Frank Merriwell's Setback; Or, True Pluck Welcomes Defeat

by Burt L. Standish

FRANK MERRIWELL’S SETBACK.

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CHAPTER I.
THE GIANT OF THE WHEEL.

In its various forms it was an old trick, and it ought not to have worked on Starbright, who had come from the famous preparatory college at Andover. But by some chance, Dick had never heard of it, and the sophomores, discovering this, prepared to “work” him with it.

It was a principle with the lordly sophomores to annoy freshmen, and the towering young giant, who had already made himself so famous at Yale, suffered as much at their hands as less noted mortals.

There is a streak in human nature which causes those who have been “through the mill” to want to put others through. This spirit accounts for “hazing,” in all its forms.

Jack Ready started it by offering to bet Dick Starbright ten dollars that he could not ride a bicycle from New Haven to Guilford and back, a round-trip of thirty-two miles, in three hours. Starbright snapped him up quicker than a wink, for though there were many things he could do better than bicycling, Dick knew that he could do this, and the trip to Guilford, along the pleasant shores for a great part of the way, was an attractive one.

The bet was made one Wednesday evening, and Dick was to do the riding the next Saturday afternoon. Starbright told his friend Dashleigh about it.

“Of course you can do it!” Bert declared.

“Dead easy! Why, I could do that trip in two hours, even if the roads are sandy. But three! I don’t know what Ready is thinking about. He must fancy that I can’t ride a wheel. Perhaps it is because I started in to take part in the relay race and Merriwell pulled me out of it and put me at other work. But that was only because you are a faster rider than I am, and my size and strength made me a promising candidate for the shot-putting and hammer-throwing.”

“And you did your part well, old man. You covered yourself with glory!”

“And I’ll show these duffers that I can ride a wheel. I’ll see how quickly I can do the trip, and I’ll make their eyes bulge out when they see me back.”

Dick did not get an opportunity to see Merriwell, but he told Browning; and Browning, who had been “let in on the ground floor,” assured Dick that he could make it “dead easy,” and that Jack Ready was a fool for offering such a bet.

“It will be a good way to open up Merriwell’s entertainments,” said Ralph Bingham, when Starbright chanced to speak to him about it. “I’d do it, if I were you.”

Bingham was a sophomore, but Dick did not think of that.

Carker, alone of the sophomores, objected, urging that he disliked to see so good a fellow as Starbright toyed with in that way.

“Well, you aren’t going to chip into the thing and spoil the fun, just because it doesn’t suit you, are you?” demanded Bingham. “We sophomores must hang together. Ready is an especial friend of yours, and he is managing the thing. Don’t you think it would be rather a scaly trick to give the snap away?”

“If Merriwell should hear of it?”

“He’ll not hear of it. He has his hands full of other matters just now. And he wouldn’t interfere, anyway, for he’s no milk-and-water kid. He had to go through the mill when he was a freshman, just as we did, and it did him good. I like Starbright. He’s a fine fellow. But he’s a freshman, and he’s in great danger of coming to think that he is ‘it’! He has boomed right up, and he’ll be wearing frills of great importance round the gray matter of his thinking machine the very first thing we know. Already he believes that he’s better than any sophomore that ever trod the campus or sat on the fence. This thing won’t hurt him. It will do him good, and tend to make a man of him.”

This sort of logic, directed to a fellow classman, was irresistible.

Ready was not at all sure that Merriwell would interfere; but, fearing that he might, for Dick was recognized as his protégé, he contrived to keep the two apart most of the time, managing to be with one or the other whenever they met, and to so skilfully direct the conversation that no opportunity presented for a discussion of Dick’s proposed ride. As for the other students of all classes, they shut up mum on the subject whenever Frank came to their midst.

There was a lowering gray sky and a hint of a change in the weather on that Saturday afternoon when Dick wheeled up in front of the New Haven House for his start. He rode a very high frame to accommodate his great height. It was a heavy roadster, not adapted to racing, but Dick had been able to crack it up for good speed on more than one occasion.

As for his attire, Dick was comfortably clothed in a woolen bicycle-suit somewhat the worse for wear, and wore a visored cap. Like most Yale men, the cut and quality of his clothing were of secondary consideration, his only demand being that it would suit his needs and be comfortable.

Jack Ready was there, to lead the cheer with which Dick’s departure was greeted, swinging his cap and yelling, after a preliminary offer to double his bet, which offer Dick would not accept. He was sure he would win Ready’s money, and for that reason he did not want the bet raised.

Dashleigh was there, too, and other freshmen. There were some juniors and seniors, also. But the larger number gathered in front of the hotel were sophomores.

