arose from the bed whereon he had been seated while awaiting his turn at the washstand, with a smile of anticipation. Standart, towel in hand, watched him suspiciously. “Let me show you, partner,” said Monty. “It isn’t half as bad as you think it is.”

“Keep away from me!” threatened Standart, dropping the towel and seizing his tooth-mug. “Don’t you dare touch me! If you come any nearer I’ll throw this!”

“If you do you’ll break it, son,” replied Monty. “And if you broke it you couldn’t brush your teeth any more. And if you couldn’t brush your teeth your heart would break, too. And——”

Whizz went the tooth-mug, but Monty ducked and it banged against the further wall, to the marring of the plaster and rolled under a bed. Just one instant later Standart was choking, sputtering, writhing and kicking as, held firmly in Monty’s grasp, he was subjected to ablutions as enthusiastic as they were informal. Monty scorned the few cupfuls of water in the basin. Instead, he dipped Standart’s washcloth in the pitcher, rubbed it on the soap and set to work. His left arm encircled Alvin’s neck and held tightly a generous fold of his pyjama jacket and his right wielded the cloth. The victim of his philanthropy said things, or tried to say things, that were, to say the least, ungentlemanly. Some of the expressions he sought to enunciate were of the sort never used in polite society. But whenever he threatened to become the least bit coherent Monty deftly introduced the soapy, dripping washcloth into his mouth, with the result that Standart’s remarks were for the most part made from between clenched teeth, and therefore they lacked conviction. But, at that, he managed to make considerable noise, and Monty, fearing that interruption would come before his task was completed, worked hard and fast.

“Behind the ears, Standart,” he said. “And around the back of the neck. That’s the ticket. Quiet, hombre! Where do you get that stuff, son? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? All right, keep quiet then if you don’t like the taste of it. Sorry you’ve got these pyjamas on, because I’d like mighty well to do this job proper. Kicking won’t help! And never mind pinching! A little more water now——”

“If you don’t—gurgle—I’ll kill—gug, gug—you, you——!”

“Your language would make a horse-thief blush! I’m ashamed of you, Standart. Almost through now. You can’t expect me to get all the dirt off the first time, son, but if you behave nice I’ll have another go at you some day. I can almost see your skin here! Now, then, we’ll wash the soap off!” Whereupon Monty seized the half-filled pitcher and quickly and unsuspectedly inverted it over Standart’s head!

At the same instant, three occupants of neighboring rooms, having knocked and hailed without response, thrust open the door. Monty with the self-congratulating expression of one who has performed a difficult task with neatness and dispatch, had retreated from the scene of action, and Standart, gasping and spluttering incoherent vows of revenge, was standing, drenched to the skin, in an ever-widening pool of water. The boys in the doorway looked for a moment with wide-open mouths, and then three shrieks of laughter drowned Standart’s angry threats.

“Wha—what’s up?” gasped Joe Mullins delightedly.

“I’ve been helping Standart wash,” answered Monty calmly. “He couldn’t reach the back of his neck.”

“You wait!” shrilled Standart, darting shiveringly for his gown and throwing a malevolent glare at the amused audience in the doorway. “He held me and poured the pitcher over me! He—he——” But there Standart’s words became unprintable. Mullins called a halt sternly.

“Cut it out, Alvin!” he said. “You ought to have your mouth washed too. I’m glad Crail has washed your dirty face. It’s needed it for a week.”

Mullins closed the door again and the trio went chuckling off to bear the glad tidings that at last Standart’s neck and ears had been washed! In Number F the victim of Monty’s kindness sat on the edge of his bed trying to dry his drenched body and at the same time express in adequate terms his gratitude. He hadn’t nearly finished when Monty bore off the pitcher to the bathroom for refilling, nor was he through when the latter returned. But presently his words trailed off into vindictive mutterings and the mutterings into silence. But Standart’s expression said plainly that in his opinion the incident was not yet closed.

The affair made a pleasant break in the monotony of daily life at Morris House and Standart didn’t hear the last of it for some time. He fulfilled none of his threats to take the matter to faculty, probably because he had no taste for the incident publicity, nor did he complain to “Mother Morris.” But Mrs. Fair doubtless learned of the happening, for more than once when the others referred cryptically to the back of Standart’s neck, or asked interestedly: “How are the old ears today, Alvin?” Monty noticed a demure flicker of amusement cross the lady’s face.

So far as practical results for good were concerned, Monty’s object lesson in cleanliness was hardly a success, for after that Alvin took a huge delight in ostentatiously avoiding water and soap, and only had recourse to them when driven to it by threats. And so the incident was apparently at an end. But Alvin nursed his wrath and waited patiently for an opportunity to wreak vengeance, and when the opportunity came proved that the enmity of even a “Digger Indian” is not to be scoffed at!

CHAPTER X
SOME VICTORIES AND A DEFEAT

The St. Philip’s game proved a rude awakening for Grafton, for four twelve-minute periods—St. Philip’s had insisted on forty-eight minutes of playing time—left the two teams virtually where they had started, on an even footing. To be sure, each team had managed to secure one field-goal in that time, but the final score of 3 to 3 was indecisive. And from the Grafton point of view it was very disappointing. St. Philip’s was a new opponent and, while rumor credited her with football strength and Grafton had looked for a hard contest, she was not expected to prove the Tartar she had shown herself.

Grafton could find no consolation in the fact that, if she had not won, neither had she lost, for an unbiased analysis of the game showed that the home team had been out-played from first to last and that had the fortunes of war dealt fairly with each team St. Philip’s would have gone off with a 3 to 0, or even possibly a 6 to 0, victory.

As Captain Bert Winslow said afterwards, no light team had ever faced Grafton with so much punch in attack and dogged resistance in defence as the late adversary. Outweighed many pounds in the line, St. Philip’s had overcome that handicap by an almost phenomenal speed. Time after time her linemen had “got the jump” on Grafton, and time after time the best efforts of Winslow and Ordway and Manson and, later, their substitutes, had gone for little or nothing. Around-the-end attempts had been early shown futile, and Grafton, after many failures to puncture the line from tackle to tackle, had had recourse to the kicking game. But even there her opponent had bested her slightly, while the longest and best placed of Captain Winslow’s or Quarterback Blake’s punts had missed effectiveness by reason of the brilliant running back of the St. Philip’s quarter and left half. St. Philip’s had earned her lone tally honestly when, after four long runs from wide formation that started in her own territory and took the ball to Grafton’s twenty-six yards, she had twice failed at an advance and had sent her drop-kicker back to the thirty-five-yard line. Although the angle was fairly difficult, and although Pete Gowen and “Hobo” Ordway had both broken through, the kick was made slowly and carefully and went directly across the center of the bar. That was in the second period. Again, in the third, St. Philip’s came near to scoring another three when a place-kick from the thirty-eight yards struck the upright and bounded back.

Grafton’s single score had been secured in the last period. With defeat staring her in the face, she had commenced and executed a creditable march up the field in which a quarterback run and a forward-pass had featured and had eventually reached St. Philip’s twelve yards. There a fumble had cost her a down and lost her four yards. Subsequently, Ordway had been thrown back for a loss. Then, on third down, a fake forward-pass had sent the ball to Fullback Manson and that able-toed young gentleman had put the pigskin across easily enough from the thirty-yard line.

Monty had failed to get into that contest for even a minute and had watched it with mingled feelings from the bench. No one asked Monty’s opinion, but he had one nevertheless. To paraphrase a celebrated quotation: “Breathes there a boy with soul so dead who never to himself hath said: Things would have been different had I led!” Perhaps Monty didn’t say just that, but he did confide to Leon and Dud and Jimmy that evening that it was his firm conviction that Coach Bonner would do well to pay less attention to the little things and more to the big. “What’s the good,” he wanted to know, “of spending a month learning half a hundred unimportant details and not knowing how to use what you learn? If our backs had forgotten a lot of slush about standing just so and having one foot ahead of the other and counting one, two, three after the signal and all that, and had just taken the ball any old way and slammed into that line we might have done something. They were so busy remembering the by-laws that they never got started until the other fellows were tackling them!”

That led to an argument, with Jimmy Logan on the other end, which continued until Leon, yawning, requested them to dry up.

