The next day, Thursday, when Hamlin reached the school-room, he found there a group of boys eagerly discussing the election and the sudden and unaccountable change in the sentiments of Company C.
“I can’t see through it,” Raleigh was saying as Hamlin entered. “Yesterday morning one of the boys told me that thirty-three of the company were pledged to vote for Griffin, and in the meeting after drill you know that Coyle declared that thirty-three were pledged to vote for Graham. There’s something snaky about it all, I believe.”
“So do I,” declared Hamlin. “Coyle’s up to mischief. You know he hates all of us who have tried to put down disorder in the class, and I don’t believe he means to vote for Graham any more than he means to vote for his royal highness, St. John.”
“So I say,” cried Reed. “Coyle’s awful slippery, and he’ll stop at nothing when he’s made up his mind to put a scheme through.”
Freeman, though not in the battalion, was as deeply interested as those who were, in the matter under discussion. As he listened to the talk, he was idly turning the leaves of a copy of the school catalogue which was lying on his desk.
Suddenly he sprang up and held the book open before Hamlin’s eyes, while he pointed excitedly to a name in the list of senior pupils. Hamlin looked at it in a perplexed way for an instant, then he cried out, “I say, fellows,” but stopping suddenly, he looked keenly around the room, and then ran and shut the door into the hall.
“Well, what’s the matter with Hamlin? Evidently he’s not all right,” cried one wonderingly, as Hamlin began:—
“There’s not one of Coyle’s crowd here, so I’ll tell you what’s the matter with Hamlin. I believe we’ve got hold of Coyle’s scheme, thanks to Freeman. Look here!”
He held up the catalogue and pointed to one of the names. It was Thomas Graham Griffin.
“Don’t you see?” he went on. “Coyle and his crowd are going to vote for Graham, as he said, but it’s Graham Griffin, not Alec Graham. He counted on our not remembering that Griffin’s middle name is Graham.”
“That’s it, sure as sneezing!” exclaimed Reed, “and Coyle said it to keep us from trying to get votes for Graham. Well, I call that a right down mean trick.”
“Here comes Gordon,” cried Freeman, as the door opened, and at once Gordon was surrounded by the excited group, all trying to tell him the story at once. He listened with a troubled face.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” he said, when the clamor subsided a little. “If this is so, Graham won’t be elected at all, and Griffin is no kind of a fellow to be captain of Company C.”
But now the boys came trooping in, as it was approaching nine o’clock, and with a hasty word of caution to let no hint get to Coyle of their understanding of the real state of things, Gordon took his seat.
It was not easy for him and some others, however, to give their usual attention to their studies, and they were glad when recess set them free to think and speak of all that was in their thoughts.
Gordon asked permission for a few of the boys to remain in the school-room during the intermission, and then the situation was earnestly discussed. The list of members of Company C was carefully scanned. Some, they knew, would vote for Griffin; some, they were sure, would not. But there were twenty doubtful ones.
“We must manage to see every one of these twenty,” Gordon said. “Some of them, probably, are pledged to Griffin, but some, I’m sure, would rather have Graham over them.”
“Unless Coyle has managed somehow to set them against Graham,” interposed Hamlin.
“How could he set them against Graham?” said Gordon.
“I don’t know how, but he’s capable of lying to any extent to do it. We all know that,” answered Hamlin.
“That’s so,” cried several voices.
“Why can’t we go to some of the nice fellows in the company and ask them point-blank about it?” suggested Clark.
“Yes, why not? Seems to me that’s the thing to do,” said Reed.
“Who’s the best one to do it, then?” questioned Gordon. “If Coyle has told ’em a lot of stuff to set ’em against Graham, likely he’s said as much about Hamlin and me, and all the rest of us.”
“Yes, but all the same, some in Company C are real good fellows, and if they found that Coyle had been lying to them about Graham, they wouldn’t stand by him or his candidate,” said Hamlin.
“I should think four or five of us could do the business. Each one of the four, say, might see five of the twenty fellows between now and school time to-morrow and try to get to the bottom of this, and at the same time try to get as many as possible of the twenty to vote for Graham,” said Sherman.
“It’s the best thing we can do,” said Gordon, “though, if they’ve promised Griffin their votes—” he added doubtfully.
“If they’ve promised because of false statements made to them, they have surely a right to change their votes,” said Clark.
“That’s so,” said Raleigh; “but see here, can’t we keep this thing quiet, so that if we do succeed in making enough fellows change their votes to elect Graham, that Coyle and his crowd shall not suspect it?”
“It would be fine if we could keep them in the dark and turn the tables on them to-morrow at the election,” laughed Hamlin.
“Wouldn’t it, though!” chuckled Reed. “Let’s try for it, do!”
“I’ll be only too thankful if we can put Graham in, anyhow,” said Gordon in a troubled voice. “Griffin’s influence is bad—a good deal worse than Professor Keene suspects, or he’d never in the world allow him to be a candidate.”
“If that is so, Professor Keene ought to know it,” said Clark.
“Nobody in this crowd goes in for telling tales,” cried Lee, with a look at Clark that pointed the remark.
Clark colored and turned away, but instantly Hamlin’s arm was thrown across his shoulders, and Hamlin’s clear voice rang out indignantly:—
“For shame, Lee,” he cried. “We all know that Clark does not deserve that. I’d like to know if you consider it more honorable to keep still and let a bad fellow lead a dozen others into evil ways, than to warn the professor and so save them. For my part, I’d rather be called a telltale than to feel that I’d had a hand in any boy’s downfall.”
Lee’s face darkened, and he muttered something, under his breath, about “cowards and cheats.”
It was Gordon who broke the silence that followed.
“I can bear witness that Clark was anything but cowardly in that affair last year,” he said; “and since I’ve become better acquainted with him, I’ve been convinced that there was some underhanded work about that pony business. I mean that somebody else, and not Clark, was the one to blame.”
“And I know who it was,” added Reed.
At this, all eyes were turned on him, and half a dozen voices cried out:—
“Who, who?”
For a moment Reed hesitated, then he said, “Henderson had a hand in it.”
“Well, who else? Why don’t you out with it?” questioned Hamlin, eagerly.
“Bet a cooky ’twas Crawford,” cried Raleigh. “It was, it was!” he added, as Reed colored, and remained silent.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Gordon. “It’s too bad to have anything more come out against Crawford, now when he’s trying to live down last year’s record.”
“That’s so,” said Reed, earnestly, “and I’m sorry I spoke, but I’ve felt for a long time that it wasn’t fair to Clark to keep still about that. Say boys, if I tell you the whole story, will you all promise not to repeat a word of it to anyone?”
“Yes, yes,” cried every boy except Clark and Gordon. The latter, less excitable and more thoughtful than most of the others, said:—
“Hold on—I don’t promise till I’ve thought it all out. If we’ve been wronging Clark, we owe it to him to let the truth be known.”
But now Clark spoke. “Boys,” he said, “you have been wronging me, for I never saw that pony until Mr. Horton held it up before me; but if all of you here believe me, I’m perfectly willing to let the matter rest. Crawford is having a hard enough time as it is, this year. If he had a hand in this thing, I’m only too glad to forget it all, if the rest of you will do the same.”
“Three cheers for Clark!” cried Reed, but Clark interposed quickly:—
“No, no, don’t! We’ll have a crowd in here to know what it’s all about.”
Gordon walked over to Clark and held out his hand as he said:—
“I, for one, have perfect confidence in Clark’s honor, and I know he’s no coward.”
Clark’s eyes were not so clear as usual as he wrung the offered hand, but he knew that from that hour no shadow would rest on his name in the minds of those present. No shadow? Ah yes—even in that the happiest hour of his school life, the shadow of his father’s sin fell upon him—and the light faded from his eyes and his lips took their old sad curve, as he turned to Reed, and said:—
“Reed, you know that someone put that pony in my desk without my knowledge?”
“I do,” said Reed, promptly; “I heard the whole thing planned.”
“Well then, for my sake, I beg that you will never tell anyone anything more about it. And boys, once more for my sake, don’t let what Reed has said make any difference in your treatment of anyone in the school. Will you all promise?”
Very reluctantly was the promise given, but it was given.
After school it was decided that Gordon, Hamlin and Reed should see that day as many as possible of the twenty boys referred to, in Company C. Then the three were to meet at Hamlin’s house to compare notes and see if there was any chance of Graham’s election. If not, they must decide whether or not they should refer the matter to Prof. Keene.
At ten o’clock that night, Hamlin was walking impatiently back and forth in the library, listening for quick footsteps or a whistle outside. He heard the steps at last, and had the door open before the whistle had fairly sounded, and in another moment he had pushed Gordon and Reed into a couple of easy-chairs, and was saying, eagerly:—
“Well, what luck did you have? I’m dying to know, as the girls say.”
“Prime luck,” cried Reed, while Gordon added, “We’ll put Graham in, unless I’m much mistaken.”
“But what did you find out?” questioned Hamlin, impatiently.
“I saw six of the best fellows in Company C. Two of them were going to vote for Graham, anyhow. The other four were determined not to vote for him,” said Gordon.
“Because Coyle had told them that Graham wanted to get the captaincy in order to work up a new scheme that they called self-government?” broke in Hamlin, rapidly.
“Yes, that was it,” assented Gordon. “If they did but know it, that self-government scheme is just about the best thing that I’ve heard of for boys; but they’ve gotten the idea that it means all work and no play—no freedom or good times of any sort—and when Coyle stuffed ’em up with the idea that we, you and Graham, and I, had got a goody-goody sort of plan all fixed and ready to spring on them as soon as Graham was elected, they all kicked, of course, and agreed to vote for Griffin—those that didn’t favor Raleigh.”
“Yes, that’s what I found out, too,” said Hamlin, “and that cad of a Coyle had actually told them that he heard Graham and me talking the thing over, and, true as you live, I hadn’t heard a word of it until to-day.”
“Well, Gordon talked some of them over,” put in Reed.
“And Reed talked more of them over,” added Gordon. “He got all the four he interviewed to promise to vote for Graham, while I only secured three votes.”
“And I, two. That’s nine out of their thirty-three,” said Hamlin, exultantly. “So we’ll put Graham in, won’t we!”
“Don’t be too sure. There’s many a slip, you know,” quoted Gordon; “but I hope the election will go all right now.”
“And won’t Coyle and Barber be mad,” laughed Reed. “I want to sit where I can see ’em when the vote is announced.”
“If the fellows only keep their word, and don’t let on that they’ve changed their minds, it will be a big surprise for Coyle. He’ll be caught in his own trap, for the boys will vote for Graham as he said, only it will be the other Graham,” said Gordon, rising. “I’ve got to study till midnight to make up for the time I’ve spent electioneering,” he added, “but I won’t grudge it if we put in our candidate. I shouldn’t wonder if, before we get through with this business, Coyle should find himself doubly caught in his own trap.”
He would not stop to explain his words, but hurried off with Reed, leaving Hamlin, also, to “burn the midnight oil,” lest he be found wanting in the class next day.
Lessons suffered the next day, always excepting St. John’s. He, serenely unmoved by the excitement about him, rendered his Virgil as smoothly and poetically as ever, while Hamlin and Gordon listened ruefully, and even Clark felt less ready than usual to take his turn. But Mr. Horton, whose keen eyes and quick ears kept him better informed than the boys realized, was very lenient that day. He could not help enjoying such recitations as St. John’s, but he realized that character and influence were of far more importance than mere scholarship, and he knew which boys he had to thank for the change in section D.
When school was dismissed that afternoon, there was a rush for the hall. Only those belonging to the battalion were allowed to enter there, but so great was the interest in the election, that very few of the boys who were not in the battalion went home. They hung about the corridors and class-rooms, waiting to know the result.
In the hall, an intense interest was manifested as the boys assembled there. Coyle and Barber looked exultant, but Griffin was nervous and uneasy, and many of Graham’s friends were nervous and uneasy too. Even Gordon, Hamlin and Reed, who had most reason to be confident, were not yet assured of success. They knew not what unexpected turn affairs might take at the last moment.
Slips of paper and pencils were distributed, and as soon as all were ready, the slips were collected, and Gordon appointed Hamlin and two other captains as tellers. The slips were divided into three piles, and each pile was counted by one captain, and then passed over to a second to be recounted.
Nobody talked while the tellers worked, and when one of them stepped forward and handed Gordon a slip of paper, many eyes watched Gordon’s face, seeking to read there the result. But Gordon’s face told no tales. There was an intense silence as he rose with the paper in his hand.
“It gives me pleasure to announce that, by a majority of ten votes, you have elected Captain Alec Graham,” he said slowly.