Starbright liked a bicycle, though he was too large and heavy to become a crack rider. He was a good wheelman, though, and he swung away with cheerfulness through the level streets of the college city and out toward the road that leads close along the shore of the Sound, following as closely as he could the railway line.

He found the wind heavy as he began to wheel over the Sound route. The breeze was off the water and he was forced to bore into it quarteringly, which, with the character of the road, made the wheeling rather too heavy for pure pleasure.

Nevertheless, Starbright “hit it up” at a good gait, bending forward over the handle-bars and thrusting his visored cap into the wind like the sharp prow of a racing yacht.

Now and then a farmer stared curiously at him as he slipped by. This grew so frequent as he neared the first of the half-abandoned summer resorts of that part of the Sound that he dismounted from his wheel, feeling that something in his personal appearance caused these men of the hoe to inspect him in that way.

Having looked his wheel over and found it all right, Dick took off his coat and inspected that. There was no legend pinned or chalked on its back, and nothing about him which could draw so much attention.

“The fellows act as if they had never seen a bicycle!” he grumbled, as he replaced his coat and remounted for the continuance of his journey. Yet that this could not be so seemed to be proved by the proximity of the summer-resort hotels, which poured out scores of wheelmen for these roads every season, to make no mention of the bicyclists of New Haven.

On reaching the first of the summer resorts, Dick was surprised still further to find a number of men and women, chiefly composed of the class who get their living in the winter from the waters of the Sound or by taking care of the abandoned caravansaries, standing grouped on a corner as if awaiting his coming, and staring at him with undisguised curiosity as he wheeled by.

“Don’t think much o’ yer wheel!” one of them shouted. Then added: “No; I don’t think I’ll buy one of ’em next summer!”

Stopping by a spring for a drink, he leaned the wheel against a fence, and a country youth came forward to look it over. Dick would have thought nothing of this if the young fellow had not asked him if he thought he received enough pay for that kind of work.

“Not doing it for pay,” said Dick.

“Y’ain’t racin’ ag’in time, then?” was the bland question.

“Not exactly.”

“Can’t say that I want to buy the wheel!”

“I haven’t any notion of selling it.”

Then the countryman stared at him.

“You ain’t Jimmy Michael?”

“Jimmy Michael, the famous bicyclist? No. What made you think so?”

“And ain’t you advertisin’ a new kind of wheel that’s a world corker?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

The country lad flushed and moved away with explanation.

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” Starbright thought. “Jimmy Michael? Nobody could mistake me for Jimmy Michael!”

Still the farmers stared at him as he wheeled by. Sometimes, when they beheld him coming, they came close down to the road, often the whole family, and stared after him as he passed on.

Once a young woman waved a handkerchief roguishly at him from a kitchen window. Dick began to feel red and uncomfortable; and then, at the next village, he was asked by a member of the mob that was apparently gathered to see him, what the make of his wheel was, and if it was to be sold cheaper than other makes of good wheels, he inquired why the question was asked.

For answer the man pointed to a large placard on a wall:

“Richard Starbright, the world-famous giant of the wheel, will this afternoon make a race against time from New Haven to Guilford and return for the purpose of advertising our new make of record-beater roadsters. Starbright has beaten the record of Jimmy Michael, and our wheels beat the world. He has circled the globe in the interest of our wheels. Wait for him! You cannot afford to miss seeing him!”

“You look a good deal like a Yale guy, but yer size made us think mebbe you was the man,” the citizen explained.

“Yes, I am the man!” said Dick hotly flushing. “I’m a guy all right, too!”

“What’s the make o’ the wheel?” another queried, walking round as if to inspect its fine points. “Looks like you’ve rid it a lot. I should think they’d have sent you out on a shinin’ new one?”

“What countries have you ridden through?” queried a vinegary woman in spectacles. “I do hope you’ve been through Tibet. But if you have, the natives did’t treat ye as bad as they do some folks. I’ve got some real good buttermilk, and if you’d like to drop into my house a minute to rest and tell me about Tibet I’d take it kindly. I’m so interested readin’ ’bout Tibet that I can’t hardly sleep o’ night sometimes. It’s the first house on the corner as you go down—a little white house with green winder-blinds.”

Starbright was in a profuse perspiration.

“Thank you!” he said. “You’re very kind. But I must really hurry on. I’ve stopped too long now.”

Then, feeling that the only way to get away from these people was to mount his wheel, he hopped on it and fled through the village, giving a glance at the little white house with the green blinds as he swept by, and thinking that perhaps the proper thing would have been to stop there and talk Tibet to the inquisitive, spectacled lady and sip her buttermilk while he thought out some plan for outwitting his tormentors.