“It’s all very unimportant, anyhow,” he said. “Football’s a crazy game and only wild men play it.” And, of course, Monty had to deny that and another argument began.

There was a great deal of argument between the four, and they settled, to their own satisfaction, at least, many problems that autumn. The subjects left undiscussed were few indeed, and Number 14 Lothrop and Number 32 Trow were the scenes of many earnest debates. (The quartette seldom met in Monty’s room, since there was always the chance of Alvin Standart’s making himself an unwelcome fifth. None of the others could stomach Alvin. Leon, indeed, held him in the utmost loathing.) The debates were always good-tempered. Leon was the only one of the four in danger of losing his temper in the heat of an argument, and the others saw that he didn’t. It was usually a nonsensical remark by Jimmy that saved the situation.

But football was not the only interest at Grafton just then. October had come in with frosty nights and mornings and days that held just the right amount of snap to put zest into life. The maples fluttered their red and orange and yellow leaves down and the elms laid russet carpets on sidewalks and paths. The baseball players were holding fall practice each afternoon, and Dud, already slated to lead the pitching next spring, was very busy. Jimmy and Leon played tennis a good deal. There was work, too, for the track and field candidates, and as for the fellows who slammed little white balls for miles over the yellowing turf, why, they were in their element. The river of an afternoon, especially if the afternoon happened to be Sunday, was quite crowded with canoes. Monty, impatient of delays, purchased a maroon-colored canoe from Pete Gordon and, coached by Leon, became a skilled paddler in a surprisingly short time. The fine weather lasted the month through and life at Grafton was very pleasant. It would have been much pleasanter, in Monty’s opinion, had there been no such things as German and English, for he was not doing very well with them. He tried for permission to exchange German for Greek, but was denied. Mr. Rumford, however, told him he could make the substitution with the beginning of the mid-winter term if he managed promotion to the upper middle at that time. Monty saw no prospect of it, though.

The second week in October witnessed the final cut in the football squad and left just twenty-nine players extant. Of these eighteen constituted the regulars and enjoyed the distinction of eating at training table, while the remaining eleven substitutes got along as best they might with the assistance of a diet list, which, I fear, was seldom regarded. The second team also went to a training table. The second took itself very seriously and, under the care of Mr. Crowley, fast developed into a formidable aggregation. Monty survived the final cut, but still could figure himself no better than a third substitute. Starling Meyer terminated his connection with football, being too haughty to go out for his class team after being rejected by Coach Bonner. Doubtless it peeved him not a little to see that the boy whose amazing innocence he had laughed at had survived where he had failed!

Monty didn’t go with the team when it traveled away from home to play the Rotan College freshmen. He wasn’t included in the list of those to be taken along, and, while he would have liked to have gone with the half-hundred rooters who accompanied the team, a falling-out with Mr. Rumford prohibited. Jimmy thought it better for Monty to remain at school and labor on an English 2 composition. Last year Rotan had beaten Grafton on Lothrop Field by the score of 20 to 6, and Grafton wanted revenge. That she obtained it was due principally to Manson’s good right foot, for he barely managed to convert Grafton’s single touchdown into seven points, while the freshmen, after smashing out a touchdown in the first ten minutes of the contest, failed to kick goal. The score of 7 to 6 was not decisive, but it constituted a victory, and Grafton, team and rooters, returned home in triumph.

Grafton met her first defeat the following Saturday at the hands—or possibly it would be more proper to say the feet—of St. James Academy. The game was on Lothrop Field. St. James was unable to do much with the home team’s line and, after the two elevens had played each other to a stand-still for two periods, she opened up her bag of tricks and showed that both the Grafton ends were far from impregnable. When Foster Tray gave place to Milford, gains around the Scarlet-and-Gray’s right became less frequent, but Mann, who succeeded to Derry’s place, was no improvement. St. James worked forward-passes with fair success and used a split attack from kick formation in which quarterback took the ball outside tackle that made many gains until Grafton finally solved and smothered it. Grafton’s attack seemed very weak that day, but the truth was that her rival had a strong line that played low and hard. Once Hobo Ordway got loose for thirty-odd yards, and several times Brunswick, who went in for Captain Winslow in the third quarter, snaked through for gains of from three to six. But invariably St. James tightened inside her thirty-yard line and four times Grafton lost the ball on downs almost under the shadow of the opponent’s goal. Twice she might have tried field-goals and didn’t. It was explained later that Coach Bonner had forbidden them. St. James, with no such prohibition governing her attack, landed two drop-kicks over the bar and took the game home with her. As heretofore Grafton had always won, that 6 to 0 victory was a surprise to the Scarlet-and-Gray, and an unpleasant one. Monty played nearly the whole of the fourth period at right guard and handled himself well even if he created no sensation. He sustained an honorable injury in the form of a black eye, of which he was secretly very proud while it lasted.

By this time Monty’s circle of acquaintances had widened. That he had increased the number of his friends is doubtful, however. Acquaintanceship and friendship are different craft. He felt no need of more friends, though, for Leon and he were inseparable chums, while Jimmy and Dud were a good deal more than mere acquaintances. In a casual way he came to know half the fellows in the football squad, some quite well; Pete Gordon, the substitute center, Tom Hanrihan, the big tackle, Nick Blake, the innocent-visaged, mischievous quarter, “Hobo” Ordway, who played right half and who, so rumor had it, was an English Earl when he was at home! Bert Winslow, the captain, Monty counted as an acquaintance, too, but Bert was too busy and absorbed in his tasks to pay much attention to the substitute guard. And there were others: Foster Tray, who played right end, Gus Weston, the chap who was so earnestly striving to oust Blake from the quarterback position, Oscar Milford, a second-string end and Paige Burgess, the team’s manager. At Morris House, Monty knew his companions even more intimately and had revised his opinion of several. Joe Mullins, for instance, was not at all the “Indian” Monty had dubbed him, but a very decent fellow indeed who occupied the unofficial position of house captain and ruled them all with a light but firm hand. And there was, of course, Alvin Standart. And very often Monty wished heartily that there wasn’t.

In short, Monty was finding his place by degrees and enjoying himself in the meanwhile. He sometimes missed his beloved mountains and sometimes felt a bit lonesome for no reason that he could discover, but as time went on he took more kindly to the tranquil, well-kept country around him and the lonesome spells became less and less frequent. He often wondered what would have happened had he not pitched into that bullying newsboy in New York. In that case Jimmy Logan wouldn’t have spoken to him and he would have gone on to Mount Morris, as he had first intended. Probably he would have liked the Greenbank school quite as well as he now liked Grafton, but he wouldn’t have met Leon Desmarais. He concluded that Fate had treated him well, for he had grown very fond of Leon and couldn’t imagine an existence that didn’t include him. Of course they quarreled now and then. Leon had a temper like a spring-trap. It always went off suddenly and unexpectedly. When thoroughly angry he was, to use Monty’s metaphor, “a regular bob-cat.” But Leon’s rages soon burned out and, since it took a lot to make Monty lose his temper, their quarrels were usually rather one-sided and speedily over, and left no scars. Leon was inclined to be a bit snobbish in the matter of birth, something that Monty was quite indifferent to. Monty had once remarked that it didn’t seem to him to matter much who one’s great-grandfather was, and Leon had been quite scandalized.

“Do you mean that birth doesn’t count?” he had exclaimed incredulously.

“What do you mean, birth?” Monty had asked. “My father was a perfectly respectable American and my mother was a French woman. Neither of ’em was ever in jail.”

“Don’t be a silly ass! Anybody could tell that you come of good family, Monty. The west is full of families from the south and east, of course. But do you mean to tell me that generations of breeding and culture don’t count? If your grandfather had been a rag-picker—What are you laughing at?”

“You’re so serious! Suppose he had been a rag-picker? What of it? The man who picks rags today deals in them tomorrow and gets rich. His children go to school and his son sells the land the junk-shop was on and starts a dry-goods store on the next corner. And in a few years he’s rich, too, and becomes a bank director. And his son grows up and marries the daughter of the wealthiest man in town. And if you met his son on the campus tomorrow you’d think ‘There’s a chap with breeding!’”

“It takes more than three generations,” answered Leon stiffly.