Coyle sprang to his feet, with flushed face and angry eyes.
“It’s no such thing!” he shouted; “I charge fraud.”
“You are hardly the one to make such a charge,” said Gordon, quietly; then he added, “Will all those who voted for Captain Graham, please stand and be counted?”
At once forty-one boys rose.
“Will Lieutenant Gray please call the names of those standing, and all who choose can count as the names are called,” said Gordon.
Not even Coyle could deny that forty-one boys acknowledged that they had voted for Graham. He dropped into his seat looking furiously angry; nor was this feeling lessened when Gordon quietly remarked:—
“It is singular that you should be so surprised at this result when, a few days ago, you yourself announced, right here in this room, that thirty-three of Company C were pledged to vote for Graham.”
Coyle cast a vindictive glance at nine of those thirty-three who had stood to be counted a moment before, but his reply was muttered too indistinctly for any but Barber to hear.
The moment the doors were thrown open, the room was filled with a crowd of eager boys, and the cheers that greeted the new captain were as gall and wormwood to Coyle. He had burst into a flood of angry blame against the nine whose change of vote had carried the election so differently from what he had planned and expected.
“But, Coyle,” one of these said, as soon as he could make himself heard, “we promised to vote for Graham, and we did.”
“Much you did!” shouted Coyle; “I call it right down sneaky to go back on your word like that.”
“And what do you call it to lie about a fellow as you did about Graham?” asked another. “Hamlin says there wasn’t a word of truth in it.”
“Oh, Hamlin!” retorted Coyle scornfully. “You fellows’ll get enough of Hamlin, and of your precious new captain. Won’t he make you toe the mark, though—and I hope he will!” he added, viciously grinding his teeth as he thought how the tables had been turned on him.
But how completely his boomerang had rebounded, he did not know until two months later.
From the very beginning, Graham won favor with the majority of his company, but the minority that had wanted Griffin for captain did all in their power to make it hard and unpleasant for Graham. In this they were ably seconded, or, more truly, led, by Griffin, who was lieutenant of the company. He tried in every way to set the men against Graham, and instigated them to all sorts of trying, vexatious blunders and disobediences, hoping thus to force Graham to resign. But they did not know their man. All this fretted and rasped Graham, but never for a moment inclined him to resign. Instead, the more the boys rebelled against his authority, the more determined he became to compel their obedience.
From Company C, the spirit of insubordination began to spread until it could no longer be ignored, and at last Professor Keene called a special meeting of the officers to consider what should be done.
During the summer vacation, Gordon had visited a cousin of his who attended a military school where the self-government plan had been for some time in force, with great success. Gordon had been several times on the point of speaking to Professor Keene about this method, but the remembrance of Coyle’s story, and the effect it had had upon Company C, had restrained him.
But at this meeting the professor himself introduced the subject, saying that he had been talking with the principal of one of the large military schools where this plan was employed, and had been so much interested in what this gentleman had told him, that he was strongly inclined to try the method in the battalion.
“One thing is certain,” he said, “and that is, that unless there is a great improvement in the order and discipline of the companies, something must be done speedily, even if that something is the disbanding of the battalion. To disband it would be a disgrace to the school, and especially to those in the battalion, many of whom, I know, have done all in their power for order and discipline. It is a shame for a few, comparatively, to work so much harm to all; but you can see for yourselves that the present state of things cannot continue.”
“Professor,” said the captain of Company A, “I’ve heard something about that self-government plan, and I’d like to know more. Can’t you tell us all about it?”
“I could,” answered the professor, “but I prefer to let you know about it from someone better informed. Suppose I send a committee, composed of officers of the battalion, to the school I have mentioned. There you can see and hear for yourselves.”
Here Gordon stepped forward and said a few words in a tone too low to reach any but the professor’s ears. The professor nodded, and Gordon returned to his seat.
Then the professor dismissed the boys, saying that he would appoint the committee the next day.
“I’d like to be on that committee,” said Graham. “I never heard of that self-government plan until the day before I was elected. The talk about it then set me to inquiring about it, and I’ve heard a good deal of it lately.”
He spoke clearly and distinctly, so that Coyle, Griffin, and several of the men of Company C, who stood near, could not help hearing him. One of the latter looked at Coyle significantly, and whispered, “Regular boomerang—that scheme of yours, Coyle.”
Coyle scowled, and muttered angrily, “You hush up, Black, if you know when you’re well off!”
Professor Keene had no need to ask for attention when, the next day, he was ready to announce the names of the committee. There was great surprise and some disappointment among the officers when it was found that only two of them were of the number, the other two being privates of Company C. These last were Knox, one of the most troublesome fellows in the battalion, and Carr, one of the most faithful and reliable.
Knox, after the first shock of surprise, was immensely elated at having been selected. He would not have been quite so jubilant over it if he had been present at a conference between the professor, Gordon and Graham the night before.
Gordon’s whispered words to the professor had been a request for a talk with him before the names of the committee should be announced, a request which was readily granted. The hour that the two lads spent at the professor’s house that evening had given him a clearer understanding than he had had before of the state of affairs in Company C, and indeed in the whole battalion. He saw that these two boys had given very serious thought to the situation, and he appreciated the wisdom of Gordon’s suggestion that Knox, who, though one of the most troublesome in the company, was really one of the most soldierly boys, and one who, if his enthusiasm could once be aroused, might do perhaps more than any other to raise the standard of feeling and purpose in the battalion, should be one of the visiting committee. Carr was appointed partly to make it pleasanter for Knox than it would have been had the other three been officers.
Graham had wanted very much to be on the committee, as, owing to the trouble he had had with his company, he was extremely anxious to see for himself if the new method was one likely to work well in the high-school battalion; but he saw that it might not be best for three out of a committee of four to be taken from Company C. So Hamlin and one other captain were appointed.
There was a good deal of grumbling over the proposed innovation, and many of the boys declared that they would not stay on if any such scheme was carried out; but all the same, the four members of the committee were regarded with not a little envy and scarcely a boy but wished that he had been lucky enough to be selected, especially as the fortunate four were to be excused from recitations and given perfect marks for the time of their absence. Coyle and Griffin, even, would have liked to visit that school, even though they scoffed at the idea of the plan proposed.
Coyle had deteriorated steadily as the weeks passed. He was a thorn in the flesh to Gordon, Hamlin and Clark, for his frequent failures in class brought down the record, in spite of the good work of the majority. Coyle rejoiced that this was so. In no other way could he have so effectually annoyed and tormented these three, whom he hated more and more as he saw how their influence was growing in the school. They had even succeeded in arousing a feeble ambition in Barber, and consequently, Barber was “no fun at all,” these days. He insisted on pegging away at his lessons, and wouldn’t, half the time, help Coyle “make things a bit lively in class.” In short, Coyle considered himself decidedly aggrieved because the boys of section D were working for honors, or for solid acquirements, this year, instead of wasting their time in foolish tricks, or idling the hours away without accomplishing anything. True, there were still in Company C a few jolly chaps who went in for good times, but most of the fellows had taken up with that fol-de-rol about self-government, and wouldn’t so much as wink or “crack a smile” in drill, nor answer back, no matter what ridiculous order an officer might give them. All this was contrary to Coyle’s ideas, and he came to the conclusion at last that he would let them all see that he, for one, had a little spirit and independence, and didn’t choose to be ordered about by any of them. Wasn’t he battalion quartermaster, ranking as high as any of the captains? Long he pondered and planned, but he could not hit upon any way of asserting his independence and humiliating his brother officers at the same time.
He not only neglected his studies and fell steadily behind the class, but he attended so poorly to his duties as quartermaster that Gordon was finally obliged to speak to him on the subject, and though he took pains to speak privately, and in the most courteous way possible, Coyle was very angry, and answered so insolently that Gordon had hard work to control his temper.
A few days after this, the quartermaster’s accounts were sent to Gordon for approval, and finding several errors in them, he sent them back for correction. Without stopping to look over the accounts, Coyle went directly to Gordon and angrily accused him of picking flaws in the accounts on purpose to bring him—Coyle—into disgrace.
“The accounts are right to a penny, and you know it,” he shouted furiously. “You’ve been trying to find something against me all this year, and now you’ve hatched this up. If there is any error in the books you’ve changed the figures yourself, that’s all.”
Gordon turned fairly white in the strong effort he made to control himself, while Hamlin started to his feet with an indignant exclamation, and another officer who was standing by clenched his fists and took a step forward, looking as if he longed to knock the impudent fellow down.
There was a moment of silence, then Gordon turned to his adjutant, and said very quietly, “You will consider Mr. Coyle under arrest.”
“I’d like to see you try to arrest me,” blustered Coyle, who had lost all control of himself by this time. As he spoke, Prof. Keene entered the room.
“What is that, Coyle?” he said, sharply, “please repeat what you said.”
Coyle shrank a little before the professor’s stern eyes, but he repeated still angrily, “I said that I’d like to see Gordon arrest me. He’s finding fault with me about—”
“Silence, sir,” interrupted the professor; “if Major Gordon has ordered you under arrest, he must have had good reasons for so doing, and your case will be tried by court-martial.” And without another word, the professor left the room.
So it came about that Coyle was the first offender tried and sentenced under the new rules. Prof. Keene was not present during the trial, but a full account of the proceedings, in shorthand, was submitted to him, and he fully approved the sentence, which was that Coyle be degraded to the ranks or permitted to resign, whichever he chose. He chose the latter, and did not appear again in the school, which was altogether the most satisfactory ending to the matter, since, with such a boy, there was no hope of any real reform.
This affair of Coyle’s had a good effect upon the worst element in the battalion. The boys saw that the majority were determined to put down disorder and insubordination, and that Prof. Keene was ready to second their efforts at reform. They did not want to be suspended from the battalion or the school, or told that their permanent absence was desired—and so they concluded that it would be wisest for them to obey orders and do their best, instead of worst, in drill and class-room, and the result was soon seen in better recitations, and much more orderly class-rooms, and a steady improvement in the drill.
“You fellows in the battalion have all the good times. I just wish I’d entered the high school first year, then I’d have been an officer by this time,” said Dixon to Reed, one day, with an admiring glance at the other’s neat uniform and shoulder straps.
“Oh, yes,” said Reed, “it’s such fun to drill three times a week, especially when the thermometer climbs up among the eighties—say about next May. We generally have a hot wave along that time.”
“It’s no fun to carry those heavy muskets,” put in Freeman. “I joined the cadets first year, but the guns were too heavy for me, and I had to quit.”
“Oh, well, you’re a little chap,” and Dixon glanced half-contemptuously at the slender lad. Freeman’s cheeks flushed at the look.
“Well, I never fainted, anyhow,” he said; “and some fellows a good deal bigger than I fainted more than once that year.”
“That was when we had heavy guns. We use lighter ones, now,” said Reed.
“I’d like to wear that uniform,” went on Dixon; “I notice how the girls watch you fellows; girls like a uniform, you know.”
A shout of laughter greeted this remark, and one boy said:—
“Too bad you can’t wear a uniform, Rosy. You might try to get on the police force next year. Maybe the girls would watch you, then.”
Rosy joined in the laugh that greeted this suggestion. He was never backward about acknowledging to an interest in the girls, and was forever begging some boy to introduce him to one or another girl of his acquaintance. Sometimes his interest in the feminine portion of the school got him into trouble, as was the case a little later on this same day.
When school was dismissed, the boys formed in line, and were expected to go through the corridors, and down the stairs in this order.
But there are always disorderly boys, and noisy ones too, and very often Professor Keene would be on the stairs, or in one or other of the corridors, to take note of any such; and not seldom would he send a boy back to his class-room, there to wait until all the others had passed out.
On this occasion, as the boys were standing in line in the upper hall, waiting for the signal to move on, “Rosy” noticed that the door of one of the girls’ rooms, near which he stood, was ajar. He glanced quickly to right and left. The professor was nowhere in sight, so he leaned over and softly pushed the door open a little farther so that he could look in. As he did so, a hand dropped heavily on his shoulder, and the professor’s voice sounded in his ears.
“Dixon,” he said, “I see you are anxious to make the acquaintance of Miss Bent and her class. Step right in, and I will introduce you”; and with his hand still on the boy’s shoulder, he threw open the door, and led him to the platform.
“Miss Bent,” he said, “this young gentleman was so very eager to meet you and the young ladies of your class, that I took the liberty of bringing him in. Allow me to introduce Mr. Dixon.”
For once, Dixon was too confused to be equal to the occasion. His face was as red as his hair, and the bow with which he acknowledged the introduction was not a model of ease and grace. No wonder—when forty girls sat there enjoying his discomfiture, and laughing at the haste with which he departed.