“This is Ready’s work!” he panted, as he wheeled down the road. “I’ll have to murder that fellow! I see there is no help for it! I shall have to take him between my two thumbs and squash his life out as I would any common bug!”

He tried to smile when the village was behind him.

“It’s a good joke, anyway, and it’s on your Uncle Richard! Of course, the whole college knows of it now, and New Haven will know it before night. Heavens! If it should get into the newspapers!”

Dick wheeled on so fast, hardly knowing now that he was speeding, that he found himself approaching the next little village almost before he thought it possible. He saw the inevitable crowd gathered on the principal corner of the street, through which he must pass unless he elected to make a wide détour and avoid the village altogether. Some boys raised a cheer as he drew near, swinging their hats with an urchin’s delight.

“I’ll not stop!” Dick grunted, shrinking from the thought of again encountering some one who would ask him about his world-wide travels. “They’ll want to know if I’ve been in China, likely, and if I’ve fought the Boxers, and how many I’ve killed!”

So he put on extra speed, lowered his visored cap, bent over the handle-bars, and went through the street like a streak of lightning. The boys yelled and whooped, and he could not help hearing one citizen remark that “Jimmy Michael ain’t in it with that feller!”

“Here comes the bikeist!” a boy was shouting to another group at the lower corner. “Come quick, Sammy, ’er ye’ll be too late!”

“Geewhiskers! ain’t he a snorter?” another boy yelled.

The group broke into a wild cheer as Dick swept past, pedaling as if he were racing for life. When he had escaped from these innocent tormentors, he began to think over the situation and to ask himself if he should go on to Guilford or stop where he was and retrace his way to New Haven by another route. To do that would be to lose his bet. Not that he cared so much for the money or for the mere winning, but that would give Ready and the sophomores a perhaps coveted opportunity to guy him for cowardice.

No, he was in it, and there seemed to be no way out but to make the ride according to plans and schedule and win out, so far as that part was concerned. So he rode on, wondering if there were no means by which he could yet defeat the sophomores.

“Yes, this is the beginning of Frank Merriwell’s entertainments!” he rather grimly thought. “I didn’t know that I would be chosen to open the show in this way, though! Merry doesn’t know anything about it, I’m sure.”

Merriwell was planning some festivities of an athletic character with which he and his friends and other students were to celebrate the many victories won by Yale that season. The college had been wonderfully fortunate and triumphant on the gridiron, not having lost a single game during the entire season. Never had a Yale team equaled the performance of the football eleven of that year under the leadership of the redoubtable senior. And not only in football, but in many other ways had Yale won honor with the victorious teams Merriwell had trained and led.

There was a grim humor in Starbright which made him appreciate the situation in which he found himself, even though he was the victim. At first he had paid no heed to anything placarded on the walls, but now, looking out for those glaring signs, he soon found one stuck against the side of a barn. It was on the side of the barn that was invisible to him as he came toward it.

So this had been Ready’s plan! These glittering advertisements of the performance of the “Giant of the Wheel,” produced, no doubt, by some New Haven printing press, had been skilfully plastered up along the roadside and in the villages in such a way that the wheelman approaching them could not see them. And the chances were small that he would look back and discover them after he had whirled by. This accounted for the fact that Dick had not for a time observed the notices which drew out the curious villagers and farmers.

In the next village, which was also of the summer-hotel variety, though there was a substantial element of people who resided there the year round, a larger crowd than ever stood in the street to await his coming.

The crowd broke into a cheer as he came in sight and wheeled up to the corner. He had resolved to ask some questions.

“When were these placards stuck up?” he inquired.

“Yisterday. Say, mister, when’s yer book comin’ out?”

“What book?”

“Why, the feller that come along yisterday stickin’ up the bills said that you was about to put out a book tellin’ about yer wonderful adventures with the Toltecs while you was coastin’ down one of them old Peruvian roads in South Ameriky.”

“What sort of looking fellow was he?”

“Well, about so high and so wide. He was a sort of stocky chap with bright eyes and red cheeks. Come to think of it, when he got off his wheel to stick up the sign, I noticed that he toed in with one foot.”

“That was Jack Ready.”

“Was it? I didn’t know! I believe he did say somethin’ ’bout bein’ always Ready.”

“Aw! that feller’s a Yale man!” a boy was heard to sneer. “He ain’t never been in South Ameriky ner nothin’. I know them fellers soon’s I see ’em.”

“Be you a Yale man?” an old man growled, not relishing the idea of being drawn out and fooled in that way by a mere college student. He had walked nearly a mile to see the “Giant of the Wheel” go by, and he wanted his money’s worth.

Dick was saved from answering this disconcerting question by a young man with a pale face and large nose, who crowded forward to inspect the wheel, saying that he intended to purchase a bicycle the coming season.