“You mean it used to,” Monty had laughed. “Nowadays things move faster. Why not? We put up a two-million-dollar building in six months. We ought to be able to make a gentleman in two generations. I don’t know much about my family, but I remember my father telling of the time when he walked four miles to school in his bare feet, and so I guess there weren’t any lords or dukes on my family tree!”

“Poverty has nothing to do with it. Your father’s father——”

“It has a lot to do with it nowadays,” chuckled Monty. “Do you suppose I’d have had the courage to come east here and butt in on these high-brows with their silver-backed brushes and all if I hadn’t had a gob of money behind me? Yes, I would—not! Son, it’s having something in the old sock that gives you the right to shove through the crowd and take a front seat. If my father had been George Washington and my mother—er—Mary Antoinette, or whatever her name was, and I didn’t have any money, I’d just as soon thought of jumping off the Washington Monument as coming here to school!”

“That’s nonsense! Money has nothing to do with it!”

“Wait a bit! Your folks have money. You haven’t told me so, but your father’s a sugar dealer—factor, you call it, don’t you?—and you dress like a circus horse, and so I guess it’s a fair bet that they have. All right. But just suppose they hadn’t. Suppose you had just enough money to pay your fare up here and back and your tuition. A lot of good your old ancestors would do you!”

“I’d be just the same as I am now, wouldn’t I?”

“No, you wouldn’t, son! You’d be slinking around in a suit of old clothes that you were ashamed of and hating fellows who dressed decently. And you’d know two or three fellows like yourself and no one else. That’s how near you’d be to what you are now.”

“You talk like a—a snob!”

“Maybe I talk like one, but I’m not. I don’t care whether a fellow has money or hasn’t, and I care just as little whether his great-grandfather or his grandfather or his father came over with the Pilgrims in 1500 or whenever it was, or came last Friday in the steerage. If a chap is square, that’s enough for me. He doesn’t have to have silver military brushes with monograms on ’em, and I don’t give a hang if he says ‘ain’t’ for ‘isn’t’! Birth be blowed!”

“But you make money everything!” Leon had protested.

“I don’t! I make the confidence that having money gives you everything. Gee, I’m talking like a spell-binder at a country picnic! I don’t say that it’s a fine thing to have money just as money, but I say it’s a fine thing to have it for what it gets you. If I was poor, know what I’d do?” Leon shook his head. “Well, I’d make some money,” chuckled Monty.

“There are lots of better things to do!”

“Maybe, but you can do them better if you have the money, son. If I wanted to be—to be a musician, for instance, I’d make me a little pile first off. Or if I wanted to be a statesman, or—or anything else.”

“And by the time you’d got your money it would be too late to be anything!”

“Don’t you believe it! Making money isn’t hard.”

“Why doesn’t everyone have it then?”

“I’ll tell you, Leon. It’s a secret, but I’ll tell it to you. It’s because the way to make money is to work, and a lot of folks never learned that. They think you have to sit down and wait for it to drop into your pocket. Savvy?”

“I ‘savvy’ that you’re a perfect ass,” grumbled Leon. “And I don’t believe you believe——”

“All I believe? Right you are, son! And I don’t believe you believe that you are any better because your great-great-grandfather was fried in oil by Spanish inquisitors away back in 1100 B. C.”

“You’re strong on dates!” laughed Leon.

“Dates,” replied Monty untroubledly, “are as useless as ancestors. They’re like the frills they put on lamb chops. You can’t eat them and the chop would taste just as well without ’em. I know that Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci or Sebastian Cabot or some other guy discovered America. But I don’t know when, and I don’t care, and it doesn’t matter. And, say, who did do it, anyway? I’ll bet it was the Vespucci chap, because they named the country America after him, and Columbus only got the capital of Ohio named after him!”

“Well,” answered Leon, “if that’s your argument, the real discoverer must have been a fellow named United States!”

CHAPTER XI
MONTY IS BORED

Monty’s day was as follows. He awoke early, which was a habit of his and for which he claimed no special merit, and, propped up in bed, studied for a half-hour or, occasionally, an hour. At seven or thereabouts he arose. Chapel was at seven-thirty. Attendance was compulsory. Breakfast was at eight o’clock, whether one ate in the big dining-hall at Lothrop or the smaller one in Manning or a tiny one in Morris or Fuller. The first recitation was at nine and the last at two, the hour between twelve and one being devoted to dinner. Monty’s schedule provided him with four hours on Mondays and Fridays, three hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and one hour on Saturdays, the latter being from nine to ten. When there was a spare hour between recitations he was supposed to spend it in preparation. If you were a member of either of the school societies you usually ascended to the society’s room on the top floor of School Hall and did the best you could in the presence of from six to twenty others, several of whom would doubtless be playing pool. Otherwise you went into the library or the common room in your dormitory or retired to your study. In Monty’s case, as Morris lay the length of the front campus away from School Hall, he usually affected the library. At a few minutes before three the last class for the day was dismissed. At three-thirty football practice began and continued for anywhere from an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. After practice, twenty minutes or more was spent in getting a shower, dressing and returning to the room. Supper was at six. In the evening one theoretically did as one pleased, although a certain amount of “digging” was necessary to even the idlest. Visits to the village after supper were not encouraged, but one might go if one filled out a “pass,” and had it viséd by an instructor or proctor. That was the average program for a member of the two middle classes. The juniors were more restricted, and underwent an hour of compulsory study in the evening. The seniors usually had fewer hours of recitation during the week, with, consequently, more free time. On Sundays every student attended church in the morning, and could go again in the evening if he desired. There was a Bible class in the afternoon, and, in the evening, the Christian Fraternity held a meeting. Both of these were open to all members of the school.

Now, it would seem that Monty’s days were sufficiently occupied to prevent his being bored, and yet on the Thursday evening succeeding the defeat at the hands of St. James he distinctly made the assertion that he was bored. At the moment he was lying on the window-seat in Number 14 Lothrop, his hands under his head—he had brushed the pillows to the floor because he disliked having his head higher than his feet—and his gaze fixed on a spot on the ceiling. The statement was made to no one in particular, but was heard by Jimmy and Leon. Dud was upstairs visiting Ordway. For a long moment the remark brought no response. Then Leon yawned, and:

“So am I,” he responded. “I wish there was something to do.”

“You might dig a bit,” suggested Jimmy cheerfully. “I’m told that digging is quite fascinating.”

“I’m sure your personal experience is very slight,” said Leon. “I wish I had enough energy to tear myself away from your scintillant society, and do some digging, though. I’ve got a lot of Milton to read.”

“Dear old John!” murmured Jimmy, stretching his feet further across the floor from the armchair in which he was reclining on his spine. “How well, and, oh, how fondly I recall his beautiful poems! Don’t you just dote on ‘L’Allegro’?”

“I do not,” replied Leon feelingly. “How much of him do we have, Jimmy?”

“Oh, lots, dearie. There’s his lovely ‘Il Penseroso,’ yet, and likewise the absorbing ‘Comus.’ Milton was a bright and cheerful writer, what?”

“What are you hombres talking about?” inquired Monty lazily. “What other brands of cigars does this fellow make?”

“Milton was not a cigarmaker,” answered Jimmy patiently. “And the ‘Il Penseroso’ is not a five-cent bundle of cabbage leaves. Milton was a poet. What he made was trouble. I don’t suppose,” he added, thoughtfully, “that Milton realized what a heap of worry he was laying out for the upper middle class at Grafton School, though. If he had, he wouldn’t have written the stuff. But he couldn’t foresee——”

“Of course, he couldn’t. Milton was blind.”

“Hello! Listen to him, Leon! He heard about it away out in Wyoming! Wonderful the way news travels nowadays, isn’t it?”

“Guess it’s Milton’s daughters you want to speak to about it,” said Monty. “They could have hidden father’s fountain pen if they’d wanted to. I’ve seen a picture of the old gentleman dictating to one of the girls, with two or three more standing around and looking like they were wondering what they could do to stop it. Do I have to wade through that Pondoroso stuff if I make the upper middle? Because if I do I’m going to stay where I’m at!”