Shouts of “Here comes Rosy!” “Did you have introductions enough, Rosy?” “Say, which was the prettiest girl?” “Why didn’t you stay longer?” greeted him, as he reached the playground, where most of his own classmates were waiting for him; but, by this time, he had recovered his self-possession, and only laughed good-naturedly at the sallies of the boys.
When he entered the school-room next morning, two or three voices called out, “Wrong room, Rosy. The girls’ room is on the other side.”
Dixon grinned, as he perched on the top of his desk, and looked about, saying:—
“Some of you chaps must have gotten up before breakfast this morning. Never saw so many here at half past eight, before.”
“Written exam. to-day, sonny,” said Barber.
“Looks as if ’twas house-cleaning, to-day,” replied Dixon, glancing at the pile of books and papers Barber was hauling out of his desk.
“Does look rather that way,” said Barber. Then he glanced about the room, and added:—
“Say, if any of you fellows have jagged my notebook, give it back, will you. It’s a new one, and I know I left it here last night.”
“You’re dreaming, Barber,” somebody remarked. “Nobody’s been near your desk.”
“But somebody has, though,” persisted Barber; “an’ ’tisn’t the first time, either. My knife vanished last week—the third one I’ve lost this quarter.”
“Better have your mother sew up the holes in your pockets,” suggested Raleigh.
“Or you might fasten a string to your knife and tie it into your pocket,” added another.
“I tell you, the things are taken out of my desk,” insisted Barber, “and somebody does it after school. I like fun as well as anybody, but I’m sick of this kind, and I think it’s time now for whoever did it to hand over my notebook.”
“Is it so, for a fact, Barber?” said Hamlin, walking over to the other’s seat. “Have you been losing things out of your desk—honest Injun?”
“I have so,” replied Barber.
“And I, too. I left a gold pen in my desk last week, and the next morning it was gone,” said Lee.
Upon inquiry, it proved that nearly all the boys present had lost something from their desks within a few weeks, and several had lost small change or car-tickets from the pockets of overcoats left in the dressing-room during school hours.
“We must tell Mr. Horton,” said Hamlin. “It won’t do to have this sort of thing going on.”
“Oh, I say!” broke out Dixon, “you don’t really believe that anybody’s been thieving here, do you? I’m always thinking I’ve lost something, and finding it a week or two later, where I’d poked it away, an’ forgotten all about it.”
Barber shook his head.
“I poked my new notebook into my desk yesterday just before I went home,” he said, positively. “I can’t be mistaken about that.”
“Crawford, you look melancholy. Have you lost something, too?” called out Dixon.
“No,” said Crawford, shortly.
“Not even your temper,” suggested Dixon, who seemed to be in a tormenting mood that morning.
Crawford was standing with his hands in his pockets, and looking moodily out of the window. He made no reply to Dixon’s last remark.
“Clark seems to be the only one who has lost nothing,” remarked Lee, with a significant emphasis that implied more than the words themselves.
Clark looked up inquiringly, while Hamlin exclaimed quickly:—
“What do you mean by that, Lee?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Lee, carelessly, “only some things that happened last term have never been really cleared up.”
Before the words were fairly out of Lee’s mouth, Crawford had wheeled around and caught him by the shoulder. Lee never flinched, and, for an instant the two boys stood gazing angrily into each other’s eyes.
Hamlin, too, had started towards Lee, but stopped as he caught sight of Crawford’s white, set face.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” demanded Lee coolly of Crawford.
“I am going to knock you down if you accuse Stanley Clark of doing anything mean or underhanded since he’s been in this school,” said Crawford, while Clark looked from one to the other in blank amazement, and the rest of the boys gathered about the two.
“So?” said Lee, tauntingly. “Perhaps, then, you know more than the rest of us about some of these underhanded performances.”
The perspiration gathered on Crawford’s forehead in big drops, and the hand that still clutched Lee’s shoulder, trembled perceptibly, but he faced the wondering group, and said slowly, and distinctly:—
“I do know something about at least one underhanded performance that concerns Clark. I’ve been longing to make a clean breast of it for weeks, and now I’m going to do it. I put that pony in Clark’s desk last year. The letters S. C. were the initials of—someone else, and Clark told the truth when he said that he had never seen the book until Mr. Horton held it up before him. I hated Clark last year, and I wanted to do anything I could to injure him. Clark,” he left Lee and turned towards the other, “Clark, it isn’t much to say I’m sorry—but that’s all I can say.”
Clark instantly held out his hand, and said cordially:—
“It is all forgotten from this moment, Crawford,” and then, catching sight of Mr. Horton, who had entered the room while Crawford was speaking, Clark added quickly, “It can end right here, can’t it, sir?”
But Crawford spoke before the teacher could reply.
“No,” he said, “I want all the class to know the truth. Then perhaps I can respect myself a little more.”
“Very well, Crawford,” said Mr. Horton, “it shall be as you wish. I think you are right, and one who can so frankly and manfully acknowledge his fault, cannot fail to win back the respect of his classmates.”
Crawford dropped into his seat with a flush of pleasure at these words, and the boys separated, but more than one glanced coldly at Lee, and Hamlin could not refrain from saying, as he passed Lee’s seat:—
“I hope you are satisfied now, and will stop hounding Clark for the future.”
Lee made no reply, but he thought to himself, “Clark didn’t cheat that time, it seems, but he’s the son of a defaulter; and no Southern boy would take a blow as he did last year.”
Mr. Horton was much disturbed when he learned of the petty stealings that had been going on in the school. Soon, not from section D alone, but from all over the school came complaints of losses of greater or less value. The teachers were very much troubled over the matter. They could not bear to suspect any pupil in the school, but no one else had access to class-rooms and dressing-rooms except the janitor, and he had been in charge of the building for years, and nothing of this kind had ever before occurred. A strict watch was kept over the dressing-rooms through the day, and no scholars were allowed to enter the class-rooms until the teachers came in the morning, or to remain after the departure of the teachers in the afternoon. In spite of these rules however, the losses continued.
One wet day, Raleigh, who lived a long way from the school, was obliged to walk home because the car-tickets he had carelessly left in his overcoat pocket, were missing. The next morning, he appeared wearing an old shabby overcoat in place of the new one he had had the day before.
“What’s the matter, Raleigh? Has your new coat been jagged?” questioned Barber, overtaking him near the school gate.
“No,” said Raleigh, “but if you’ll keep mum, I’ll tell you why I wore this.”
“Mum’s the word,” said Barber, promptly, and Raleigh went on:—
“My car-tickets vanished yesterday. Served me right, I suppose, for being such a ninny as to leave them in my overcoat pocket; but it made me mad to have to foot it all the way home in the wet, so I planned a little scheme to put a mark on the stealer. My sister has some shoe blacking that stains like fury—worse than any ink I ever got hold of—and I’ve soaked a sponge with it, and put it in my side pocket, here. See?”
“Well,” said Barber, “how’s that going to mark the thief?”
“Why, I’ve put half a dollar—a counterfeit one, you understand, that somebody shoved off on my mother—I’ve put it into that same pocket, and if anybody puts a hand in to haul out that half-dollar, he’ll get a mark on his fingers that he can’t scrub off in one day, now I tell you.”
“Well, that is a scheme,” laughed Barber, “but you ought to let one fellow in every room into it, for you and I can’t examine all the paws in the school, ourselves.”
“That’s so; I never thought of that,” said Raleigh.
So the two decided upon one boy in each room who should be the one to keep an eye on the hands in his class-room in case that fifty cents should be missing later in the day.
Mr. Horton having given Raleigh permission for himself and Barber to remain in the room that morning, during recess, as soon as the other boys had gone down to the playground, the amateur detectives began operations. They borrowed from the dressing-room a mirror which they hung on the wall in such a way that it reflected the hall and the door of the dressing-room to them, while they, having set open the door of the class-room, were out of sight behind it.
Five minutes of the recess had slipped away—ten, and not a person had passed through the hall.
“I don’t believe,” began Barber in a whisper, but at that instant Raleigh gave him a poke, and pointed to the mirror. Through the hall a boy was passing quickly, glancing furtively about him as he went.
While they looked, he slipped noiselessly into the dressing-room and softly closed the door behind him.
Raleigh and Barber looked at each other with astonished faces.
“I can’t believe it,” whispered Barber, and:—
“I never would have believed it,” said Raleigh, in the same breath.
Then he added:—
“His going in there is no proof, though it’s against the rules now.”
In silence then the two sat, their eyes fixed on the telltale mirror.
“There goes the bell,” whispered Barber. “He’s probably going to wait there and drop in at the end of the line. We must get out of this corner before the boys come up.”
“Let’s go out and wait near the stairs; then we can see him when he comes out, without his suspecting.”
This they did, and without seeming to look, saw Dixon suddenly and silently fling open the door of the dressing-room as the last boy passed by, and follow quickly to the class-room.
Then Raleigh hurried into the dressing-room, slipping an old glove on to his right hand as he went. He rejoined Barber in a moment, saying:—
“It’s gone.”
“The half-dollar?” questioned Barber.
Raleigh nodded, and the two went into the class-room. Each cast a quick glance at Dixon as they passed his seat, and both saw that he was rubbing his right hand with his handkerchief.
As they took their seats, Barber glanced at Raleigh with a quick gesture towards St. John. He, too, was rubbing his handkerchief over his right hand, and eyeing with a disgusted expression some black stains that showed conspicuously on his slender white fingers.
Presently, Raleigh went to the desk, and told Mr. Horton, in a tone too low for any other ears, the result of their watch.
Mr. Horton was greatly disturbed.
“There must be some mistake,” he said. “I cannot believe it of either of them.”
Then placing Gordon in charge of the room, he went to confer with Professor Keene. The result was that when the class was dismissed, St. John, Dixon, Raleigh and Barber were told to remain.
Then Mr. Horton took St. John into the dressing-room alone. The boy followed him with evident bewilderment, and when the teacher said:—
“St. John, will you tell me how you got those stains on your hand?” he looked as if he thought himself the victim of some practical joke, and drawing himself up, answered haughtily and coldly, “That is my affair, sir.”
“Ordinarily, it would be your affair, St. John,” answered Mr. Horton patiently, “but, unfortunately, to-day I must insist upon an answer to my question.”
The boy bit his lip and hesitated, evidently half inclined to refuse to answer, but there was something in Mr. Horton’s face that puzzled and rather awed him, and after a moment’s silence he said sulkily:—
“The janitor did not fill my inkstand, and I had to go down to that beastly old cellar and fill it myself, and I got the ink on my hand. I never went to a school before where I had to do servant’s work,” he added with his haughtiest air.
“Did anyone see you filling your inkstand?” asked the teacher.
“The janitor was muddling around there,” answered the boy. “I told him it was his business to do it for me, and he had the impudence to tell me that it was as much my business as his.”
Mr. Horton half smiled, understanding that St. John’s overbearing manner would not be likely to incline the somewhat crusty old janitor to save him any trouble; but remembering the serious question at issue, his face grew grave again.
“Have you been in the dressing-room to-day?” he asked.
“No, sir,” said the boy.
“Very well; you may go,” and, as St. John went down the stairs, Mr. Horton returned to the school-room, where he found the three boys sitting in a sort of embarrassed silence.
“Dixon,” he said at once, “I see you have stained your hand. How did you do it?”
Dixon glanced at his fingers, and the color suddenly flamed in his freckled cheeks.
“I—I—hit it against something black,” he stammered.
“Evidently,” said Mr. Horton. “Dixon, were you in the dressing-room at recess?”
The boy hesitated, glanced half appealingly at the teacher, and then at the boys.
“Would you rather see me alone?” asked Mr. Horton, and as the boy nodded, he signed to Raleigh and Barber to leave the room. Then he said:—
“Dixon, it will be best for you to tell me the whole truth frankly; best for your own sake, I mean.”
“Oh, I’m not thinking about myself, you know,” said Dixon. “It’s—” then he stopped.
“Well?” said Mr. Horton, inquiringly.
“Oh, dear!” said Dixon desperately, “I don’t know what to do,” and putting his head down on his desk, he actually sobbed.
The teacher’s hand was laid kindly on the rough, red hair, as he said:—
“A fault confessed is half forgiven, Dixon, and though this is more than a fault, for it is a most grave and serious matter, yet a frank and full acknowledgment will incline us to deal as leniently as possible with you.”