“I thought, mebbe, when I heard that feller talkin’ yesterday, that it was one of them headless wheels made in Indianapolis. D’y’ever see one of ’em? You sort of set in the handle-bars as if they was the arms of a rockin’chair. I didn’t know but I’d like to have one of ’em. I’m sure the feller said somethin’ ’bout headless!”

Dick thought it quite likely that the irrepressible Ready had referred to the rider of the wheel as “headless,” or something of like character, indicating that he was “easy.”

“Well, perhaps I am easy,” he thought, as he wheeled on, glad to be past another inquisitive village.

Branford Point, a favorite watering-place, turned out a good-sized crowd to see the “Giant of the Wheel,” but Dick concluded that he did not care to ask further questions or make the acquaintance of the curious people, so he flew through the place as rapidly as he could pedal.

He was making good time, even though the road was not of the best, in spots, and the wind blew cold from the leaden clouds in the northeast. He was warm enough, in spite of the wind, and sometimes, when he reflected too strongly on the condition in which he found himself, and of the laughing sophomores in the campus, he grew altogether too warm.

There were other groups to meet and pass, other farmers who hurried down to the road to look and wonder, other boys who whooped and yelled and told each other to “git onto de legs of de Giant,” and other things equally uncomplimentary to the bicyclist.

But Dick, having resolved to take the whole thing good-naturedly and philosophically, smiled back at them; and, whenever he dismounted, he answered the rain of questions as best he could, without revealing that he was the victim of a sophomore joke.

But when he reached Guilford, the end of his route—Guilford, celebrated as the birthplace of the poet, Fitz Greene Halleck—he met a surprise that took away his breath. In front of a conspicuous hotel was a brass band, surrounded by Yale sophomores, with Jack Ready prominent in their midst. They were waiting to give the “Giant of the Wheel” a right royal reception; and, as Dick wheeled up, almost too disconcerted to know what to do or say, the band struck into “See the Conquering Hero Comes!” and the sophomores gave a yell that shook the building and almost rattled the curbstones.

But Dick Starbright was quick-witted, and he pulled himself together, so that he was able to dismount with a smile and a bow.

“What sort of fool circus are you idiots trying to make of yourselves?” he blandly demanded, walking forward, pushing his wheel.

Ready wiggled his fingers characteristically.

“An immense one, old man, and you have been the clown of the show. We’ll take supper at your expense to-night. In the meantime, you will find refreshments in the house of this publican.”

He gave his fingers another wiggle and jerked them toward the hotel proprietor, who stood by with red face expanded in a grin.

“It’s one on me!” Starbright admitted smilingly. “But the end hasn’t come. Before Frank Merriwell’s entertainments are over you Smart Aleck sophomores will acknowledge that the freshmen know a thing or two, and are more than your masters. And we’ll not resort to deceit to win our victories or to give us a chance to ‘holler’.”

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CHAPTER II
TO THE AID OF DADE MORGAN.

Jack Ready and the sophomores had rushed to Guilford by train with their band, after Starbright’s departure from New Haven, and had easily beaten him there, with plenty of time to spare. They returned by train, feeling supremely joyous over their success.

Dick, however, in accordance with the terms of the wager, was forced to wheel back to New Haven over the route he had come, again stared at and questioned by the curious people along the road.

The leaden clouds thickened and darkened, portending a northeaster; but, with the wind for a large part of the trip at his back, Dick sped swiftly along, approaching New Haven well ahead of time.

On the outskirts of the city he came upon a sight that stirred his blood. Dade Morgan, who had been out on a wheel accompanying Rosalind Thornton, found himself confronted by a rough-looking man whose brutal face was somewhat familiar to him, and who planted himself in the center of the street as if to intercept him.

Dade was not particularly afraid of the man, but rather scorned him.

“Out of the way!” Dade roughly commanded.

He rang his bell furiously. Rosalind paled.

Seeing that the man did not mean to step aside, and having no desire for an altercation with him in Rosalind’s presence, Dade veered his wheel to pass. The man leaped at him, thrust a foot out in front of the wheel, stopping it, and Dade was thrown heavily over the handle-bars.

Rosalind, who was close at his side, was also thrown to the ground, though she saved herself from injury and skilfully alighted on her feet.

When Starbright saw this he set his pedals in still swifter motion, all his chivalrous instincts aroused.

Dade scrambled up; but the man struck him a heavy blow which knocked him backward.

“Dis is me time I git even wid you fer dat insult. See!” the ruffian growled. “Ye insulted me t’other night, when ye hadn’t no call. Now I pays ye back!”

Rosalind gave a scream of fright. Starbright, swinging forward like a whirlwind, saw Dade dodge the next blow and grapple with the ruffian and saw them begin a furious fight.