“I love his free and untrammeled use of the English language,” murmured Jimmy. “‘Where I am at’ is so expressive, isn’t it? Of course, you both recall the Englishman who went home from a visit to this benighted land and criticised us for saying ‘Where am I at?’ He said it should be ‘Where is my ’at?’”

“That’s funny,” said Monty.

“Why not laugh a little, then?”

“I didn’t mean that the story was funny, although it is—or was once. I meant it was funny you should remember it. I forgot it so long ago!”

“Next time stop me, sweet one.”

“You didn’t give us a chance,” laughed Leon.

“Naturally. If you want to tell a funny story, do it quick before some Smart Alick says he’s heard it!”

“All this is bright and brilliant,” observed Monty, “but it doesn’t soothe the restless longing I have for excitement.”

“Wish we could go to the movies,” said Jimmy.

“Might as well wish for grand opera,” responded Leon. “What can we do, fellows? I’ve got it now, too.”

“Why do anything?” asked Jimmy. “I’m quite comfortable here. You chaps probably ate something for supper that doesn’t agree with you. I know that feeling of unrest perfectly.” He laid a hand tenderly on his stomach. Monty snorted with disdain.

“Bet you your soul and your stomach are in the same place, Jimmy,” he said. “If I was at home I—I’d get on a bronc and run him about ten miles across country. I feel—” Monty stopped.

“Proceed, dearie,” prompted Jimmy. “Just what are your symptoms? Tell Uncle James.”

“I feel like it would do me a heap of good to take that closet door off its hinges and slide downstairs on it.”

“Why, that’s an innocent diversion,” said Jimmy. “Go to it, Monty!”

“Come along?” asked Monty hopefully.

“N-no. No, I think not, my impetuous friend. You see, my folks rather expect me to stay here until June. It would be an awful disappointment to them if I appeared, bag and baggage, back at the old home in October. Think of something—something—er—more sub-tile.”

“How about going down and doing something to Jimmy?”

“‘Something’ is so vague. What, for instance? Mind you, I’m for it, because Jimmy and I don’t love each other just now. Jimmy said things about a comp of mine that no gentleman should say to another. Go on, Monty. You interest me strangely.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Anything short of breaking him somewhere. Joking aside, fellows, let’s mosey out and shoot up something. Let’s have some excitement. I’ve been as good and quiet as a little woolly lamb ever since I struck this outfit, and now I’ve just got to spread myself a bit. Leon, you think of something.”

“Yes, Leon, let that ardent southern nature of yours loose for a spell,” Jimmy seconded. “Unfurl—er—unleash your vivid imagination. We hang on your words.”

“We might break something,” answered Leon thoughtfully. “A couple of windows.”

“With rocks?” asked Monty doubtfully. “Oh, I know! With baseball bats! Great! Come on!”

“Call that sub-tile?” scoffed Jimmy. “You fellows have no more imagination than a—than a—a hen! You’re just naughty little boys with your breaking windows stuff. Think up something artistic, original.”

“I don’t hear you coming across with any big ideas,” said Monty, scornfully. “Say, what do you fellows do here when you want some fun?”

“Oh, we go up to the society rooms and play pool or chess,” replied Jimmy sweetly. “Or we gather about the piano downstairs and sing glees. Don’t you just love to sing glees? And rounds? Know that charming thing about the Three Blind Mice? Shall we go down and sing it?”

“You make me sick,” groaned Monty.

“I’m going home to do some studying,” said Leon with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “What time is it?”

“About a quarter past nine, old dear. What’s the matter with our western friend?”

Monty had lowered his feet to the floor, and was gazing at Jimmy with a strangely earnest expression, an expression absorbed and almost exalted. “Where is this piano?” he asked softly.

“Oh, my poor Leon, he’s going to sing at us!” moaned Jimmy. “Don’t tell him! Don’t tell him!”

But Monty was already crossing the room to the door. “Come on,” he directed. “If we can’t break something let’s make a noise.”

The common room, a big apartment on the first floor comfortably furnished with leather-cushioned chairs and couches and window-seats, was deserted, but in the game room, which opened from it at one end, a dozen boys were seated about the tables at chess or checkers or dominoes. At the other end of the common room was the library, a square apartment of book-lined walls and low reading lamps, and here a few more denizens of Lothrop were ensconced. The evening was a trifle chilly in spite of the warmth of the day, and a small fire flickered in the big fireplace when Monty and Leon and Jimmy descended on the piano. Jimmy was grinning in anticipation of the disturbance about to be created. There was no rule that he knew of prohibiting the use of the piano at that hour, but he fancied the chess players and the studious youths reclining in the padded ease of the library armchairs would not be especially sympathetic toward Monty’s craving for music.

If any such thoughts assailed Monty, he hid the fact. Up went the piano lid, and he ran his fingers along the keys with a startling tri-i-ill. “Some box,” he announced approvingly. Then he seated himself on the bench, struck a chord resonantly, and put his head back. In the library five books were lowered simultaneously, and in the game room a dozen absorbed youths stared amazedly and frowned disapproval.

CHAPTER XII
KEYS: PIANO AND OTHERS

Monty had a good voice, and lots of it, a true baritone. And he proved within a few moments that he could, to use his own phrase, “pound the tombstones.” He could read easy notes, but his playing was usually by ear, and he was not tied down by any particular method, style or rules. Fingering may not have been one of Monty’s strong points, but he had a good sense of harmony and rhythm and plenty of strength! His first offering, however, afforded him small opportunity to prove his skill as an accompanist, for the song required little assistance from the instrument. Nor, for that matter, did it call for remarkable vocal effort. It wasn’t a particularly cheerful song, and the fact that Monty sang it in a drawling wail made it no livelier.

“Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,

The words came low and mournfully

From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay

On his dying couch at the close o’ day.

He had wasted and pined till o’er his brow

The shadows o’ death were gath’ring now,

And he thought of his home and breathed a sigh

As the cowboys came round to see him die.

Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,

In a narrow grave just six by three,

Where the wild coyotes will howl o’er me;

Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee!”

There was, evidently, another verse, but Jimmy interposed. “For the love of lemons, Monty!” he begged. “Don’t you know anything cheerful?”

Monty grinned, nodded and struck the keys a resounding bang, straightened back and started off blithely:

“Only a ‘ranch hand,’ stranger,

At a dollar a day, you see;

And six mules hitched to a ‘Stockton gang’

Furnish the fun for me.

“At four o’clock in the bunk house

The clock beats a wild tattoo,

It’s git up an’ git an’ feed your mules

An’ swallow the Chinaman’s stew.

“The ‘Stockton gang’s’ three miles away;

We’re there before the sun;

There’s fifteen of us breaking the sod

Before the day’s begun.

“There’s no orange bloom on the harness,

But frost on the single-trees,

And the sun shows red over Baldy’s head

As you shiver an’ cough an’ sneeze.”

Monty said there were eighteen verses in all, but he compromised with Leon and Jimmy on eight. By that time Monty’s audience had increased vastly. The doorways were thronged, while a few of Jimmy’s friends had joined him at the piano. Monty dashed into a rollicking cowboy ditty called, “When Rob Got Throwed”:

“The time when Rob got throwed

I thought I sure would bust!

I like to died a-laffin’

To see him chew the dust.

He crawled on that Andy bronc

An’ hit him with a quirt;

The next thing that he knew

He was wallerin’ in the dirt!”

Applause followed the final verse, and for the first time Monty became aware of the size of his audience. “Hello,” he said to the room in general. “Want to sing something? What do they know, Jimmy? How about ‘Sam Bas’? or ‘The Shivaree’? or ‘Black Jack Davey’? Well, what do you know?”

But it appeared that the audience preferred to hear more from Monty, and Monty good-naturedly responded. The game tables were now abandoned and the doorways were empty, and half a hundred inhabitants of Lothrop had closed in around the piano or found points of vantage near by. The big tables, one at each end of the room, were crowded, and swinging feet kept time to the refrains. Monty had to ransack his memory for songs. Now and then the listeners showed a disposition to take part by humming a chorus, but it wasn’t until the soloist had got halfway through “Cantankerous Charlie” that he had the audience with him. They liked that song, for there was a fine swing to the refrain:

My name’s Cantankerous Charlie, and I come from over the mesa.

I never gets bust, I’ve plenty o’ dust, and I always pay my way, sir.