Dixon raised his head. There was a bewildered expression in his blue eyes which changed to one of indignant astonishment as the meaning of his teacher’s words dawned upon him. He started up, dashing the tears from his freckled cheeks as he exclaimed:—
“You don’t mean that you suspect me of stealing!”
“Well, really,” said Mr. Horton, actually moving back a step before the indignant flash of those blue eyes. “Well, really, I begin to think I do not, though I must confess that I did a few moments ago. Tell me all about it, Dixon. Evidently you know something about the matter.”
“Oh, yes; I wish I didn’t,” and again the freckled face was hidden by the stained fingers. After a moment’s silence, he went on:—
“Mr. Horton, if I can promise you sure that nothing else will be taken, won’t that do?” he asked imploringly.
“I’m afraid that won’t do, Dixon. I see that you are trying to shield the guilty person, but it is not fair to those who have been robbed, nor do I believe that it would be best for the one who deserves punishment to go scot free. It would encourage him to repeat the crime. Yes,” as Dixon started at the word, “it is a crime, and one that will put the guilty person behind the prison bars, if continued.”
“Oh, Mr. Horton, you won’t put him in prison, will you? Promise me you won’t, or I’ll never tell. I’ll go to prison for it myself first,” he cried excitedly.
“Easy, easy, my boy,” and Mr. Horton laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “If you do not tell what you know, we shall surely find out for ourselves who is the guilty person, and then it may be too late for any word of yours to be of any benefit to him. Be persuaded, Dixon, and tell me all you know about the matter, now.”
“Well—I will,” said the boy, after a moment’s thought; “only, Mr. Horton, I shall depend on you to save him from prison, if you anyway can. You see he’s a little fellow, only thirteen, and it will break his mother’s heart if he’s sent to prison. His mother is an old friend of my mother’s, and when I came in to the city to go to school, last year, I went to her house to board. She’s a widow, and keeps a boarding-house ’way up town. Well, sir, the very day after I went there, I was taken sick with typhoid fever, and my mother was sick at home, so she couldn’t come to me, and Mrs. Gray took care of me just as if I had been her own boy. She sat up nights with me, and oh, I can’t tell you how good she was through all those weeks. The doctor told mother afterwards that I owed my life to Mrs. Gray’s care and nursing, so you see, I can’t help thinking a lot of her, and I’ve tried my best to keep Willie straight; but lately, he’s got to going with one or two bad fellows in the school, and I think, Mr. Horton, that they make a cat’s-paw of him, and make him do things that he’d never think of doing himself, for he isn’t a bad boy really—Willie isn’t—and he’s all his mother has left.”
Again the rough red head went down on the desk, and the boy’s low sobs proved the depth of his sympathy for the widowed mother.
Mr. Horton’s own eyes were dim as he looked down at the lad.
“You haven’t told me how you came to be in the dressing-room at recess,” he said gently, after a little silence.
“Why, I hunted all over the playground for Willie, and when I found he wasn’t there, I felt somehow that I must find him, and be sure he wasn’t doing anything wrong. You see, I only found out about this a few days ago, and he had promised me solemnly that he’d never take another thing that did not belong to him. You know there’s another dressing-room adjoining ours, and the windows of the two are only a foot apart. As I came through the hall, I saw Willie slip into that other room, and I got to the door just in time to see him climb up on the window sill. I didn’t dare speak, for fear he’d fall, but I waited till he’d climbed from one window to the other, and slipped down into our dressing-room, and then went in, and shut the door after me. Willie had his hand in the pocket of an old overcoat, one I never saw before. I snatched his hand as he drew it out, and it was all wet with what looked like ink, and that’s the way mine got daubed.”
“And Willie kept the half-dollar he found in the overcoat?” said Mr. Horton.
“Oh, no, I made him give it up, and I put it back in the pocket.”
“And then?” questioned the teacher.
“Then he cried, and said that those fellows had threatened to tell Professor Keene that he was a thief, unless he’d keep on taking things. He hasn’t kept a single thing himself, Mr. Horton. They lent him some money a while ago, and because he couldn’t pay it back, they kept at him, telling him that he could easily pick up loose change enough in the dressing-rooms to pay the debt, and after he had taken one piece of money, then you see, they held that over him to make him keep on.”
“And these boys; who are they?” said Mr. Horton sternly.
Again Dixon hesitated, but in his heart he knew that such boys were too dangerous to be suffered to remain in the school to lead weak boys astray, and so he gave the names.
When at last Raleigh and Barber were called in, they were glad enough to learn that their classmate was not the thief; and Dixon, his mind relieved by having passed the responsibility over to Mr. Horton, could even laugh at his stained fingers, while he appreciated Raleigh’s ingenious plan.
“Funny what became of that coin, though,” the latter said, as he took his old coat from the nail where it hung.
“I rather think there’s a hole in this pocket, Raleigh,” said Mr. Horton, feeling at the bottom of the coat “See here!” and he held up the side where the coin could be plainly felt between the outside and the lining.
Dixon told the two boys enough of Willie Gray’s story to explain his own connection with the affair, and awaken their sympathy for the widowed mother.
There were no more losses that year, in the Central school.
Willie Gray’s interview with Professor Keene, and his suspension from the school for a month proved a lesson that he did not care to have repeated, but his severest punishment was in seeing his mother’s bitter shame and sorrow when she heard the story. He wore very shabby clothes the rest of that year, and so did his mother, but by the end of the school year every scholar’s loss had been made good, and from that time on no more scrupulously honest boy than Willie Gray could have been found in all that city.
As to Dixon, Raleigh and Barber conceived a new respect and regard for him after this affair, and even his openly expressed liking and admiration for “the girls,” awakened amusement instead of scorn.
“For you see, boys,” Dixon said one day confidentially to the two, “You see, boys, I’ve got a lot of sisters at home—half a dozen of ’em—and a right pretty lot they are too. You wouldn’t think they were any relation to a freckled carrot-head like me. But, bless you—they have never found out how homely I am, and, as I’m the only brother they’ve got, I’ve been kind of spoiled, I reckon. Anyhow, you wouldn’t believe how I miss those girls, and I like all girls for their sakes, don’t you see?”
St. John never found out that a suspicion had rested upon him. Indeed, it is doubtful if he knew that there had been any losses, since, as it happened, nothing had been taken from his desk; and Hamlin never again saw Dixon hanging about a saloon, since he no longer had to look for Willie Gray in such places.
Just after New-Year came a very heavy snowstorm. It lasted two days, and when the boys went to school on the third morning, they had to wade through drifts in some places as high as their shoulders. Even on a level the snow was up to the knees of the smaller boys.
It was a huge frolic to most of them, and the best part of it was when they found that, owing to some trouble with the furnace, there would be no school in the boys’ department that day.
“Hurrah for a holiday!” shouted half a dozen voices, as the boys tumbled pellmell down the stairs, not considering it necessary, under the circumstances, to keep in line as usual.
“Won’t the girls envy us, though,” chuckled Dixon, lifting his cap with great politeness as he saw two or three girls looking out of one of their windows. “I’ve half a mind to go and smash their furnace, so they can get out too.”
“I would,” said Hamlin, dryly. He had long since arrived at the conclusion that “Rosy” had “plenty of good points,” but even yet Dixon’s frequent references to “the girls” were apt to vex him, and he had never been willing to introduce his red-haired schoolmate to his cousin Grace or any other of his girl friends.
“Say, fellows, why can’t we build a fort and have a snowball fight instead of going home,” cried Reed. “The snow’s in prime condition. Just see what balls it makes,” he added, catching up a handful of snow and hastily fashioning it into a ball which he flung at Hamlin, who dodged just in time to avoid it, and it landed full in Dixon’s mouth, as he opened it to speak. He spluttered and gasped for a moment, but as soon as he could get his breath, he dashed at Reed and rolled him in the snow, rubbing a handful of it into his mouth.
“Ouch! ouch!” yelled Reed; “help, help, boys!” whereupon two or three ran to his rescue, and the next moment, Dixon was treated to a dose of his own medicine. He took it very good-naturedly; he always did take everything good-naturedly. Even the boys that disliked him could not deny that.
“Say we do have a snowball fight. We may not have another chance this year,” said Sherman.
“Professor would order us off. The girls couldn’t recite if we were yelling outside here,” suggested Graham.
“That’s a fact! I forgot about the girls,” murmured Rosy, at which somebody remarked:—
“First time in your life you ever forgot ’em, ain’t it, Rosy?” and there was a general laugh at Dixon’s expense.
“Well, let’s go out on the vacant lots, then. No hospital or old ladies’ home around there, is there?” said Barber.
“Never heard of any. Come on, then,” cried Hamlin, leading the way. Presently he turned, and inquired:—
“What’ll we do for shovels and brooms? We can’t build a fort without ’em.”
“So we can’t,” said Reed, ruefully. “I forgot all about them.”
“Let’s borrow some,” suggested Graham.
“Where?” said Lee, with the touch of scorn in his voice that always irritated the boys.
“Right here on this block,” retorted Graham promptly.
“As if the people in these houses would lend us their snow shovels,” said Lee.
“If I get the shovels, will you agree to pay your share of the price?” asked Graham.
“Of course; don’t I always pay my share of anything that’s going,” said Lee, haughtily.
“All right,” said Graham as, with a grin at Hamlin, he ran up the steps of the nearest house and rang the bell.
“Want your walk cleared?” he inquired of the servant girl who opened the door.
“How much do you charge?” said the girl; “And where’s your shovel?”
“Where’s yours? Have you one?” replied Graham.
“Ye—yes,” said the girl, doubtfully.
“Well, tell your mistress that we’ll clear the steps and walk in fine style, if she’ll lend us her shovel for an hour afterward.”
“Get along with ye,” said the girl, “we’d never set eyes on the shovel again!”
At this, the crowd of boys on the sidewalk set up a shout of laughter, but Graham persisted:—
“Ask the lady to come to the door a minute, please do! We’ll clear the walk; honor bright, we will.”
As Graham spoke, the mistress appeared in the hall, and inquired of the girl what the boys wanted. Graham’s face lighted up as he caught sight of her, and he stepped forward, with his cap in his hand, saying:—
“I didn’t know that you lived here, Mrs. Hayes, but we boys want some shovels and brooms to make a snow fort on the vacant lots over yonder. We’ll clear off all the steps on this block, and the sidewalk too, if we can have the use of half a dozen shovels for an hour, to build our fort.”
“You can have ours, and welcome,” said Mrs. Hayes, “and I’ll give you a note to the other people on the block. Of course you won’t forget to bring back the shovels,” she added smiling. “You see I have several brothers, and have known them to forget such things, now and then.”
“We’ll return them, sure, before we begin our snowball fight,” Graham answered; and soon, thanks to Mrs. Hayes’ note, half a dozen shovels had been handed out to the boys, who took turns at using them, and so quickly had the walks beautifully cleaned. Lee did his share under protest, but he did it, and some of the boys would have done twice as much themselves for the fun of seeing the Southern lad obliged to handle the shovel.
Then the boys trooped over to the vacant lots, and set to work to build their fort. The many hands made short work of it, even though the fort they fashioned was of goodly dimensions; and as soon as it was finished, Graham and another lad carried back the borrowed shovels. Then the two came racing back, to take part in the choice of leaders for the two parties.
A dozen names were proposed by different boys, but finally, Hamlin and Griffin were selected. They at once proceeded to choose their followers by first one, and then another, calling out a name.
In Hamlin’s party were Clark, Gordon, Freeman, Graham, Raleigh, Sherman and Reed, while Griffin’s included his own friends, with Lee, Dixon, and a few others. In all, there were sixty boys. The leaders tossed up a penny for choice of position, and it fell to Griffin and his party to hold the fort.
Then he and his men were allowed ten minutes to make and carry into the fort as many snowballs as they could, for ammunition. Meantime, Hamlin’s party was similarly employed, while he was discussing with one or two of them the best plan of attack. It was decided to first make a rush all together, and try to scale the walls all along the line. This was done, but the attempt was a failure. The walls were too high to be readily scaled, and such a storm of snowballs was showered down upon the attacking party, that Hamlin was forced to call off his men, amid exultant shouts from those in the fort.
Then Hamlin divided his men into two parties, ordering one, under Clark’s leadership, to attack one end of the fort, while he himself led the other half against the other end, thus obliging Griffin to divide his force to repel the attack.
The two parties advanced all together against the fort until they were quite near, then suddenly dividing, half turned to the left and the other half to the right. Griffin hastily sent half of his men to repel Clark’s party, while he, with the rest, beat back Hamlin and his followers. Again and again the boys outside would succeed in climbing almost to the top of the wall of snow, only to be met by a shower of balls that filled eyes, ears and mouths, while strong hands pushed and shoved them down the slippery walls, shouts and yells of derision following them as they descended.
