A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
The day after the great game the Boston and New York morning papers gave columns to a full report of the contest. All the evening papers of the day before had contained reports, but on the following morning the story was told more fully and accurately.
Not a morning paper appeared in either city that did not contain Frank Merriwell's picture. It made little difference if some of the pictures were poor, Frank's name was beneath each and every one of them.
The papers gave him glaring headlines. He was called "The Yale Trojan," "The Sensation of the Season," "The Boy of Iron," and many other complimentary things.
All Yale was reading the papers, and Frank was more than ever the topic of conversation, for his fellow-students began to realize that he had played an even more important part in the game than was at first thought possible by those who had not witnessed it.
If Frank had smoked or drank he would not have found it necessary to buy a cigar or a drink for weeks to come. Scores of fellows would have considered it a great honor to buy smokes and drinks for him.
But Merriwell neither smoked nor drank. He had never indulged in tobacco or liquor. Who knows how much that was responsible for his wonderful strength, nerve and wind?
At the fence a group gathered early and read and discussed the newspaper reports. Rob Marline seemed to be the only man who did not have a paper.
"What's the matter with you, old man?" asked Tom Thornton. "You are looking as blue as if we had lost yesterday."
"I'm feeling grouchy," confessed Marline.
"Ankle?"
"Has something to do with it."
"Too bad! It was tough to be knocked out just before the game, but you can feel satisfied that your place was filled by a good man."
Marline seemed to turn yellow.
"That is it, sah—that's just it!" he exclaimed, "Look at all the stuff in the papers about him! And I might have had the opportunities he had if I had played."
"Perhaps not."
"Why not?"
"The change might have made considerable difference in the play. You know as well as I, no two men will play just the same under the same circumstances. They may attempt similar plays, but they do not carry them out in precisely the same manner."
"I don't like the way you use that word 'attempt,' sah!" said Marline, flaming up a bit. "It seems like an insinuation that I might have failed in the attempt, while Merriwell succeeded."
"You are altogether too suspicious and sensitive, Marline. I did not hint anything of the sort, although even you cannot be sure you would have succeeded as well as Merriwell. Indeed, what he did in that game was phenomenal."
"Rot, sah!"
"I believe you are jealous of him, Marline. If you are, take my advice, and conceal it, or the boys will jolly you to death."
Rob Marline drew himself up with as much haughtiness as possible, considering his lame ankle.
"Sah," he said, hissing the words through his white teeth, "the boys had better be careful. I am in no condition to be jollied on that point, sah."
Had any other fellow at Yale taken such a stand, it would have produced shouts of laughter. As it was, not a fellow of the group grinned, and Burn Putnam observed:
"If you don't want to be jollied, you'd better keep still about Merriwell. All the fellows will be onto you if you keep it up."
Rob flashed Old Put a cutting look, and then haughtily returned:
"My tongue is my own, sah!"
"All right," grunted Burn. "Use it as you please. You'll find I've given you a straight tip."
"I presume, sah, a man has a right to criticise the playing of any fellow on the eleven?"
"Sure; but it doesn't come very well from you, as you and Merriwell were rivals."
"We were not rivals, if you please. He was substituted to fill my place after I was injured. But for this ankle, he would not have been on the team."
"But that he refused to play football this season, you would not have been on the team," put in Bandy Robinson.
"Oh, I see all you fellows are standing up for him and are down on me!" fiercely cried Marline. "I don't care if you are. I think Frank Merriwell is——"
"Is what, sir?"
It was Merriwell himself, who had approached the group without being noticed by any of them. He now stepped forward promptly and faced Marline.
Rob turned pale, and his eyes gleamed. For some moments he did not speak, but he did not quail in the least before Merriwell's steady gaze.
At last, gaining control of his voice, he sneered:
"So you were listening. Well, there is an old saying that eavesdroppers seldom hear good of themselves."
"So you call me an eavesdropper?"
"You heard what was not meant for your ears."