I’ve rocked the cradle and shoveled the dirt from morn till dewy night,

And now I’m down in this old town with a heart that’s gay and light

Yip, yip! Yip, yay! I’m free to say I’m here to see the sights!

After that the concert was no longer a one-man affair. One singer after another was pushed forward, held a brief conference with Monty and launched into song. After the first verse was sung Monty was right with him. When in doubt he “faked,” but he never went far wrong. They sang all the popular songs of the moment, and many old favorites. Once, Mr. Rumford appeared unnoticed at the door—his rooms were at the end of the corridor—and looked and listened doubtfully. But the hour was still early, and save that the noise was possibly a bit excessive, the performance was violating no rule, and the assistant principal went softly away again.

At last, Monty pleaded weariness, and a senior named Forbes took his place at the keyboard, and they began on the school songs: “Here We Go,” “The Scarlet and Gray,” “The Days to Memory Dear,” and many others. Monty sifted his way through the crowd. He had had enough, and was ready for bed. He tried to find Leon, but that youth was swallowed up in the throng. Fellows near by were observing him curiously, but approvingly, as he loitered across to the fireplace. At the piano Forbes was making the strings hum under the strains of “Here We Go!” and half a hundred throats—more, perhaps, since youths returning from the village or other dormitories had joined the throng—were chanting the chorus. Monty yawned. After all, singing had not altogether quieted his craving for exciting deeds, but nothing more promised. Unobtrusively, he left the room by the nearer door, and climbed the stairs to Number 14 to recover his hat. As he went, the swelling refrain followed him:

“Grafton! Grafton! Here we go,

Arm in arm, with banners flying!

Pity, pity any foe

When it hears us loudly crying:

‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’

All together! Now the chorus:

‘Grafton! Grafton!——’”

The words, if not the sound, failed him as he pushed open the door of Number 14. He considered awaiting Leon’s and Jimmy’s return, and decided against it. Leon would probably go back to Trow without coming back upstairs. Monty yawned again, picked up his hat, set it askew on his head, and started out. But the sight of the key reposing trustfully on the inside of the door gave him an idea. He chuckled as he withdrew it, closed the door, inserted the key on the outside, turned it, and pulled it out. He tried the portal and dropped the key in his pocket. Up and down the corridor other doors stood invitingly open, some wide, some barely ajar. A few were closed. Monty’s idea grew to splendid proportions. He crossed the corridor to the nearest open portal and knocked. There was no answer. As he had expected none, he was not disappointed. Reaching around, he took the key of Number 13 from the inside, transferred it to the outside, and closed and locked the door. The key, with its little brass disk bearing the number, joined its fellow in Monty’s pocket. He listened, a smile of dreamy delight on his face. They were still at it downstairs. It would be a shame not to make a thorough job of it, not to take advantage of such good fortune!

For the next few minutes he was busy. He didn’t hurry, and there was nothing crafty in his movements. Quite boldly he walked to a door and knocked. Only once did he meet a response. Then he asked for Jimmy, was told to try Number 14, apologized and withdrew. At the end of five minutes twelve doors were firmly locked and twelve keys jingled merrily in Monty’s pocket. Whereupon, crooning softly and happily, he descended the stairway at the south end of the building, and, carefully avoiding the common room, let himself out into the night.

“So I went and fetched him back,

But I was feelin’ good all day,

For I sure enough do love to see

A feller to git throwed that way!”

Monty jingled the keys in his pocket in soft accompaniment to his triumphant song as he walked toward the corner of the building. But having reached the corner, he paused in the shadow there. The question confronting him was what to do with the keys. They were no use to him, were heavy in his pocket, and made a noise as he walked. There ought to be, he reflected, an appropriate place to deposit them. But he didn’t see one that he favored until his gaze fell on the lighted and open window of a room close at hand. It was the corner room in the building, and, as he determined when he had softly pushed his way through the branches of the shrubs between walk and building, was evidently a study.

It was more elaborately furnished than other studies Monty had seen, and the pictures on the walls were rather more “classy.” A light on a big mahogany writing table was turned low under its green shade. Best of all, the apartment was deserted. By standing close to it, and rising on his tiptoes he could stretch his hand through the window and reach the top of a small cabinet which stood against the wall at the right. The top of the cabinet was already occupied by various small articles, but they could be pushed aside. Monty listened and looked. No one was in sight, and, save for the subdued din of the singers in the common room, all was silent. In a moment the booty was disposed of. One key fell to the floor with an alarming rattle, but nothing happened in consequence. Monty withdrew noiselessly, got cautiously back to the path, and proceeded on his way home across the campus. He met no one, and a few minutes later climbed the stairs of Morris and entered his room looking as innocent as a cherub.

At the washstand, Alvin Standart was sopping a sponge against his nose and sniffling weirdly. Monty gazed delightedly.

“Hello,” he said. “Who gave it to you?”

“Nobody,” replied Alvin, sniffling between syllables. “It’s just a nose-bleed. I have them sometimes.”

“Oh,” murmured Monty, disappointedly. “What for?”

“What for?” echoed Alvin in disgust. “Because I can’t help it, you fresh chump.”

Monty pondered that, looking on interestedly while Alvin continued his efforts to stop the hemorrhage. Finally, “Look here,” he said, “isn’t there something you do for it? Seems to me I’ve heard of something. Let’s see. I know! You put a lump of ice on the back of the neck or against the spine. That’s it. And if you haven’t any ice you use something cold, like a—paper-knife.”

“Haven’t any ice,” grumbled Alvin.

“Wait a bit. A knife will do, or—here’s the very thing!” Monty’s inquiring hands had encountered a key in his pocket, and he drew it forth triumphantly. “Here you are. Hold that against the back of your neck, like that.”

“Ouch! It’s cold!”

“Sure! It ought to be. Got it? All you’ve got to do is to hold it there until your nose stops bleeding.”

“Well—well, suppose it doesn’t? Think I’m going to stand here all night holding this thing?”

“Search me,” answered Monty cheerfully. “You don’t expect me to do it, do you? Couldn’t you sit down and hold it?”

“No, because I’ve used up all the handkerchiefs I’ve got and— Oh, gee!”

“What’s the matter?” inquired Monty, looking up from his work of removing his shoes.

“It’s gone.”

“The nose-bleed? Good!”

“No, you fool, the key! It dropped down my back.” Alvin squirmed uncomfortably.

“You should have held on to it. You see, the well-known law of gravity——”

Alvin sniffed. “You and your silly old key,” he growled.

“Well, you ought to be glad it wasn’t a lump of ice,” responded Monty soothingly. “There’s a bright side to every cloud, Standart.” Monty dropped his shoes and began undressing. Alvin viewed him aggrievedly from the washstand.

“I don’t believe you ever heard of stopping nose-bleed with a key,” he said, suspiciously. “I never did.”

“That’s mighty poor reasoning, partner. About how long will you be camping around that basin?”

“I—I guess I’m through with it now,” answered Alvin. “I think it’s stopped.” He sniffed experimentally, blew his nose gently, and said, “Humph!” in a surprised tone.

“There you are! Next time, hombre, you’ll believe in my remedies, eh? Would you very much mind removing the basin to the bathroom, and obliterating the evidences of carnage? Give it a good cleaning while you’re at it.”

When Alvin returned he set about disrobing, and in the course of the operation the key which had slipped down his back fell with a tinkle to the floor. Alvin picked it up, and observed it curiously. “Say, where’d you get this?” he asked.

“Get what? Oh, that key? I don’t know. Let’s see it.”

“It’s a dormitory key,” said Alvin. “It says ‘8’ on it.”

“Oh, I—happened on it. Toss it over. I dare say some chap dropped it.” Monty put it in his trousers pocket, with a fine show of ease, but as he went back to bed, and settled down for slumber he wondered how he had missed it when he had emptied his pockets of the others, and blamed himself severely for his carelessness.

CHAPTER XIII
STANDART GETS ADVICE

Monty encountered Jimmy the next morning in front of School Hall. Jimmy was one of a dozen youths awaiting the nine o’clock bell on the steps. It was a brisk morning in the last week of October, but here in the sunlight it was comfortably warm. Jimmy disengaged himself from Ned Musgrave and Nick Blake, with whom he had been talking, and sauntered out to intercept Monty. He had a quizzical smile on his face as he thrust a hand under Monty’s arm, and turned him along the brick wall.