Dade, who was a good, hard fighter, had been weakened by his fall, so that it was evident at a glance that he was no match for his burly adversary. He struck savagely, however, and managed to release himself from the man’s grip.

The tough now struck at him, using a big doorkey as brass knuckles, with the amiable intention of cutting open the face of the “college dude.” Morgan evaded this and landed a blow, but the fellow tripped him and kicked him heavily as he fell.

Rosalind, screaming for help, ran to one side of the road. Dade jumped to his feet again, and, managing to fasten on the tough, the two went down together.

Then the whirring wheel stopped beside the struggling couple; and, as the rough pulled loose and tried to strike Dade in the face with the heavy brass key, a blow from Starbright’s big fist sent him reeling.

“Anodder college dude!” growled the ruffian, wheeling about. “Ye’ll wish’t ye’d kep’ out o’ this!”

His hand went to his hip-pocket, but he found no weapon. Then he gathered himself and made a spring at the newcomer. As a result, he ran his face into the big fist on the end of a long, straight, stiffened left arm. At the other end of the arm were something like two hundred pounds of hard-trained muscle and over six feet of young manhood.

A feeling of jarring surprise penetrated to the evil brain. It was not often that he ran against anything quite like that. He paused a moment to stare his surprise; and Dick saw that he was a big, brawny fellow, with heavy jaw, small head and piggish, wicked eyes, the type so often found in the lowest slums of great cities, but seldom seen in New Haven.

The effect of that blow rendered the man cautious.

“Dis ain’t your cut in, young feller!” he snarled.

Then, thinking to take Dick by surprise, he struck out suddenly, with the force of a piledriver. But his maul-like fist did not connect with Dick’s face, and the force of the blow almost threw him to the ground.

Crack! Dick’s hard right fist sounded like the smack of a board striking a house. The fellow reeled, but recovered. His head was like iron.

“W’en I gits me fingers onto ye, ye’ll wilt! See!”

He dodged Dick’s next blow and rushed in with the ferocity of a bulldog. Dick stepped lightly aside; and the hard, white fist pounding the ruffian on the jaw threw him senseless to the ground.

Dade Morgan, having regained his strength somewhat, was on the point of coming to Dick’s assistance, but drew back when he saw the man senseless on the ground.

“That was handsome of you, Starbright!” he acknowledged. “I’ll try not to forget it.”

Rosalind tried to stammer her thanks, but the presence of the ruffian, even though he was insensible for the moment, made her wildly anxious to escape from the vicinity. Some people were approaching, those in the lead seeming to be of the same type as the fellow knocked out.

Before their arrival the man was stirring into consciousness, making Rosalind more than ever wildly anxious to proceed. So she and Dade remounted and wheeled away.

“Perhaps the fellow is your friend,” said Starbright, speaking to the man who arrived first. “If he is, look after him. He interfered with that young lady and her escort, and got what he deserved!”

Then he, too, rode on into the city.

Having reported his return, Dick put away his wheel, and, feeling tremendously hungry, went to a restaurant and had something to eat. It was not until long after nightfall that he went to his rooms. The sophomores had returned to New Haven by rail long before.

“Gone out nagging signs!” was the scrawl left for him on the table by Dashleigh.

Dashleigh had not heard of what had befallen his chum on the trip to Guilford, for the joke had been kept from the freshmen. The sophomores had feared Starbright would learn of it through his freshmen friends; and, besides the sophomores had other plans in store for making it interesting for the men of the lower class.

After changing his clothing, Dick went out to give instructions for the “dinner” he meant to give to Ready and other sophomores that night. When he returned he encountered Dashleigh as the latter was about to ascend to their apartments.

“What have you got tucked under your coat?” Dick asked.

“Sh!” Bert warned. “It’s a sign.”

“Nagging,” or stealing, signboards is, for some inexplicable reason, one of the standard forms of amusement for freshmen. No one can tell just where the fun comes in, unless it is found in imagining the stormy anger of the storekeepers and others when they find their signs gone.

“Had a great time!” Dashleigh panted, as he and his chum hurried up-stairs. “Never had more fun in my life. Ready was with us. Say, that fellow is a corker!”

“What time did he get back?”

“Back where?”

“New Haven.”

“I didn’t know he was out of town. Anyway, he didn’t say anything about it. We nagged a lot of signs this evening. Ready went along to put us onto the thing right, you see. I hardly thought he’d favor freshmen that way, but he was just as jolly about it; said he’d been a freshman not long ago himself, and that he hadn’t forgot it.”

“What kind of a sign did you get?” Dick asked dryly.