"Because I happened to be coming here to join this party. You were talking loudly and in public. There was no reason why I should not have heard, and I did so in anything but a sneaking manner. Your insinuation that I eavesdropped is an insult."
"What are you going to do about it, sah?"
"Demand satisfaction!" shouted back Frank, who was aroused to such a pitch that he was ready to quarrel with his rival on the slightest provocation.
Marline grinned sarcastically.
"Very well, sah," he said, something like exultation in his voice. "I am ready to give you all the satisfaction you want, sah, as soon as my ankle will permit."
"You will fight me?"
"With pleasure, sah."
"All right; it's settled. I'll agree to give you a pair of nice black eyes."
"No, you won't, sah."
"Eh? You won't be able to stop me."
"Only ruffians and prize fighters use their fists."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"I mean business, sah!" shot back the boy from South Carolina, drawing himself up, with the aid of his crutch. "You have seen fit, Mr. Merriwell, to consider yourself insulted by me, and you have demanded satisfaction. You shall have it, sah—all you want! We will fight, but not with our fists. I am the challenged party, and I name swords as the weapons!"
Marline's words produced a sensation. Of all who heard them, Frank Merriwell seemed the least startled or surprised. Danny Griswold near fell off the fence. All the boys looked at each other, and then stared at the boy from South Carolina, as if seeking to discover if he could be in earnest.
He was in deadly earnest; there could be no doubt of it. His face was pale, and his eyes gleamed. The fighting blood of the Marlines was aroused.
Then the other lads of the group remembered the record made by the Marlines, the famous fighters of South Carolina. They remembered that Rob Marline's ancestors were duelists before him, and every one of them on record had killed his man!
With such an example in his own family, and with certain notions of the proper course for a man to defend his honor, it was certain Marline meant business when he named swords as the weapons.
But such a meeting could not take place. It was unlawful. Besides that, dueling was not popular in the North, and it was not believed that a man showed cowardice if he refused to consider the challenge of an enemy.
What would Merriwell do? He could not accept Marline's proposal, and still it would not be easy for him to back down, after demanding satisfaction. He was in a trying position, and the boys wondered how he would get out of it.
"Mr. Marline," said Frank, and his voice was perfectly calm and cool, "you must be aware that such a thing as you propose is utterly impossible."
"I am not aware of anything of the sort, sah."
"Then I will tell you so now."
"That means you are afraid—you dare not meet me face to face and man to man! You show the white feather!"
"It means nothing of the sort."
"You can't get out of it, sah."
"I am a Northerner, and I do not believe in personal encounters with deadly weapons, after the rules of the code duello."
"A Northerner!" flung back Marline, with a curl of his lips and a proud toss of his head. "Well, I am a Southerner, and we do believe in the code duello. It is the only way for a man to satisfy his honor."
"It is evident that is a point on which we cannot agree."
"Then, you are going to back down—you will play the coward?"
"You are making your language very strong and offensive. Will you be good enough to remember you are on crutches, which makes it impossible for me to strike you now?"
"No man ever struck a Marline without spilling his blood for the blow! It is a good thing for you, sah, that I am on crutches."
"If you were not crippled, you could not use the language you have within the past few moments, without getting my fist between the eyes."
Marline sucked in his breath with a hissing sound through his teeth.
"Never mind my condition, sah—hit me! Nothing would give me greater satisfaction, sah!"
"It is impossible. You will not be crippled long."
"I shall recover as swiftly as possible. You may be sure of that, sah!"
"There will be time enough to settle this little affair between us then."
"But the preliminaries can be arranged in advance, Mr. Merriwell. My representative will call on any friend you may name, sah."
It was plain enough to all that Marline intended to force a duel or compel Merriwell to back down squarely.
"If I decline to name a friend—if I decline to meet you in a regular duel——"
"I shall brand you as a pusillanimous cur, sah!"
Frank's face paled a bit, but still his eyes met Marline's steadily.