At last, Hamlin again called off his men to rest and gather a new stock of ammunition.
“’Tisn’t much use, though, for us to snowball them,” grumbled Reed, trying to get some of the snow out of his neck. “They can throw right into our faces when we’re climbing their walls, but we can’t hang on to those slippery snow banks, and throw up into their faces. They can dodge and we can’t.”
“Dodge! I should say we couldn’t,” echoed Freeman. “Much as ever I could hang on at all while Lee was dashing snow into my face for all he was worth.”
“We’ll never take that fort by direct attack,” said Hamlin. “We’ve got to use stratagem.”
“Any sort of gem you say, so long as it’s a taking sort,” responded Reed.
“We might tunnel under, and so let them down unexpectedly,” suggested Clark.
“But they’d see us doing it,” objected Graham.
“Mustn’t let them,” answered Clark.
“What’s your idea, Clark? How would you do it?” asked Hamlin.
“I’d make another attack at two points, so as to divide their force, and make such a desperate fight that Griffin would need every man he has, at those two points. Then, while the fight was going on, one fellow might drop down at the bottom of the fort, and keeping below those who were climbing the walls, so that those above in the fort couldn’t see him, he might dig under the bottom of the wall. It wouldn’t take many minutes for him to dig out a hole that he could crawl into. Then he could loosen the snow above him, so that a little extra stamping or pushing would break the wall through and let some of those fellows down where we could capture them. And then we could pile up through the opening, and so into the fort.”
“What do you say, Gordon? Think we could do it?” cried Hamlin eagerly.
“Looks as if we might, if we can find the right chap for that burrowing trick.”
“If we only had a big mole here, now,” remarked Reed.
“I’ll be the mole, if nobody else cares to try it,” said Clark.
“I don’t believe that plan will hold water,” remarked one boy, scornfully.
“It’s snow we want it to hold, not water,” was Reed’s quick response.
“We’ll give it a trial anyway,” said Hamlin. “Now then—are you all ready? Well then, we’ll go for those walls again. Forward, march!”
On went the attacking party at a full speed, while those in the fort braced themselves to repel the charge. Fast and furious flew the balls, and in the cloud of snow, and amid the shouting, squirming, struggling crowd trying to climb the walls, it was easy for Clark to drop unnoticed at the bottom, where he had taken care to kick out an opening as he approached the wall. Now, using his hands in decidedly mole-like fashion, he began to burrow under, throwing the snow out behind him as he dug.
Meantime, above and around him, the struggle went on, and so many hard knocks were given and received, that some of the boys began to get angry. The fun was changing to earnest.
Finally, Hamlin again called off his men, and as they gathered about him, out of earshot of those in the fort, he said to Clark:—
“Couldn’t carry out your plan—eh, Clark? I was afraid it wouldn’t work.”
“But it did work,” said Clark, quietly.
“Do you mean that you succeeded in undermining the wall?” cried Hamlin, eagerly.
“Yes,” said Clark, “and it would only take a little more digging to make it mighty unsafe for those fellows to dance any more jigs up there.”
“But I don’t see any opening,” said Hamlin.
“No—I kicked some snow into the opening so they wouldn’t discover it if any of ’em should come outside the fort.”
“Good for you, Clark,” cried Reed joyfully. “I tell you what, Hamlin, I began to think I was getting tired of plain fighting up there. Some of those chaps don’t fight fair. They whack altogether too hard about a fellow’s head.”
“That’s so,” assented several.
“Yes, I think myself they pommeled us too severely this last time,” said Hamlin; “but if Clark’s plan is a success, we’ll snake ’em out of their snug quarters before long. How do you think we’d better go at it, Clark?”
“I should think it would be best to make an attack at each end as we did last time, and while you keep them busy so, I’ll go through my tunnel again and pull down a little more snow under the middle. Then I’ll back out and give a signal to let you know I’m ready, and then both parties might drop down and make a dash for the walls in the middle. Of course Griffin and his men will rush there, and the sudden rush and weight will break through what’s left of the wall and down they’ll tumble, and up we’ll scramble and swarm over the walls before they can pick themselves up.”
“Tiptop plan,” said Gordon, and Hamlin added:—
“Yes, and we’ll carry it out, too. Now, boys, remember—pitch in and carry the walls if you can, but keep your ears open for a whistle from Clark, and when you hear it, follow me to the center.”
Derisive hoots and yells from Griffin and his men greeted the approach of Hamlin and his party, but the latter went steadily on in silence. Not a shout or a cry answered the taunts of the defenders, and again the struggle was renewed, the boys scrambling up the walls, fighting their way inch by inch, only to be thrust and pushed back as they neared the top. Two did succeed in scrambling over the wall, but a dozen strong arms seized them, and promptly rolled them over the slippery barrier to the ground below.
In the midst of the struggle, a clear whistle sounded, and at the signal, Hamlin’s voice rang out calling his followers to retreat. They slipped down the walls and joined their leader, but instead of retreating as before, they instantly made a dash for the walls in the center.
Griffin shouted to his men, and all but two rushed to the threatened spot to repel the enemy. As they did so, the walls gave way, and more than half of the defenders rolled through the breach to the ground, while yells and shouts of a different sort announced their surprise and disgust at their unexpected descent.
The few who had not gone down in the slump, fought bravely, but they were quickly overpowered by numbers, as over the walls scrambled Hamlin and his men. It was their turn now to shout exultantly, as they seized and made prisoner every boy that they could catch. Griffin’s men looked rueful enough as they found themselves so cleverly trapped, and some were not only rueful, but bitterly angry.
“Where’s Griffin,” cried Hamlin.
“There he is. Catch him—catch him!” shouted Lee, pointing to a white figure just crawling out from under the mass of fallen snow.
“Surrender! Surrender!” shouted a score of voices, as the boys surrounded Griffin.
“Oh, well, of course we must surrender, since you’ve got possession of the fort; but you had to take it by trickery—not in fair fight,” Griffin said, sullenly.
“All’s fair in love and war,” quoted Graham, gaily. “It was a perfectly fair stratagem, and certainly a successful one, I think.”
“Who cares what you think! Take that for a last shot!” and Griffin, losing all control of his hot temper at these words from Graham, whom he had never forgiven for winning the election, suddenly raised his arm and flung a snowball he was holding in his hand—straight at Graham’s face.
Clark was standing near Griffin, and as his quick eye saw the look on the latter’s face and the sudden movement, he sprang forward, and struck up Griffin’s arm, and the ball, instead of knocking Graham over, went crashing through a big window in a fine house across the street.
A change came over every face, as the rattle of the falling glass was heard.
“You’re in for it, now, Grif,” said one.
“’Twasn’t my fault. ’Twas Clark’s. What did you knock my arm up for?” he added, turning angrily on Clark, and looking more than half inclined to strike him.
Clark did not flinch, as he answered gravely:—
“That ball might have hurt Graham pretty badly, Griffin.”
“Hurt him! I should say so!” cried Hamlin. “A ball that would break a window at this distance would have killed a fellow, sure. You must have thrown it with tremendous force, Griffin.”
Griffin dropped his eyes and said, sulkily:—
“Well, what’s to be done about it? I’ve no money to pay for plate-glass windows, and anyway, I think Clark’s the one to foot the bill—unless we bluff it out. Here comes the man, now.”
The gentleman who was coming quickly towards the group might have been excused for feeling that the limit of patience was reached in his case, since this was the third time that season that his windows had been broken by boys playing on the vacant lots. He was plainly very angry, as he began abruptly:—
“Which of you broke my window?”
For a second, nobody answered, and the man was about to express his opinion pretty freely, when Clark stepped forward.
“I am partly responsible for it, sir,” he said.
“Oh, you are—are you? Well, are you going to pay for it?”
“It shall certainly be paid for,” Clark replied, “but I can’t pay for it to-day.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said the man. “You can’t pay it to-day, and if I let you off, you never will pay it. I’ll see your father about it. Where is he?”
Clark’s face grew suddenly white, and his clear eyes fell, while many of those rough boys felt a most unusual thrill of pity and sympathy for him. But he recovered himself quickly, and answered in a low voice:—
“I have no father to pay my bills, sir, but if you will not take my word for it, I will give you a note to the firm I work for, and they will see that you are paid.”
By this time the man’s anger had begun to cool off a little. He was a shrewd reader of faces, and Clark’s straightforward glance and manly air began to make an impression on him.
“What’s your name?” he asked gruffly.
“Stanley Clark.”
“Well, Mr. Stanley Clark, I suppose I’m a fool, but I’m going to trust you. How long do you expect me to wait for my money?”
“How much will the glass cost?” inquired Clark.
“Five dollars; the glass and the putting in. It’s a big window, you see.”
“Yes, I see,” said Clark. “Well, sir, you shall have the money before the first of February. Will that do?”
“That will do,” and without another word the man turned away, saying to himself, “I may be mistaken, but I believe that young chap is honest. Anyhow, if he doesn’t keep his word, I’ll see the principal of the high school. They were high school boys, and I could pick that one out among a thousand.”
As the man departed, all eyes were turned on Griffin, and Hamlin voiced the feeling of many when he said:—
“I call that right down mean and sneaky, Griffin. It is really you who ought to pay that bill.”
“Here’s the man coming back again,” said Reed. And sure enough, the man was returning, looking at something he held in his hand, as he came.
Facing Clark, he demanded:—
“Did you throw that snowball?”
“No, sir,” said Clark, “but if it hadn’t been for me, it would probably not have gone through your window.”
“Ah!” said the man, “I’m glad you didn’t throw it, and if it was aimed at any boy’s head, that boy owes you a debt of thanks, at least. See here; this was inside the ball. I was so mad before that I forgot to show it to you,” and he held out a rough, jagged piece of brick. “That would have knocked the breath out of a boy, if it had hit him full in the face”; and leaving the brick in Clark’s hand, the man again departed.
There was more than scorn and contempt now in the eyes that turned towards Griffin, who, for the life of him, could not help cowering under the fire of indignant glances and the words that followed.
“You’d better blame Clark for knocking up your arm,” said Hamlin, and the man crossing the street smiled grimly as the clear, ringing voice reached even his ears. “You might have slept behind prison bars to-night, if it had not been for Clark’s quick eye and hand.”
“I wouldn’t have believed there was a fellow in the Central mean enough to do a thing like that,” added Gordon.
“Well, see here now, fellows.” It was Graham who said this. “Are we going to let Clark pay that debt for Griffin? I can’t, for one,” and the look he gave Clark said what his tongue could not say before all those listening ears.
“No! No!” shouted a score of voices.
“I can’t pay it, ’n that’s all there is about it,” said Griffin, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground.
There was a moment of silence. Many of the boys knew that Griffin belonged to a family that had no money to spare.
“Well,” said Graham, “if Griffin really can’t pay it, I’m the one to do it, and I will, though I can’t do it just now. Christmas cleared me out entirely.”
“And me, too, of course,” said Hamlin; “that and the school dues that I paid yesterday.”
“See here, boys, neither Clark nor Graham ought to foot that bill, and I reckon we’re all pretty short just now. Say we all chip in and earn it to-day,” was Reed’s suggestion.
“Earn it, how?” cried several voices.
“Shoveling snow,” was the prompt reply. “This snow is so heavy that the fellows that usually go around to clear walks can’t begin to cover the ground that they generally do. You see they haven’t cleared anywhere about here yet. What’s the matter with our borrowing shovels again over yonder, or anywhere we can get ’em, and each of us clearing one sidewalk. At ten cents each, we’d raise six dollars that way in a jiffy.”
“Three cheers for Reed. His head’s level!” called out one; and in two minutes not a boy was to be seen on the vacant lots; not one except Griffin. He stood there biting his nails, and scraping a hole in the snow with the toe of his shoe. When the boys passed the lots with their borrowed shovels, Griffin was gone.
Late that afternoon, somebody left at Hamlin’s door twenty-five cents done up in a bit of paper, on which was scrawled the one word, “glass.”
“Griffin left that, I’m sure,” Hamlin said as he read the word. “I’m glad he had grace enough to do that much.”
He did not know that the boy had earned that quarter clearing off snow with a shovel that he had manufactured himself out of a broom-handle and a piece of a soap-box. Even Griffin was not all bad.
A much astonished gentleman was the one who was called to his door that evening to meet a delegation of high-school boys, one of whom handed him a five-dollar bill to pay for his broken window.
One morning, St. John, on his way to the class-room, stopped before a bulletin-board on which had been written the names of the institutions offering scholarships to the pupils of the high school.