He had cause to fear the “friendliness” of Jack Ready for unsuspecting freshmen.

“The dandiest in the lot. It’s a new blacksmith’s sign, or a blacksmith’s new sign, and it has a picture of a horse on it that is a real work of art.”

They had arrived at their rooms, and Dashleigh carefully unbuttoned his overcoat and took from under it the sign. He stared at himself and the sign in comical amazement.

The sign had been freshly painted, and his clothing was coated with the paint. In addition, he had slapped the picture of the horse up against his dark new coat as he tucked the outer coat over it, and the impression of the horse had been transferred to the coat. Starbright could not help laughing.

“Seems to me it is literally a horse on you! That is more of Ready’s work.”

“Why——”

Dashleigh looked from the paint to the red face of his friend.

“Jack Ready?” he gasped. “Say, did Jack put up a job on me?”

“He certainly did, and he put up another on me this afternoon.”

Dashleigh daintily put down the sign, stripped off his overcoat, and sat flat down in a chair.

“Well, say, when I meet that fellow I’ll kill him! Don’t you suppose there was a mistake?”

“Biggest kind of one!”

“What?”

“When we let ourselves forget that Jack Ready is a sophomore and we are only freshmen.”

Dashleigh looked ruefully at his clothing and at the fresh red paint of the sign. Then the humor of the situation came to him, and he smiled, though the smile was somewhat ghastly.

“I’m an idiot!”

“Of course you are. We’re a pair of idiots!”

“What did he do to you?”

“Tell me about the sign first.”

“Well, you see, I’ve been wanting to go out nagging for several nights. Jack heard of it, and he told me that he could give me some pointers. So I spoke to some other fellows.”

“All freshmen?”

“Yep.”

“So I thought.”

“And Ready piloted us to-night. He showed me this beautiful sign in front of the blacksmith’s, and told me that it had been up there only a short time, and it would be a lovely one to nag.”

“It had been up there only a short time!”

“Confound him! I see it had. I thought it felt damp as I pulled it off the hooks, but we had a few drops of rain this evening, and I supposed that was the reason. Then I clapped the thing under my coat and fled hitherward. And there the thing is. And my beautifulest suit is ruined. Well, when I meet him I’ll kill him!”

“It will give a good job to some coat-cleaner. Better tackle the thing yourself, while the paint is fresh. There is some benzine over on the shelf.”

Then, while Bert Dashleigh tried to remove the paint from his clothing, Starbright told of his race to Guilford and of the advertisements and greeting given to the “Giant of the Wheel.”

“Say, we’ll have to murder that villain!” Dashleigh whispered. “I feel to-night fit for treason, stratagem, and spoil.”

Nevertheless, after laboring with the suit and benzine for an hour, he hung the sign against the wall, went out again, and, meeting Ready, greeted him with great cheerfulness.

“Thanks for the sign!” he murmured. “I’ve hung it on our wall, and intend to have it framed as a memento of our adventure.”

Ready grinned.

“That blacksmith will be tearing mad in the morning. His sign hadn’t been hanging there long.”

“Confound you! Don’t I know it hadn’t? That blacksmith never saw that sign in his life, and he never will!”

“It had a beautiful steed on it!” Ready purred.

“A sort of transfer picture! I transferred it to my coat!”

Then they adjourned to Traeger’s and buried the hatchet, after which Ready betook himself to the dinner which Starbright was giving to the sophomores.

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CHAPTER III
SPORT WITH THE LASSOS.

The first of the “entertainments” was given that night in the gymnasium. It was a roping-contest between Bill Higgins, of Badger’s ranch, and Tom Bludsoe, a cowboy from the neighborhood of El Paso, who had been traveling with a “Wild West” exhibition and had somehow become stranded in New Haven. Drink may have had something to do with Bludsoe’s loss of position and his consequent poverty; but he was a fine roper, nevertheless, and in arranging to put Higgins against him for the amusement of the students, Merriwell was not at all sure that his friend from Kansas would be able to win out and cover himself with glory.

Perhaps because Merriwell had seemed in some of the class contests to side with the freshmen, Tom Bludsoe was enthusiastically backed by the sophomores, while the freshmen took Higgins for their champion.

“It chills the corpuscles of my sporting-blood to have to turn your picture to the wall to-night, Higgins,” said Ready, ambling into the gymnasium, after his “feed” at the expense of Dick Starbright; “but the sophomores have taken up Bludsoe, and I’m a soph.”

“Oh, that there is all right!” Higgins grinned, as he strung his riata across the gymnasium floor, to make sure it was in good condition. “This hyer ain’t fer blood, ye know! Jist a little fun, to please Merry and t’other fellers! I hear tell there’s another feller that’s got a picture he’d like to turn to the wall.”