"You seem to forget you are not in the South," he calmly said. "If you were on your own soil, you might be justified in pushing this thing as you are, for that is the not entirely obsolete custom among Southern gentlemen. But you are in the North, where duelists are criminals who have not even the sympathy of the public in general. Under such circumstances, you have no right to try to force such an encounter with me."
"You demanded satisfaction, sah, and I named the weapons. I know nothing of your Northern ideas, and I care less. I do know that a man of honor in your position would name a representative and have this affair settled properly."
"You have raised a point of honor on which we cannot agree, that is all."
"Then you refuse to meet me? You take water? Ha! ha! ha! I swear I did think you were a coward all along! A short time ago all Yale said you were a coward, but now, because you made two or three lucky plays in the football game, all Yale is praising you to the skies. Well, sah, I will show them the kind of a man you are! I will show them that you challenged me, and then dared not meet me. I will brand you as the coward you are, sah! It will give me great satisfaction, I assure you."
"Look here, Marline," broke in Burn Putnam, "you are carrying this thing beyond the limit. Merriwell has explained to you his position and made it clear that such a meeting as you propose is utterly impossible."
"That's right, that's right!" chorused the others.
"Mr. Merriwell knew me at the beginning," said the boy from the South, unrelentingly. "He knew I did not take any stock in fist-fighting—that I made no pretensions of being what you call a scrapper. Yet he demanded satisfaction of me for what he chose to consider an insult. That gave me the chance to name the weapons, and I named them. It seems that he sought to take an unfair advantage of me, thinking to force me into a fist-fight, about which he knew I knew nothing, and, having the advantage of me thus, give me a drubbing. It was a brutal attempt to take advantage of me, but he was check-mated. Now, under the circumstances, I have a right to push this matter as far as possible, and I will do it! He'll meet me in a regular duel, or I will take great trouble to brand him as a craven."
"You'll get yourself into a very bad scrape, Marline," said Thornton. "Sympathy will not be with you."
"Bah! What do I care! I can stand alone! I am a Marline!"
"Besides that," continued Tom, "there is another point to be considered."
Rob made a gesture of disdain, but Thornton hastened on:
"Suppose you two would fight a duel and one of you should be seriously wounded, what then? Why, an investigation would follow, and the truth would come out That would mean expulsion for you both—it would mean disgrace."
"Bah!" cried Marline, once more. "I presumed I was dealing with a man of honor, and that every person here was a man of honor. In such a case, if one of us should be wounded, he would keep his lips closed, even if he were dying. Not a word of the truth would he disclose, and no amount of investigation would discover the truth. The victor would be safe."
"That is much easier to talk about than it would be to put in practice. I, for one, am against anything of the sort."
"You do not count, sah."
"Don't, eh? Well, we'll see about that! Frank Merriwell can't meet you, and that settles it. If you try to force him, I'll report the whole matter to the faculty, and the chances are about ten to one that you will be fired from college. There, Mr. Marline, you have it straight from the shoulder, and I trust you are satisfied."
Thornton was astonished with himself for taking such a stand, as he was, as a rule, a good follower, but no leader. He had a way of thinking of things after others put them into execution, but now he was the one to take the lead.
Marline made a gesture of scorn.
"Yes, sah, I am satisfied," he said; "I am satisfied that Mr. Merriwell is a coward. He was looking for a loophole to crawl through, and you have provided him with that loophole. He should feel very grateful to you, sah!"
"Marline," said Frank, sharply, "you can make a mistake by heaping this on too thick! I can't stand everything, and you'd better drop it."
"Yes, drop it, Marline!" cried some of the others.
"Oh, I'll drop it for the present," said Rob, with deep significance—"for the present, you understand. But I am not done with Mr. Merriwell. My ankle will be all right in a short time, and then——"
He paused, giving Frank a stare of hatred. Then, without another word, he turned and swung himself away, aided by his crutches.
All felt sure that the affair was not ended.