He had overheard an occasional word about these scholarships, but really knew very little about them. So he stood there reading the list.
Then up the stairs behind him came half a dozen boys of section D. As they caught sight of St. John, they, too, stopped to see what he was reading. St. John, who seemed never to want any boy within a yard of him, turned to go, but, with a mischievous glance at the other, Reed stood still, and the others pressed closely together, penning St. John in to the little space between them and the board. Seeing their purpose, St. John’s face took on its haughtiest expression, and leaning against the board, he waited in angry silence for them to move aside and let him pass. But they, enjoying his discomfiture, stood laughing and chaffing one another, but never saying a word to him.
More and more boys joined the group, and, each one taking in the situation, stood there as if he had no intention of going farther that day.
Finally Dixon called out:—
“Say, boys, who’s going to take these prizes?” glancing at the board.
“Gordon—Clark—Hamlin—Raleigh,” shouted the crowd.
“Yes,” said Reed, thoughtfully, “they’re the only ones that have the ghost of a chance.”
“But they can’t take ’em all,” somebody suggested.
“Well, the girls have a go at two of them. Aren’t you going to give the girls a chance?” said Dixon.
“We didn’t say that those fellows would accept the scholarships—but they’ll win ’em sure.” This from Barber.
“Yes,” said Reed, with one eye on St. John’s angry face, “they’ll win ’em sure, and they ought to. They’ve worked hard enough for them, and they deserve all they’ll win. The rest of us must play second fiddle this year. Not but what second fiddle is pretty fair, when it puts a chap up in the nineties.”
“Here comes Bobby!”
The word ran through the crowd, and the group dissolved like magic, leaving St. John free to enter the class-room.
Of course he knew that the boys had only been trying to tease him, for his high rank in the class could not be denied; but all the same it made him furiously angry to be ranked with the “second fiddles,” and counted out entirely in the prize competition.
All but one of the six scholarships were to be given to the pupils having highest averages in all or in certain studies, during the three years’ course; but one, and that the highest prize—or the one so considered in the school—was offered to the boy who should rank first in the classical course during the senior year, and should also write the best Latin essay. If, as had sometimes happened, two or three boys should stand equally high on the year’s average, then the quality of their essays would decide to whom the prize should go. But if one boy should stand first in the class, and another not ranking as high should hand in a better essay—for any boy who chose was free to compete—then the prize would not be given at all that year.
“I’ll win that scholarship if it kills me to do it, just to make that crowd mad. It would make them mad enough to see their precious four worsted in the fight. And they shall see it, sure as fate!”
So ran St. John’s thoughts during that morning’s exercises. From that day, this one thought and purpose ruled him. He had never cared for athletic sports, and riding and driving were all the exercise he ever took, but now, the time spent in going to and from school was all that he was out of doors; and almost every moment of his waking time was given to study. Long after midnight he worked, going over and over what he already knew, lest possibly, some point might have been forgotten or slighted.
The other four boys were working hard too, but they were so accustomed to out-of-door sports and exercise, that it never occurred to them that they could give them up. So they kept their brains and bodies in good working order, while St. John grew, week by week, more worn and weary.
“His royal highness looks rather seedy—eh,” Reed said one day to Clark, and the latter answered:—
“I think he’s working too hard.”
St. John’s ears, sharpened by his nervous anxiety, caught both question and answer, and resented anyone’s thinking that he needed to work harder than any of the others. Up to this time he had been coldly indifferent to his classmates, but now he began to hate them all. He told himself that they were all banded against him, and that not one of them wanted him to win. And this was true. He had made not the slightest effort to gain their friendship, while the others were all prime favorites. Even Clark was happily conscious that the boys were friendly to him now; all except St. John and Lee. Lee’s Southern prejudice had not yet died away, and in his heart he still regarded Clark as a coward.
The competition for the prize scholarships was not confined to section D. There were two girls’ sections, and one other boys’ section in the senior year, and in each of these there were scholars who were quite as eager to win the prizes as were the boys in section D.
And in section D also there were other competitors besides the five who stood highest in the class. These were what Reed had called the “second fiddles,” and their chance lay in the fact that neither St. John, Gordon, nor Hamlin would accept the scholarships, should they win them, as all three of them were planning to enter some of the larger and more prominent colleges. They wanted the honor of winning the prizes, but it was generally understood that the prizes themselves would go to the next lower in class, while the whole class to a boy, always excepting St. John, was now determined that D should be the banner section this year. None were more eager for this last than Crawford and Freeman. Both of them were trying to live down the previous year’s record. They could hope to win no prizes, but they could do their share towards raising the general record, and this they were trying to do.
As the sunny May days slipped away and examination time approached, the strain of the competition began to tell upon many of the pupils. Four in section D stood so nearly together that Mr. Horton himself could not see that one had any better chance than the others.
“I never had four such students in one class,” he said to Professor Keene one day. “So far as perfect recitations go, there is nothing to choose between them. When St. John first entered, he was away ahead in Latin, but the other three have been steadily overtaking him, and now it all rests on the examinations.”
“And the Latin essay,” added the professor.
“Yes. That, of course, decides one prize.”
“St. John going to win there?” questioned the professor.
Mr. Horton shook his head doubtfully:—
“I’m afraid the lad is not well,” he said. “I notice that he doesn’t think as quickly as he did, and one of the others may write a better essay. His will be couched in elegant Latin, but the matter of it may not be equal to some one of the others. There’s no telling; anyhow, it is going to be a very close contest, and I shall be glad when it is over.”
“Yes, so shall I,” responded the professor. “There’s always more or less ill-feeling, and too great strain in these prize competitions.”
A carriage stood before the schoolhouse gate when school was dismissed that day. A lady and little girl sat within it, watching the throng of boys passing down the steps.
“There’s Charlie, Mamma! Charlie! Charlie!” called the child’s clear voice, as Reed, with Hamlin and Clark, came down the steps.
Reed hurried to the carriage, but his mother was looking not at him, but at one of the other two.
“Who is that boy, Charlie—the one that you were talking to?” she cried breathlessly.
Reed paused, with his hand on the carriage door.
“That’s Clark—Stanley Clark. You’ve heard me speak of him times enough,” he answered, wonderingly.
“Oh, Charlie, that is the boy that saved Nellie’s life. Don’t let him get away. Bring him here quick. I must speak to him.”
With a mixture of delight and amazement on his face, Reed raced after the two boys, and seizing Clark by the arm, cried:—
“Come, Clark, my mother wants to see you. You must come,” he added imperatively, as Clark held back, unwillingly. “I’ll tell you what it’s all about to-morrow, Hamlin”; and he began to pull Clark toward the carriage.
Clark knew why he was wanted, for he had recognized the two, but he would far rather have risked his life again than to have been marched up to that carriage. But there was no help for it, so he submitted with the best grace possible.
Mrs. Reed seized both his hands, and her eyes were dim as she said:—
“To think that it was you who saved my little girl, and all this time we have never suspected it! You must have seen our advertisements?”
“Oh, yes,” said Clark, looking mightily uncomfortable, “but I didn’t want any more thanks, you know. Any fellow would have done what I did on the impulse of the moment. If I’d stopped to think, I should probably have stood still.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Mrs. Reed promptly. “A boy who acted on such an impulse as you did, couldn’t be a coward. It is not in him. But step in; we’ll take you home. I must know where you live, for I want to call on your mother. I know she was proud of her boy that night.”
Clark laughed a little. “No,” he said, “she never knew anything about it, except what she read in the paper.”
“Well, she will know about it to-morrow,” said the little lady decidedly.
When the carriage stopped at Clark’s door, she again took the lad’s hand.
“Think what a shadow would be upon our home to-day, but for you,” she said, with a glance at her little daughter. “It is a debt that we can never repay, but, at least, let us have the pleasure of seeing you and your mother sometimes, at our home. I have often asked Charlie why you never came to our house, as so many of the other boys do; I know the reason, now.”
Mrs. Clark wondered a little when her son told her that Charlie Reed’s mother would call upon her the next day. She was not at all pleased, since she was living in the utmost seclusion, feeling almost as keenly as did her son the cloud of disgrace that rested upon them. But when she learned from Mrs. Reed what Stanley had done, when she saw the tears of deep feeling in the eyes of her visitor, and felt the warm pressure of her hands, how could she help being proud and happy?
Clark would have liked to stay away from school that next day, but it would never do to bring down his record by an absent mark. He went as late as he dared, however, but the instant he entered the room he saw that the boys were waiting for him, and in spite of the fact that Mr. Horton was already at his desk, a shout broke from the whole class at sight of the schoolmate, whom they were now as eager to honor as a year ago they had been to hurt and annoy.
“Three cheers for Clark!” shouted the irrepressible Reed, actually jumping up on his seat in his excitement, and the cheers were given with a will, while Clark, blushing and confused, bowed his thanks and dropped hastily into his seat.
“Well,” remarked Mr. Horton, looking slowly about the room, “may I ask what this means? What have you been doing, Clark, to awaken all this enthusiasm?”
“Nothing at all, sir. It’s just the boys,” stammered Clark.
“Yes,” said Mr. Horton dryly, “I’m quite aware that it was just the boys.” But now Reed, trying to keep his enthusiasm within bounds, told the story in a few graphic words.
Mr. Horton listened with as great an interest as even Reed could desire, and when the story was ended, said only:—
“Boys, you are perfectly excusable for this once; only remember that this is not a precedent,” but the look he gave the quiet lad whom he had learned to love, assured the boys that their teacher was in fullest sympathy with them.
From this time, Clark’s popularity in the school was very great. Even hot-headed Lee blotted from his memory that unreturned blow, the year before, and not even in the depths of his own heart did he ever again call Stanley Clark “coward.”
Before that day was over, section D had another sensation.
As usual near the close of the year, the rules were relaxed, especially in the senior class, and often some of the boys would remain in the room during part of the recess, talking over their work and surmising about the questions likely to be asked in the examinations. Half a dozen or more were busily talking about the dreaded Latin essays, when Reed came rushing upstairs, exclaiming:—
“I say, you fellows, you missed a picnic, staying in to-day. Didn’t you hear us all yelling outside?”
“Why, yes, we heard you, but it’s nothing unusual for you little chaps to be noisy,” said Hamlin, loftily. Then he added, “but if you’re very anxious to tell us what it was about, this time, we can listen, I suppose,” and with an air of patient endurance, he dropped into his seat.
Reed picked up a book and flung it at him, but he was too full of his story to pursue the mock quarrel, especially as two or three voices called out:—
“Go on, Reedy—tell us what ’twas all about.”
“Why, we were all out there on the sidewalk—a whole crowd of us,” said Reed, “when a fellow came along driving a heavy cart with the worst-looking old rackabones of a horse you ever laid eyes on. The creature didn’t look as if it had had a good meal in six months, and it was so weak that it could hardly crawl. Just before it got opposite our gate, the horse stopped, and the big brute that was driving began to lash it unmercifully—to get past us, I expect.
“Some of us yelled at him to ‘hold up,’ but, bless you, before the words were fairly out of our mouths, Crawford had dashed out and was pitching into that driver, and giving him as pretty a pommeling as you’d want to see; put him right down there in the street and licked him well. Then he yanked him up, and ordered him to take the horse out of the shafts. The fellow refused at first, and threatened to ‘have the law’ on Crawford; but that didn’t scare Crawford a bit, and then the rascal began to whine and swear by turns; and finally asked how he could get his cart home without the horse.
“‘I’ll fix that,’ said Crawford, ‘but that horse is going to have a rest for one week, and all he wants to eat, and he’s going to have ’em in the stable where my horses are kept.’
“‘An’ phwat will I be doin’ ahl that week, with niver a hoss to me cart?’ said the man.
“‘I’ll hire a horse for you to use that week,’ said Crawford.
“The man looked at him.
“‘An’ phwat if I say No?’ said he, looking as if he would like to give Crawford a black eye, if he dared.
“‘Then I’ll go this moment, and enter a complaint against you. Any officer of the Humane Society would order that poor brute killed rather than see him driven as he is now, to say nothing of seeing him beaten as shamefully as you beat him just now,’ said Crawford.
“The man looked around at us all. Of course, we’d crowded ’round to see the thing out—and then he began slowly to unfasten the poor old nag. It was so weak that I thought it would have to be propped up against a fence or something, but it did manage to stand.
“‘Now phwere’ll I take him?’ said the man, and I know he added some hot words under his breath.
“‘You’ll come along with me,’ said Crawford. ‘I’m not going to trust that horse out of my sight’; and I just wish you’d seen ’em going up the street together, almost holding up that poor old skeleton between ’em, with a crowd of street boys who had gathered, tagging on behind, hooting and yelling.”