“Fine morning, Monty,” he observed blandly.

“Why not?”

“No reason at all, no reason at all. I’m glad it is. I’m glad for your sake.”

Monty gazed around over the turf. “I didn’t know loco weed grew in these parts,” he murmured.

“Because,” proceeded Jimmy, “it’s nice to have pleasant recollections of a place. You’ll remember Grafton as you see it today, Monty, with the sunlight gilding the façades of our noble buildings, and the autumn sky blue overhead——”

“I like it rhymed better. There’s more swing to it. This ‘free verse’ stuff——”

“Yes, you’ll look back on this fair morning, and say, ‘Ah, them was the “halcyon” days!’ You’ll remember the school at its best, Monty.”

“I’ll try to. I’m in no hurry, but it’s about two minutes to nine, and maybe you’d better get down to cases, partner.”

“What train have you decided on?” asked Jimmy solicitously.

“Oh, I’m going away, am I? That’s the idea. Well, shoot, Jimmy!”

“Don’t pretend innocence, Monty. In the words of our best playwrights, ‘All is discovered!’”

“Who’s Hall?” inquired the other interestedly.

“He’s the key to the situation,” chuckled Jimmy. “Say, it was all right, Monty. I give you that. It was some circus while it lasted. Where you made one mistake was not to stick around and watch the fun. You ought to have heard the howls!” Jimmy laughed gleefully. “We spent about half an hour trying to fit keys from the upper corridor rooms before someone got sore and hiked down to ‘Jimmy’ Rumford, and told his troubles. Then ‘Jimmy’ sent for Mr. Craig, and Craig had gone to bed, and after he came he couldn’t find which was the right passkey, and there was the dickens generally.”

“Of course,” drawled Monty, “I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

Jimmy winked slowly. “You are. Bixby recognized you.”

“I don’t know him personally, but I’ve used his blacking.”

“You put your head in his room and asked for me, you idiot. That was a crazy thing to do. But they say criminals always fall down somewhere on the job.”

“Oh, that was Bixby, was it? And he up and spoke a piece?”

“Not Bix! Bix is all right. He told me in confidence, and you can depend on his keeping mum.”

“I always liked his blacking,” said Monty gratefully. “Well, then, why the stampede? Why look up trains, Jimmy?”

“Because Rumford’s hopping, tearing mad, darling. Says you—meaning whoever did it—tried to fasten the crime on him. He’s gone and told Charley. Says he will find the culprit if he has to question every fellow in school. He will, too. He’s like that. All the—er—tenacity of a bulldog; without his forgiving disposition. That was mistake number two, old dear. ‘Anyone but Jimmy’ should have been your motto.”

The nine o’clock bell rang, and Jimmy turned back along the path. But Monty grabbed him. “I guess I’m sort of boneheaded, Jimmy,” he said, “but kindly tell me where Rumford comes in on it. What did I do to him, Jimmy?”

“What did you do to him?” demanded the other incredulously as he led the pace back to School Hall. “Why, you triple-ply, self-starting idiot, you dumped the keys on his table!”

“What!”

“Sure! Didn’t you know it? Didn’t you mean to?”

Monty shook his head weakly as they stumbled up the steps, and Jimmy gave way to a gale of laughter.

“Oh, that’s great!” he gurgled. “Monty, you’re a wonder! You—you——”

“Shut up!” whispered the other. “Don’t sing about it! How much does Old Whiskers know?”

“Nothing—yet. But watch out for trouble, dearie. And, say, if you still have the key to Number 8 go and drop it in the river. It’s the only one that wasn’t found, and having it on you will be just about as safe as carrying a stick of dynamite. See you at eleven, Monty. Come up to the room.”

Jimmy darted off down the corridor, leaving Monty to climb the stairs to a Latin recitation. As he went his right hand clutched tightly a brass key and tag at the bottom of a pocket. He feared it might jingle!

“What gets me,” said Jimmy later, as they sat in Number 14, “is why Charley didn’t spring something about it in chapel this morning. He must have known by then, because he and ‘Jimmy’ were talking together when Dud and I went in. Maybe he’s going to do some detective work, and find that Number 8 key. I say, you don’t know where it got to, eh?”

Monty hesitated. Then he nodded.

“You do? Where is it? You haven’t got it still, I hope!”

“It’s best for you not to know, Jimmy,” replied Monty gravely. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“Well, all right, but, for the love of lemons, Monty, get rid of it if you have it! If it got found on you—or in your room—or anywhere—” Jimmy was quite breathless.

“I’d have to look up another school, eh? Why is it, Jimmy, that Fate knocks me around the way it does? I want to lead a quiet and peaceful life, but I’m not let. I’m a regular tumble-weed. Look at the way things happened at Dunning.”

“But you told us you deliberately fired yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but why? I was bored, just as I was last night. I needed excitement, and there wasn’t any, and so, of course, I had to find it. But it isn’t my fault, is it? I guess it’s my evil genius,” said Monty sadly. “The real A Monty Crail is a quiet, peace-loving hombre, but——”

Jimmy laughed. “The trouble with you, old scout, is that you need more room than you get at prep school. You’re a child of the boundless west, eh, what?”

“Maybe. Anyhow, I’ve had a good time so far. I’d be sorry to lose football, though. Look here, how’s Old Whiskers going to fasten the childish prank on me as long as you and Bixby keep your ears down?”

“I’m hoping he won’t,” said Jimmy. “But he’s a determined old codger, and if there’s any sort of a clue he will find it as sure as shooting. At that, though, you might not get anything more than probation.”

“What’s that do to you?” asked Monty anxiously.

“Well, it keeps you out of athletics, for one thing. And you have to stick around the school, and can’t go off, and you stay in your dormitory every evening after six o’clock, and you have to get up and stay up in all your studies. And if you make one false move faculty is on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Is that all?” asked the other sarcastically. “They don’t draw and quarter you, then?”

“It’s better than being dropped, though,” responded Jimmy philosophically. “If you’re on pro you can get reinstated again, but if you’re expelled—good night!”

“I would just as soon get fired as go on probation,” said Monty. “Anyway, what’s the good of worrying about it? If Old Whiskers gets me, why, he gets me, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe, after all, I wasn’t intended to mingle with you high-brows. Maybe one of those catch-as-catch-can schools out our way would be more my style. Might as well be cheerful, eh?”

“Sure! ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet,’ as the poet so beautifully hath it.”

“Did the fellows notice the fact that I left before the party was over?” asked Monty.

“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t know you had gone until we stopped yelping. Leon was looking for you, too. If Bixby doesn’t talk, and he promised he wouldn’t, I don’t see that ‘Jimmy’ has much of a show. Of course, if he gets to asking all the fellows he might stumble on something to put him wise.”

“He wouldn’t be likely to ask any fellows outside Lothrop, would he?”

“I suppose not. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Come across. What are you wondering about? Did someone see you up here?”

“Only Bixby. But—well, the silly part of it’s this. I didn’t know I’d missed one of those keys when I dumped them through that window. I suppose I dropped it in another pocket. Anyway, when I got back to Morris, that Indian, Standart, had a nose-bleed——”

“Who handed it to him?” asked Jimmy, eagerly.

Monty shook his head. “That’s what I hoped, but it wasn’t so. He just has ’em for fun. Well, I remembered that if you put something cold against the back of your neck you generally stopped it. I mean the nose-bleed. So I did the Good Samaritan act and fished out a key——”

“You howling idiot!”

“Take the money, Jimmy. I didn’t think anything about it being one of those keys; didn’t stop to think that it was a key, I guess; and Standart got hold of it, and wanted to know how I came by it.”

“Did you tell him you found it?”

“Something of the sort. I tried to be careless about it, but——”

“It’s all up, dearie! Still, maybe Standart won’t peep, eh?”

“Won’t he?” said Monty grimly. “He hates me like he hates soap and water, and that’s some hate! I didn’t know last night that I’d gone and put the keys in Rumford’s room or that there’d be all this fuss about it. If I had I’d have made Standart promise not to squeal. Now, I guess it’s too late. He’s probably talked it all over the school.”