“Dashleigh?”

“Picture of a hoss!” grunted Higgins, critically examining his rope and working at it with his fingers to take out an incipient kink which he fancied he had found. “I’m going to hold that agin’ you!”

“He held it against himself!”

“Yes, so I heerd. But I’m a lover of hosses, and I don’t like to have even a picture of one fooled with. That makes me willin’ to champion these pore freshmen fellers to-night, and I’ll string ropes fer ’em fer all I’m wu’th.”

Indeed, Higgins was going into the contest with “blood in his eye.” He believed that he was a better roper than the man from El Paso, even if Bludsoe had been engaged in giving public exhibitions of his roping proficiency, and he was glad of this chance. Higgins delighted in keeping himself in the public eye. Though he was a noble fellow in many respects, he was as vain as a peacock, and he “felt his oats considerably” that night, as he stretched his riata across the floor and walked round in his new cowboy clothing, with his great spurs musically clinking and jingling on his heels.

Bludsoe was a lithe, wiry man, younger than Higgins and smaller. He wore a smooth face, which was as bronzed as a copper mask. It was a sharp, hatchety face, keen and shrewd—the typical face of the cowboy of the plains, whose intense activity, combined with the dry, sap-extracting climate, tends to keep down all superfluity of flesh.

The opening feature of the contest was an attempt to pull down a tin cup hung by its handle on a nail against a post. A large roping-space had been cleared in the gymnasium by removing some muscle-strengthening machines and horizontal bars.

The room was filled to overflowing, the pushing, laughing crowd seemingly the more jolly because the night without was windy and inclement.

“Makes me think of the plains,” chirped Higgins, as, in a lull of the noise, he heard the singing of the wind round the building. “A feller that’s lived with the wind as I have sort o’ likes to hear its mournful whistle. I’ve heerd it sing that way, wrapped in my blanket, with the stars shinin’ brighter’n diamonds; and oncet I remember it had thet wail when me and some other fellers was lying in a sod house, with the Pawnees creepin’ onto us through the grass.”

It was amusing to notice how the Chickering set and all the enemies of Merriwell invariably became champions of whoever they thought was opposed to him and his friends.

When Bludsoe pulled the tin cup from the post in two throws and Higgins took three throws for the same feat, the Chickering crowd clapped their hands and stamped the floor in their glee.

“Say, I will have to go over to the freshmen side if this keeps up!” Ready moaned in Merriwell’s ear. “It plants an ache in my heart and a desire in my foot to kick somebody. Yet I seem doomed by fate to howl with the Chickering set. Don’t jot it down against me in your book of remembrance!”

The next attempt of the ropers was to catch and hold the corner of a swinging trapeze-bar, and as Higgins turned to get his rope, which he had dropped on a seat while talking with some friends, he roared with rage.

His new rope, in which he took such pride, had been split and ripped and cut in a dozen places by a keen knife. Higgins reddened under his tan as he surveyed the work of the unknown hand.

“If I kin lay my paws on the skunk ’t done that, I’ll try to see if they’s enough of the rope left to hang him with!” he exploded.

He turned slowly round, with blazing eyes, and looked over the sea of excited faces.

“Gents, is this hyer Yale? A man mean enough to be a hoss-thief wouldn’t do that on the ranges! All I asks is fer the scalawag that done it to step up to the counter and let me look at him oncet.”

There was no forward movement, and every one seemed to glance at his neighbor. Bludsoe sneered.

“I don’t reckon that any of yer friends did that to keep ye from bein’ beat?”

Higgins turned on him with those blazing eyes. He saw that, in spite of the sneer, Bludsoe had no knowledge of the author of the outrage, and his hot heart relented. He remembered that Bludsoe was a brother roper of the plains, and that plainsmen in a strange land ought to be friends and not enemies.

“I won’t hold that again’ ye, pardner. If you beat me, I’ll know that you wouldn’t do it by a trick like that. Some skunk that never set eyes on the peraries done that!”

Merriwell knew that another riata could not be had in New Haven, and he was about to suggest that something be substituted for the roping-performance, but Higgins asked if a common rope could be had.

“But a common rope won’t give you much show!” Frank insisted. “I’d like to have you win in this thing if you go on with it.”

“I’m goin’ to win, b’jing!” Higgins vowed. “I’ll win now if it kills me! Send fer a rope!”

Then he gave more explicit directions; and while some one hurried away for the rope, Starbright came upon the scene, and was asked to amuse the crowd by trying to beat the gymnasium freshman record for hammer-throwing and putting the shot, which he did.