As Reed stopped to take breath, Gordon exclaimed:—
“Well, I’d never have believed that of Crawford. I didn’t think he was that sort at all.”
“Oh, he loves horses,” broke in Freeman. “You ought to see him pet those ponies of his. I heard him say once, that his ponies were all the folks he had, for his nearest relative is a cousin that he hasn’t seen in ten years.”
A sudden silence followed Freeman’s words, and more than one boy’s thoughts flew to his own home and those who loved him there, and a new feeling of sympathy for Crawford was awakened.
“Section D should be proud of Crawford, to-day,” said Clark. “Let’s show him that we are.”
“So we will,” said one and another.
“But won’t Mr. Horton mark him off for breaking bounds?” said Dixon, as the bell sounded.
“Not he; trust Bobby to do the fair thing when he hears the story,” said Graham, and Reed added:—
“Bobby’s all right. Crawford asked me to tell him, and he said it would be all right.”
But for Mr. Horton’s warning in regard to a precedent, Crawford would have received almost as enthusiastic a greeting when he returned half an hour later as had been given to Clark that morning; but, as it was, he slipped quietly into his seat, and the boys only showed their appreciation of the stand he had taken, by surrounding him after school, and asking all sorts of questions about the affair. From this time however, Crawford was “counted in” to whatever was going on, as he never had been before.
In the midst of the strain of approaching examinations, and essays to be prepared, came the annual drill, and though our senior boys had felt, a few weeks before, as if they could hardly spare the time for the extra drilling, yet, after all, Company D did want to keep those red ribbons one more year, and every other company wanted just as much to capture them and that beautiful gold medal; and so, when the great day came, lessons took a second place for once, and the boys in blue came to the front.
This time, there was no disorder, and no unfair dealing. The judges gave high praise to the battalion as a body, and Company D retained the red ribbons. It was the last company on the list, and when, with the little silken badges fluttering in the breeze, it marched off the field, all the other companies united in a cordial cheer for Company D; which unexpected demonstration from the disappointed competitors so pleased Captain Hamlin that, the next day, every boy in the battalion received an invitation to a steamboat trip down the bay, with a shore dinner—all at the expense of Company D, though Hamlin himself paid the bill. And if he thereby deprived himself of a special pleasure trip that his father had promised him, the boys never knew it, and Hamlin was content.
“Who enters here, leaves hope behind.”
This legend, in huge, shaded letters, adorned the blackboard one morning, when a written examination in geometry was to take the place of the usual recitations.
Mr. Horton glanced at Dixon with a smile as he read the sentence, for Dixon was apt to get badly tangled up over those perplexing lines and angles, and was always in the depths of melancholy when an examination in geometry was impending.
Just then Dixon was saying:—
“Wish I could borrow your head this morning, Clark. You wouldn’t mind lending it, would you?”
Clark, buried in the depths of a big lexicon, answered in an absent-minded way:—
“Certainly not. Help yourself.”
The shout of laughter from the boys who had heard both question and answer brought Clark back to his surroundings, and he joined in the laugh against himself, while Dixon grumbled:—
“Only wish I could hold him to his word.”
When inkwells had been filled, pens and paper distributed, and the boys were taking last, lingering peeps at the knottiest theorems before their geometries should be collected, as was the custom, they were taken entirely by surprise, for, instead of telling two boys to bring the books to the desk, the teacher said:—
“Boys, we are going to carry the self-government principles into the examinations this year. If you will all promise to be perfectly fair and honorable in this examination, your books may remain on your desks, and I shall leave the room without a monitor until the examination is over. As many as would like me to do this will please rise.”
It seemed to Mr. Horton that every boy in the room was on his feet the next instant. In reality, several rose slowly, and only because they were not willing to say that they preferred not to be so trusted.
Mr. Horton looked much pleased, as he bade the boys be seated.
“I am very glad to have such an unanimous response,” he said, “and I shall leave you without the slightest doubt. I know that my boys can be trusted this year, and it is a pleasure to me to show you how thoroughly I do trust you. Now, has any one any question to ask about the examination before I leave the room?”
After answering a few questions, Mr. Horton went out, and the boys settled down to work. To many of them, it seemed strange to be left so. These were the boys who had been used to whisper, and take sly peeps at bits of paper which they had tucked into various pockets. More than one had such aids to memory about him at that very moment, but they were ashamed, now, to use them.
As the boys looked over the list of questions, many a sigh or frown showed that that list contained precisely the questions that one or another had hoped would not be there.
But most of the boys settled down at once to steady work, and for a while nothing was heard but the scratching of pens and the rattling of paper, or the uneasy movements of some lad who was trying in vain to recall a forgotten theorem.
As Gordon laid aside a written sheet, he happened to glance towards a seat occupied by Blake—one of the boys who had entered that year, and he saw Blake softly lift the lid of his desk, and peep at something on the inside.
Leaving his seat, Gordon marched directly to Blake’s, and, without a word, suddenly lifted the lid of his desk, in spite of the other’s efforts to prevent it On the inside of the lid was pinned a brief explanation of several of the toughest problems in the geometry.
With a look of scorn in his blue eyes, Gordon snatched the paper and tore it into bits; then, still without a word, he returned to his seat. As he did so, several boys, whose quick eyes had taken note of the whole performance, clapped their approval, and at this, Blake, who had started up angrily, dropped back into his seat, and went on with his work in sulky silence.
One or two other boys attempted to cheat that day, but their attempts were put down by the rest as promptly as Blake’s had been.
Blake tried to slip out of the room unnoticed after the examination was over, but Gordon had kept an eye on him, and speedily overtook him in the hall.
“Blake,” he said, “I’m sure you are glad, now, that you did your work honestly. You wouldn’t have liked Mr. Horton to know that you went back on your word.”
“He wouldn’t have known it, if you’d minded your own business,” growled Blake, “and I should have had a hundred on the examination, and now I shan’t get above eighty, thanks to your meddling.”
“I’m sorry for that, Blake, but I’d rather have an honest eighty than a dishonest hundred, and I’m sure Mr. Horton would say so, too.”
“Oh, you’re too high-toned in this school,” said Blake. “I never was in a school before where we didn’t cheat in examinations. The teachers wink at it. They know we do it.”
“Well, I don’t believe in it,” said Gordon. “I mean to be honest after I leave school, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be honest in school, too. I couldn’t respect myself, if I did mean, underhanded things.”
“Respect your grandmother!” muttered Blake, walking off at such a pace that Gordon did not attempt to keep up with him, but turned back to wait for Hamlin, who came down the stairs a moment later.
Hamlin was looking very happy.
“Such a relief to get that exam. over,” he said, as he joined Gordon; “and I knew every problem like a book. Wasn’t it fine, though, to have Bobby put the class on honor so!”
“Yes,” said Gordon, “though two or three didn’t live up to it.”
“Oh, of course not. There are always a few sneaks in every crowd, but on the whole they did splendidly, I think. But what’s the matter with St. John?”
“Matter? What do you mean?” asked Gordon.
“Why, he’s still pegging away up there, and usually he’s one of the first to finish up,” replied Hamlin.
“Haven’t you noticed how much slower he’s been lately than he was the first of the year? I think the fellow’s worked out,” said Gordon. “Too bad, too, for it will spoil his whole year’s record, if he doesn’t get through these exams. in good shape.”
“Oh, he’ll get through all right enough,” said Hamlin, carelessly.
“Who else was up there when you left?” asked Gordon.
“Only Dixon, Freeman, Lee and Clark. Clark had handed in his paper and was waiting for Freeman. Here they come now.” And the two boys stopped and waited for the other two.
“Bobby certainly is working the self-government plan for all it is worth to-day,” said Freeman, as he and Clark joined the others.
“Anything new?” asked Hamlin.
“He’s left those three, St. John, Lee and Dixon, up there in the room to finish, and told ’em to put their papers in the lower drawer in his desk when they get through; and the last one is to lock the drawer and give him the key in the morning.”
“He certainly is putting them on honor,” said Gordon; “but I guess it’s safe enough with those three fellows.”
The three boys left in the class-room worked on in silence for half an hour. Then Lee had finished his work, and putting his paper in the drawer, he departed, followed a few minutes later by Dixon. Both boys cast wondering glances at St. John, who was usually among the first to pass in his papers, but he paid no attention to them, not seeming even to notice when they left the room.
He had finished all but one of the problems given. That one he had tried in vain to solve. His tired brain would not recall the theorem required. As Dixon left the room, St. John dropped his head on his desk with a weary sigh, but in a moment he started up again, and bent over the question-paper.
“Why can’t I think of it?” he said half aloud. “Of course I know it. I’ve solved that problem no end of times.”
His eye fell on his geometry. He stretched his hand towards it, then drew it back, a hot flush burning on his cheek.
“On honor!” he murmured, and pushing the book aside, he tried again to think out the solution required, but in vain. For half an hour he sat there fighting against the temptation that assailed him. Once he folded his unfinished paper, and started to put it in the drawer; then, remembering how Gordon, Clark and Hamlin had gone off an hour before—with every question correctly answered, he was sure—he dropped back into his seat with a groan.
“I can’t let them get ahead of me, so,” he thought. “I’m really a better scholar than anyone of the lot. It’s just that my head is so dead tired! I really do know every page of that geometry, if I only could think of it—if only I could.”
But he could not, try as he would. Then the janitor looked in at the door, and St. John knew that he wanted to clean the room. He began wearily to put away his papers. Suddenly he reached forward, snatched his geometry, and hurriedly turning the leaves, looked at the theorem that he had been trying to recall. Then, flinging the book aside, he hastily wrote out the explanation on his examination paper, folded it, and flung it carelessly into the drawer, and, forgetting entirely that he was to lock the drawer and keep the key until morning, he picked up his cap and left the room. His paper was all right, he was sure, but already he felt that he had paid too high a price for it.
The examinations that followed were conducted on the same principle as this first one, and Mr. Horton was so well satisfied with the result that he determined that he would never go back to the old watching method again. The Latin examination was held the next week, and, so far as was known, not one boy attempted underhanded methods.
St. John was so thoroughly at home in Latin, that he was among the first to complete his work, and he left the room with a sigh of relief that one more task was over, for he had reached that stage of mental and physical exhaustion when the smallest task seems a load too heavy to be borne, and he was gathering all his energies to finish the Latin essay that was to decide who should hold first rank in the class.
For weeks he had been working at that essay, writing and rewriting; one day pleased with his work, the next so dissatisfied that he would throw it aside and begin anew. But now, the time was short, and in a few days the essay must be handed in to the judges.
Gordon, Hamlin and Clark were also more than a little concerned about their essays.
“It isn’t the putting it into Latin; it’s getting the ideas in English that sticks me,” Hamlin said to Clark one day. “I’ve been cudgeling my brains, and it does seem as if I haven’t an idea worth writing down, on any subject whatever.”
“Queer, how a fellow’s ideas do vanish the minute he tries to write ’em out on paper,” said Clark. “I couldn’t get to sleep the other night for thinking about that essay, and while I lay awake, I thought of a subject, and one idea after another came to me, till I jumped out of bed and went to scribbling. Then I went back to bed and to sleep, and in the morning, when I read over my bright ideas, they seemed just about as near nothing as anything I ever read. So I flung the whole thing into the waste-basket, and began over again.”
“I’ve begun about a dozen times, and all my efforts, thus far, seem to me to be fit for the same receptacle,” laughed Gordon; “but there’s so little time left, that all I can do is to pick out the best of the lot—if there is any best—and make a smooth copy of it, and let it go at that.”
“Oh, yes, that’ll do for you to say,” grumbled Hamlin; “but all the same you’ll hand in an essay all trimmed up and polished off in tip-top style. That’s what you’ll both do. I know you two chaps; seen you before.”
Any boy in the Latin class was free to hand in an essay in competition for the prize scholarship; but it was well enough understood who were the six sure to stand at the head of the class, and there was small likelihood that any other boy could produce a better essay than any one of these six could write. Nevertheless, a few made the attempt, and nine essays were given to the judges. The decision was not to be made known, however, until Commencement day; so, when their papers had been handed in, the boys tried to forget all about the matter until the decision should be announced.
The day before Commencement was always one of intense interest, because then the results of all the examinations were announced, and not till then could the scholars know their marks on the whole year’s work, and for those who had been in the school through the entire three years, their standing for the whole period. Those who hoped to win one of the scholarships were especially anxious to know their standing, to see what their chances might be.