“I’m afraid so,” groaned Jimmy. “Say, you are one fine little criminal, aren’t you? Look here, though, Monty, why don’t you go and find Standart and see if he’s blabbed? There’s always the chance that he hasn’t. And if he hasn’t—” Jimmy paused eloquently. “You might be able to convince him that it would be a lot more healthy to forget it!”

“I guess I’d better,” agreed Monty, reaching for his hat. “It may just be that he hasn’t connected that key with the little affair yet.”

“Don’t bank on that, old dear. Standart’s no fool, if he is an ass. He knows, all right, all right, but he may be chewing it over and thinking out the best way to spring his little piece. Get after him and buy him off or scare him to death.”

“Buy him off!” said Monty scornfully. “I wouldn’t bargain with the beast. But I might show him two mighty good reasons for keeping quiet!”

Monty didn’t overtake Alvin until dinner-time. Then he encountered him on his way downstairs to the table. During the meal, during which the practical joke played on the second floor residents of Lothrop was the main subject of conversation, Monty cast many appraising glances across the board at his roommate without, however, being able to decide how much Alvin knew or guessed. At least, he offered no light on the problem that interested the gathering, which was who had had the beautiful effrontery to put those keys on Mr. Rumford’s cabinet. Monty gathered that it would have been far less rash to have rung Doctor Duncan’s doorbell and handed the keys to a maid with his compliments!

When dinner was over Monty trailed Alvin to the front steps. It almost seemed that the latter was aware of Monty’s espionage, for he appeared to take especial pains to avoid him. He sat down, and entered the conversation that was going on, while Monty grimly stood watch in the doorway. One by one, however, the other fellows got up and went indoors or wandered away toward the campus, and Alvin, finding himself threatened with being left alone with Monty, arose, too, and started upstairs. Monty followed him leisurely, and reached the next floor only in time to prevent Alvin from dodging into Number G.

“I want to see you a minute,” he said, laying a persuasive hand on Alvin’s shoulder. “Just a minute, hombre. Come on in here.”

Alvin expostulated haughtily, but evidently didn’t care to make a physical issue of it, and followed the other into F. Monty closed the door. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets—the right coming into startling contact with that horrible key—and faced his roommate. Alvin was eyeing him at once slyly and defiantly.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to give you some advice, partner,” replied Monty gravely. “If you know something you think faculty would like to hear it’ll pay you best to forget all about it.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“I think you do, son. And my advice to you is: Don’t do it! Because if I found that faculty had learned something unpleasant about me I’d hitch it right up to you, and then, if it was the last act of my young and blameless career, I’d everlastingly wallop you, hombre. Sprinkle that on your oats and chew it!”

“If I did know anything,” blustered Alvin, “your threats wouldn’t keep me quiet. Not if I wanted to tell. I’m not saying, though, whether I know anything or not.” He smirked. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. That’s for you to find out.”

“Whether you do or don’t isn’t worrying me, Standart. I’m only giving you fair warning that if you talk you’ll wish you hadn’t. Savvy?”

“I’m not afraid of you, you blow-hard! I’ll do just as I please. Maybe if I wanted to I could tell Mr. Rumford something that would interest him, though.”

“So you do know, eh?” asked Monty grimly. He began to get out of his coat. [“Then I guess you’ve already squealed, and I’d better——”]

[“Then I guess you’ve already squealed, and I’d better——”]

“I haven’t!” protested Alvin, moving hurriedly around the table. “Give you my word I haven’t, Crail!”

“Sure?” Alvin nodded vehemently. “Well, are you going to? Because, if you are, you might as well have it right now while I’m feeling in the right mood. Are you?”

“I haven’t said I knew anything,” hedged the other. “And you can’t lick me for something I haven’t done. And—and I’d like to know what I’d be doing all the time! I’m not afraid of you, you big bully!”

“I’m no bigger than you are, and I’m nearly a year younger,” replied Monty, “but I sure can lick you, and I mean to do it the very first time you make a yip. I mean that, Standart. Remember this, hombre; if you tell anything you know or think you know it will be good-by for me, and when it is good-by I shan’t care a hang what I do, because I’ll be pulling my freight anyway. Now, you think that over, and if you think hard you’ll decide to keep your ears flat down to your head, son.”

Monty pulled his coat back into place, and Alvin, seeing that instant punishment was not his doom, recovered his sang-froid. He smiled contemptuously, and snapped his long fingers.

“I’ve got you guessing, haven’t I, Mr. Smart Alick?” he asked. “And I’ll keep you guessing, too,” he chuckled. “When things are going along their nicest, Crail, you just remember that I’m still around with a tongue in my head. I make no promises, understand. I’ve got you where I want you, and I’ll keep you there as long as it pleases me to! Now you do some thinking!”

“That’s all right, hombre,” replied Monty. “Just remember what I’ve said. There’s no time-limit set.”

After that, Monty sauntered across to School Hall, and, being quite alone in the corridor, hung the key of Number 8 Lothrop to a tack on the notice board.

CHAPTER XIV
THE MIDDLETON GAME

That was on Friday, and on Saturday morning Monty waited with mingled feelings of curiosity and uneasiness for Doctor Duncan to make an announcement in chapel regarding the matter of the stolen keys. Jimmy Logan was quite as alert, and Leon was plainly anxious. But to the surprise of each, and of the school in general, no mention was made of the affair. Faculty was treating it with bland unconcern, or so it would seem to one less used to the ways of faculty than James Townsend Logan. Jimmy was pessimistic after chapel, and on the way across to Lothrop made the fact known.

“I’d like it a good deal better,” he said, “if Charley had come out in the open and talked about it. It just proves that Rumford is doing some of his gum-shoe work, and doesn’t want to—to frighten the criminals. ‘Jimmy’ is all right, but he fancies himself a bit as a ‘detecative.’ Still, he doesn’t always make good. Last year, for instance. Remember how he sleuthed around to find out who started that Junior Meeting Riot, Dud?” Dud nodded. “Well, he fell down hard on that.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Dud. “Most fellows thought the reason faculty didn’t jump someone was because it was afraid it would have to jump half the school. Some fellows did get pro, didn’t they? Hobo Ordway——”

“Oh, Ordway got caught trying to sneak into hall after lock-up. Some lower middlers shut him up in a room in School Hall, and he had to climb down a rain-spout or something, and Wallace Cathcart, who was proctor then, nabbed him. That wasn’t any feather in ‘Jimmy’s’ cap. Just the same, I wish they’d come out, and say things and not scare us to death with this Secret Service stunt. I met ‘Jimmy’ in the corridor this morning, and he looked too blamed innocent and sweet for anything! Bet you he’s got a clue—or thinks he has!”

“Well, what’s the good of letting it spoil your entire day?” asked Monty, snuggling down into the neck of his sweater philosophically. “I didn’t do anything much, after all. It was a perfectly harmless joke. If Jimmy wants to be nasty, why, that’s up to him. I’m enjoying a perfectly clear conscience.”

“If only you hadn’t let that pig of Standart get wise,” mourned Leon. “Couldn’t we get him into a canoe and spill him out in the river? He doesn’t look like a chap who knows how to swim.”

“I’ll stake my claim he doesn’t,” agreed Monty. “He hates water too much ever to learn swimming! Well, I’m going to breakfast. See you later, fellows. I’ll be up at eleven, Leon.”

They parted in front of Lothrop, Jimmy, Dud and Leon entering the building to seek the dining hall, and Monty setting out briskly for Morris. It was a cold, nippy morning, and he thought pleasantly of the cup of coffee that awaited him, and hoped that he would not be too late to get his full share of Mother Morris’s hot biscuits or muffins. That affair of the keys dwindled into insignificance beside the far more important matter of breakfasting.

That afternoon there was a lay-off for the first team men, and, in consequence, the substitutes held the middle of the stage. Monty ought to have been so depressed and anxious as to have no heart for football, but just the opposite was true. After Williams had played against the second team for one twelve-minute period, Monty was summoned to take his place at right guard, and proved the nearest thing to a sensation that the afternoon developed.