Rules were relaxed on this day. There were no more recitations. The work of the senior year was ended, and this last day was really more in the nature of a final friendly meeting as a class, than anything else.
When Mr. Horton, who had been down to Prof. Keene’s office, returned to his class-room with a paper in his hand, the merry chatter ceased, and the boys dropped into their seats, prepared to give him their undivided attention.
He began by telling them that never since he had been teaching had he had a class that had done, on the whole, so satisfactory work as this class had done during the past year. He spoke of the marked improvement, both in scholarship and moral character of the class as a whole, and told them that their influence had not been confined to their own section, but had extended to the whole school, so that Prof. Keene declared that the school stood much higher in reputation than it had done a year ago. “And he attributes this,” said Mr. Horton, “to the influence of the Law and Order Society of section D.”
A round of applause greeted this, but it was quickly hushed, as the teacher went on:—
“It gives me much pleasure to say, as it will give you to hear, that section D is the banner section of the Central, this year.”
The applause that followed this announcement was so enthusiastic and prolonged that it reached the ears of Prof. Keene, in his office, but he only smiled as he listened.
But Mr. Horton raised his hand, and silence instantly succeeded, for the boys were longing to know what was written on that paper which he held, and now he unfolded it, and read the result of the examinations.
Number 1. Stanley Clark.
Number 2. Hugh Gordon, and Everett St. John.
Number 3. David Hamlin.
Number 4. Alec Graham, and so on.
Each name was greeted with a round of cheers, and as soon as the list was ended, the boys crowded around the prize-winners with congratulations. Only St. John sat apart, and spoke to nobody. To stand second was nothing to him. If he could not stand first, he said to himself that he might as well be at the bottom of the list; and besides, deep in his heart, he knew that he had not gained honestly even the second rank. So he answered coldly, even rudely, the congratulations of Clark and Hamlin, and intimated so plainly that he wanted to be let alone, that no one else ventured to approach him.
In the midst of the hubbub of talk, Mr. Horton called Reed to the desk.
“You are wanted in the professor’s office,” he said.
Wondering “what was up,” Reed hurried down to the office. When, half an hour later, he returned, his face was fairly radiant. A tall, fine-looking gentleman followed him, and the whisper went around that that was Charlie Reed’s father.
Reed did not go to his own seat, but slipped into one beside Clark, and, as he did so, he seized Clark’s hand and wrung it till the latter fairly winced, as he whispered:—
“Whatever is the matter, Reed?”
But Reed, with that same happy smile, answered only:—
“Father’s going to make a speech. You just listen.”
At this moment Mr. Reed, who had been talking to Mr. Horton, rose and faced the boys.
“I have a story to tell,” he began; “a story in which, I am sure, you will all be interested, as it deeply concerns one of your number. It is a true story—true in every detail.
“In a neighboring city there lived, not long ago, a man who stood very high in the community. He was wealthy, he held positions of trust—of honor, and no man in the land seemed less likely to fall than he; yet he did fall. Not satisfied with the wealth and station he had gained, he wanted to double his millions. He speculated—risked all that he had, and lost. Then he used the trust-funds in his hands, and again he lost.
“Then, with wealth gone, with honor gone, he would have taken his own life, but for one thing. His wife was very, very ill, and she had no one in the world but him, for they had no children.
“While he sat in his office, trying to decide whether he could leave his dying wife alone in the world, and commit this last great crime, there came to him one who was associated with him in business, one to whom he had years before given a helping hand. This man had never forgotten the help he had received, and the other knew that he could count upon help and sympathy from him in this hour of his shame and trouble.
“He told his friend the whole story, and asked of him what I believe no man has a right to ask of another. It could be made to appear to the world as if this other were the one who had betrayed his trust, and the guilty man proposed to let the world believe this. He asked his friend to bear in his stead the shame and dishonor that rightfully belonged to himself.
“‘It is only for a few days,’ he pleaded. ‘You know how very ill my poor wife is. The doctors say it is a question of but a few hours now. It is only for her sake—that she may die in peace—and, as soon as she is gone, the world shall know the whole story, and your name shall be fully cleared.’
“That was an awful sacrifice to ask of an upright, honorable man.
“At first the man refused utterly, but the other reminded him of past kindness received not only from himself, but from the wife whose life was so near its end—and at last he yielded. He agreed to bear the blame and the shame for the little time she had to live, only making the condition that his own wife should know the truth.
“Think, boys, what it was to that man to have the papers full of the story, to see friends pass him coldly by—even when he believed that in a few days all would be made right again!
“But, contrary to all expectations, the apparently dying woman rallied, and slowly, very slowly, began to recover.
“Then, what was to be done? The guilty man selfishly refused to own the truth, and clear the name of his friend, and that friend was obliged to leave the country, or go to prison and serve a sentence for a crime he had never committed.
“He went to another land, and there devoted his time and strength to winning back enough to repay all that had been lost through his partner’s sin.
“A few days ago, the invalid wife died—died in blissful ignorance of the sad truth. When she was gone, all interest in life for her husband was ended. He felt that he could no longer bear the burden of his own guilt, and the knowledge of what another was suffering through him. He told the whole story, gave up every dollar he had left, and only asked that the name of the noble man who had suffered shame for his sake be cleared at once.
“The papers, to-night, will tell the story to all the world, and from this day forth no shadow will ever rest on the name of Stanley W. Clark.”
There was a moment of intense silence as Mr. Reed ceased speaking. Then came a perfect burst of cheers.
Clark’s face was buried in his hands, and when he lifted it to see Mr. Reed standing beside him, the glad tears were rolling down his cheeks, and more than one boy found his own eyes dim.
As for Charlie Reed—he declared that he was “’most too happy to live.”
All through the year Clark had been winning his way into the hearts of his schoolmates, and now they went wild over him, and shook his hands till his arms were lame, and showed so much sympathy and gladness for him, that, at last, he broke down entirely, and cried like a baby for pure joy.
From that day no shadow rested on his strong young face, and never again did he need to shrink from others, or dread a reference to the father who was, more than ever, his ideal.
The next day was Commencement.
A brief, informal session was held in the morning, but it was a session from which none wished to be absent, for then the names of the prize-winners were to be announced.
There were many anxious hearts, and a few hopeful ones, for though the rank-list read the day before told each boy his standing in class, it did not settle the matter of the prize scholarships.
It is safe to say that only one boy grudged Stanley Clark the first rank that he had so fairly won by his steady, thorough work. That boy was Everett St. John. He would not have been present at all, that morning, but for the Latin essays. He had still a lingering hope that his might be adjudged the best.
But now Mr. Horton was writing on the blackboard, and every boy gazed eagerly forward to read what was written. In his clear hand, they read the names of the six colleges offering the scholarships. Then, with the chalk in his fingers, he faced the school.
“You all heard the rank-list read yesterday,” he said, “so you know that Clark, St. John and Gordon would have the first claim on the second, third and fourth of these scholarships, but as these three are to enter other colleges, these scholarships go to the next in rank, Graham, Griffin and Bent; the two last named being members, as you know, of section A.
“The last two scholarships on the list have, I am happy to say, been won by girls. And now there remains but one—the first—which will be awarded to the boy whose Latin thesis has been considered by the judges to be the best. That thesis I hold in my hand, but I do not know what name it bears, as it was handed to me in this sealed envelope.”
Every eye watched as he tore open the envelope and read the name of Stanley Clark, and hearty cheers expressed the satisfaction of his classmates at the result.
As soon as he could secure silence, Mr. Horton went on:—
“The judges desire me to say that they have awarded the prize to Stanley Clark because of the high character of his essay, and they also wish me to state that, in elegance of style and choice of words, the essay submitted by Everett St. John is decidedly superior.”
It was Clark who led applause for St. John, but the latter only scowled in response to it. His pride and ambition were too bitterly hurt to appreciate any expression of kindly feeling.
“There is one more prize to be given this year,” Mr. Horton went on, taking a small case from his desk. “It is a gold medal which has never been given before, but the donor has made it a perpetual gift from this time. It is to be given to the boy in the senior class who has made the greatest advance in moral character during the year. Of course, we can only judge from what we see, and therefore this is the most difficult prize to award; so you, to whom the decision is left, must think carefully before you decide. This is to be awarded by vote of the class. I should have added that, by express desire of the gentleman who gives this prize, it is to be, this year, awarded to some member of section D. After this year, it is not to be so limited.”
The boys looked wonderingly at one another. They did not quite like the responsibility laid upon them.
“May I speak to some of the boys, sir?” Clark asked, and as Mr. Horton gave assent, he quickly turned to Hamlin, and whispered:—
“I think Crawford ought to have it, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Hamlin, promptly. “I had thought of Freeman, but though he has improved immensely this year, he hasn’t made such a jump as Crawford, because he never got so far down.”
“And I’m sure it will help Crawford to know how we feel about it,” suggested Clark.
From one to another the suggestion passed, and, when Mr. Horton called for the decision, it was almost an unanimous one for Crawford. He was taken utterly by surprise. Not one thought of the possibility of its being awarded to him had entered his mind, and he was prepared to vote most heartily for Freeman; but he was honestly pleased to know that his efforts to “do the square thing,” as he would have expressed it, had been appreciated, and that shining gold medal was a constant incentive to fresh effort thereafter. It was many a year before he discovered that it was his stern guardian, Mr. Chase, who had given this prize, earnestly hoping that Crawford would be the winner.
The Commencement exercises were held in the evening in one of the largest opera-houses.
Never had the decorations on such an occasion been so beautiful as this year, for never before had so many outside friends lent a helping hand. There was Gordon’s father, so proud that the old high school was regaining its old reputation, and so proud and happy because of the share his boy had had in bringing this about; and there was Reed’s father, who was but too happy to spend some of his abundant means to make the occasion a memorable one, not only for his own boy’s sake, but also for the sake of Stanley Clark, whom he had taken right into his big heart. And, by the way, he had carried matters with a high hand, and when he made arrangements for his boy at Yale, he had made arrangements for Stanley Clark to go with him, and no refusals would he listen to for a moment. Clark had been obliged to give in, and accept the generous provision, though he did it with a mental vow that he would pay it all back one of these days.
Then there was Mr. Chase, who was so relieved and delighted at the improvement in his ward, that he, too, insisted on “lending a hand” at these Commencement arrangements. And so it happened that no graduating class had ever had such beautiful decorations, such perfect stacks of flowers, or such fine music as graced this occasion.
And it was Clark who, much against his will, delivered the oration for the class. He did his best to get out of it, declaring that it should be given by Gordon, or Hamlin or St. John; but it was Clark himself that his classmates now delighted to honor, and it seemed as if they could not do enough to make up to him for what was past.
His story had spread through the school, and he was the unanimous choice of the senior class, so there was no escape for him, and he was obliged to be the orator of the evening.
He performed his duty well, as was testified by the applause that followed, and so many floral tributes were sent to the stage, that Reed laughingly told him that he’d have to hire an express wagon to “tote ’em home.”
But the boy’s glad eyes sought out the spot where his mother sat with a tall man beside her, a man whose strong, noble face bore the marks of the sufferings of the past years.
When it was whispered about that Clark’s father was there, every boy was wild to see him, and not one who looked into his face that night but felt that he was a father to be proud of.
The exercises were over at last. The address to the graduating class had been made by an eminent lawyer. The diplomas had been received with more or less grace and ease, or more or less shyness and awkwardness.
“Rosy” had distinguished himself by darting out of the line, as the boys passed forward to receive their diplomas, and picking up Grace Harlan’s handkerchief, which he presented to her with his most fascinating smile.
Then the benediction closed the exercises, and in a burst of martial music from the orchestra, the crowd began to disperse.
But the boys of section D lingered still. They realized now that they could never be all together again, and Mr. Horton, as he clasped one after another by the hand, found it harder to say “Good-bye” to this than to any class he had ever before taught.
“I am afraid I shall dread to go back next year,” he said, holding Hamlin’s hand, while he laid his arm affectionately across Clark’s shoulders. “You boys are going into new scenes, and you will soon forget the old high school, but I shall be there with all new faces. Boys—you don’t know how I am going to miss you.”
They crowded about him then, realizing, as they had not done before, how real and true was his interest in them—his friendship for them—realizing, too, that the great days of our lives, though full of sunshine, have yet their shadows.
But they were boys, strong, healthy, happy boys, and life was all before them, with ever new heights to reach, new prizes to win, and no shadow could rest long on their young hearts on that glad day.
In the years that followed they made no mean record in college and in the world, and often Mr. Horton would read with a happy smile of what one and another of his boys—the boys of section D—had accomplished out in the great world.