It wasn’t that Monty played a dazzling game, exactly, for he didn’t. But he showed such an improvement over his previous efforts that even Coach Bonner was surprised. Monty was still lacking the finer points of the position, but today he went on a regular rampage, and inside of two minutes from the blowing of the whistle had Luderus, playing opposite him on the second, putting in the hardest afternoon of his experience. Luderus was a big, beetle-browed, tow-haired youth of eighteen, as strong as an ox, and much better natured. He was very generally known as “Old Ludicrous,” and today Monty nearly succeeded in making the nickname fit him! The day was an ideal football day, windless, gray and cold, and Monty felt particularly good. As a result, Coach Crowley was forever hovering around Luderus and berating him.

“Get into him, Luderus! He’s making you look like a fool! Get the jump on him, man! Watch his arms! Don’t let him swing you like that! Now, then, hold!”

On the other side of the line, Coach Bonner frequently called commendation to Monty. “Good work, Crail! That’s the stuff! Put him out and keep him out! Go on, you’re doing well!”

After the first five or six minutes, Luderus evened matters better, but more than once when the substitutes had the ball, Monty dug a clear hole for the runner through the left side of the enemy’s line. It was a fine contest while it lasted, with each boy fighting hard for supremacy, giving and receiving hard knocks, but keeping his temper through it all. The fourth period witnessed the vanquishment of both Monty and Luderus, for they literally played themselves out, and were sent off together to make way for fresh material. They walked side by side to the field house, still panting from their exertions, and talked the conflict over in a wonderfully detached manner. Luderus was inclined to acknowledge defeat, but Monty wouldn’t hear of it.

“Snakes, Luderus, I don’t know half what you know about playing guard. The only reason we had such an even thing of it was because I felt like a two-year-old today, and managed to get the jump on you. I dare say tomorrow you’d run rings around me. Why, I’m no football player! I’d like to be, but I guess I don’t quite savvy it.”

“Keep on the way you’re going,” chuckled “Old Ludicrous,” “and you will find yourself holding down a job on the first next year. You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

“Yes. That is, I am, if they’ll let me.”

“This is my last,” said the other, rather solemnly. “I’ve played three years here, and the best I’ve done is make the second two years. Suppose it doesn’t much matter, though. A fellow has a pretty good time on the second. Football’s football, no matter where you play it. Well, hope we’ll have another go at it, Crail, some day. You’re a good fellow to play against.” Luderus went off to his locker, leaving Monty suddenly aware that he was extremely tired, and very sore in many places!

Grafton went off the next day to play Middleton School, and Monty found himself one of the party that set out by barge, after an early dinner, for the railway station. There was no especial honor to be claimed because of the fact, for Coach Bonner was taking pretty much the entire squad. But Monty was glad, and hoped he would have a chance to work off some of the stiffness that was his portion today. Half the school made the trip with the team, and supplied enough enthusiasm to have won a dozen contests.

Middleton was only forty-four miles distant, but, what with a delay at Needham Junction, and a consequent late arrival at their destination, the Grafton team and supporters reached the scene of battle a scant four minutes before the time set for the start of the game.

Practice was necessarily short for the visitors, and at five minutes past the scheduled time, Pete Gowen kicked off for Grafton. The latter began the game with her strongest line-up, for her adversary was reputed to be a very clever team. Derry was at left end, and Tray at right, the tackles were Spalding and Hanrihan, the guards Kinley and Gowen, and Musgrave was at center. Behind the line, Captain Winslow was in his place at left half, with Ordway beside him, and Nick Blake at quarter. The only second-choice player was Caner, playing fullback in place of Manson, who had hurt his knee in practice three days before. As the game progressed many substitutions were made, but with the single exception noted, Grafton started out at her best.

Middleton had a particularly puzzling, and successful protection for the runner at the kick-off, and swept the ball back into the middle of the field in spite of her opponent’s efforts to penetrate the interference. After that, Middleton apparently set out to capture the game then and there, and came measurably near doing it. From their forty-five yards to Grafton’s twenty-three they took the pigskin, using bewildering runs outside tackles that, for the time at least, the Scarlet-and-Gray could neither solve nor stop. Only once was the home team in danger of losing the ball during that advance, and that was when, on the thirty-yard-line, a runner tripped over his own feet, and the tape had to be brought in to determine the distance. The matter of an inch or so gave Middleton her first down, however. After that, she plugged the line, and reached the twelve yards in six downs. There, after two attempts with no gain, she tried a field-goal, and, although the kicker stood well inside the twenty-yard-line, made a horrible mess of the attempt, the ball being blocked and captured by Hanrihan on his nineteen yards. Winslow kicked on second down, and the battle surged back to midfield.

Middleton again tried her running plays, but made shorter gains now. Grafton got the ball on downs near her thirty-yard-line and started toward the distant goal. Plugging brought her past the center of the field and two wide runs by Caner put the pigskin down on the enemy’s thirty-four. Then an attempted forward-pass went into the wrong hands and Middleton punted, and the quarter ended.

The second period was Grafton’s all the way, but although she got to within fifteen yards of the goal a fumble by Caner just when things looked brightest and the Grafton contingent was shouting loudest saved the home team. The second quarter ended in a punting duel in which neither side showed any superiority, although Middleton’s skill in running the ball back gave her the best of the argument. Middleton had caught on her thirty-five yards when the whistle blew.

When the second half began it was seen that Bellows had taken Derry’s place at left end and James was substituting Spalding at left tackle. Middleton had favored that end of the Grafton line in her runs, and with good results. The change worked well, James proving much harder to fool than Spalding had been. Grafton got the ball on her ten yards at the kick off and Ordway took it back seven before he was spilled. The same back made four through tackle on a delayed play and Caner was stopped in his tracks. Winslow punted to the enemy’s forty-five yards. Middleton tried the Grafton right end and made three, but was stopped for a loss on the next attempt at the same place. She got through left guard for four and then faked a kick and made her distance on a double pass that caught Grafton’s right side napping. Two more gains gave her another six yards and then she punted over the line.

From the twenty yards, Winslow got clean away for twelve and followed it up with four more. Caner tried the center and made no gain. Bellows pulled in three on an end-around play. Caner again failed and Winslow punted. Middleton misjudged the ball and Ordway fell on it on the enemy’s twenty-seven. Grafton’s supporters implored a touchdown and the Scarlet-and-Gray team set out to give them what they asked for. Two delayed-passes put the pigskin on the twenty, Blake gaining four and Winslow three. Ordway was stopped for a short gain near the side line, but Winslow made the distance on a short-side plunge. Time was called for a Middleton player and the home team made two alterations in her line. Ordway carried the ball on a wide end run to a point opposite the goal but without much gain. Caner faked a forward-pass and tossed the ball to Winslow for a try at center. Winslow got through for seven and put the pigskin just back of the ten-yard-line. Caner got two off right tackle, Ordway failed to gain and Winslow dropped back to kicking distance. But with only eight to go on the third down, the kick didn’t materialize, nor did Middleton expect it to. Winslow threw forward to Tray and the latter fell across the line for the first score. Caner failed at goal.

Grafton’s second score came three minutes later. Ordway made thirty-two yards on the run back after the kick-off and put the ball on his own forty-four yards. Longley went in for Musgrave at center and Brunswick took Captain Winslow’s place at left halfback for Grafton. On the next play Brunswick got clear through the right of the Middleton line and romped to her thirty-six before he was pulled down. A forward-pass paved the way for the next touchdown and Ordway took the ball across from the twelve yards in three plunges. Brunswick kicked an easy goal.

The period ended a minute later and the teams changed places.

CHAPTER XV
MONTY GOES OVER

Coach Bonner ran in five substitutes, Bowen at right guard, Peet at right tackle, Hanser at right half, Barnes at full and Weston at quarter. Monty, one of the blanket-wrapped line on the bench, witnessed Bowen’s departure for the trampled battle field with disappointment. He had been hoping that Mr. Bonner would decide on him for the place. But Bowen was an old hand and a better player, and, in spite of disappointment, Monty acknowledged the wisdom of the coach’s choice. Kinley was still holding down the right guard position and would certainly come out before long, but when he did there was Hersum ready, or, if not Hersum, then Little. Monty couldn’t see where he came into it today.