When the hemp rope ordered by Higgins came he amused the students by showing them how to make a riata from an ordinary hemp rope. To make the “loop” he spliced an end back on the rope, wrapping it with shoemaker’s wax, also securing the ends from fraying by wrapping them tightly with this wax. Not a knot was used.

“The thing ought to be soaked in water fer two or three hours,” he explained, “and then stretched with weights, but it’ll haf to do as it is.”

“If you can win out with that rope, you will show yourself to be a much better roper than if you had used your own lasso,” Merry whispered encouragingly.

Then the rope-kings went at it again, catching the trapeze-bar as it swung from side to side, roping students who volunteered to run before them for the purpose, pulling caps and gloves from pegs and doing other roping-feats.

Though the rope so hastily prepared was clumsy and inclined to kink in an aggravating way because it had not been stretched, Higgins succeeded in doing some remarkably good work with it, duplicating every feat of Bludsoe.

The applause was pretty equally divided between the ropers, for the freshmen, feeling that their champion had been foully dealt with by some sophomore jealous of his ability, cheered every throw of Higgins with wild delight.

“Try the trapeze again,” said Merriwell. “Then we’ll try the cane, and those two things ought to settle it. Higgins is handicapped, but we’re banking that he will beat Bludsoe anyway.”

The first throw at the trapeze fell to Bludsoe. He stepped forward, holding the free end of the lasso in his left hand and the big swinging noose trailing in his right. He took a keen look at the swinging trapeze, then threw and caught the end of the bar.

The Chickering set went wild with joy.

“That’s all right!” grinned Higgins, getting on his feet. “I dunno ’bout this hyer rope, but I’ll make my try.”

Merriwell asked that the trapeze be given a quicker movement. It dropped like a bird with a broken wing, and Higgins’ noose flew up to meet it.

The rope kinked and seemed about to fall short, but it caught the tip end of the bar, hung and tightened, and the descent of the trapeze was stayed.

Merriwell had secured a cane, round whose center he wrapped a white handkerchief to make it more conspicuous.

“I want Gene Skelding to throw this cane whirling through the air in that direction!” he requested, indicating the direction. “Let him throw for both Bludsoe and Higgins.”

Skelding flushed and colored. Merriwell had made some of the throws, and Skelding had been claiming that the throws made by Merry for Bludsoe were not as fair and easy as those made for Higgins.

He would have backed out, but the sophomores pushed him forward, and he took the cane from Merriwell’s hand, and sent it spinning end over end, as directed.

This was one of the most difficult roping-feats that could have been chosen, for the object was to put the noose of the lasso over the flying cane, and so bring it down.

Bludsoe’s noose struck the whirling cane, but simply sent it on faster.

Then there were shouts for Higgins, and he rose in all his cowboy dignity.

“Gents, I ain’t a-sayin’ that I’m goin’ to do this, but I’m goin’ to try. I reckon I couldn’t do it every time with the best rope ever strung acrost a floor. But I’m goin’ to try!”

Skelding saw that Merriwell was watching him closely and that the eyes of others were on him, so that, in spite of his desire to make an unfair toss, he did not dare to.

The wrapped cane flew out again, a whirling white streak, and Higgins’ rope shot after it. He had nerved himself to make the throw of his life, and he made it. The stiff hemp rope swept through the air with the sinuosity of a serpent, and the noose, dropping over an end of the cane, brought the cane to the floor.

There could be no question that Higgins had won, and won fairly; for not only had he won this trick handsomely, but throughout the contest he had shown that, even with the handicap of the stiff hemp rope, he could do as good work as Bludsoe with his smooth, supple riata.

“Curse the luck!” Skelding growled to his friends, the Chickering set, some time afterward, when all were in Chickering’s rooms. “Do you suppose that Merriwell knew I cut that rope?”

“Did you cut it?” Chickering gasped.

“Of course I did. I wonder if Merriwell knew it?”

“Well, it wath the handthometht thing I’ve known done in many a day!” purred Lew Veazie. “Chummieth, we’ll have to dwink thome wine on that! That wath gweat!”

“But the fellow won, anyhow!” Skelding snarled. “And what I did only made his victory seem the greater. It was a regular boomerang! And my plan was to claim that some of his friends cut the thing for him to prevent him from going to the defeat they foresaw. I can’t make that claim now, confound it!”

---

CHAPTER IV
AN APPARENT CHANGE OF HEART.

Sunday afternoon Dade Morgan received a call from Donald Pike. The northeaster had turned to a snowstorm. Pike shook from his coat the feathery flakes as he came into Dade’s room.

“There is to be a snowball battle in the campus in the morning, before college hours, between sophomores and freshmen. I’m told that you’re to lead the freshmen.”

“That’s the plan now,” said Dade. “Have a chair.”

Pike hung up his coat as if he were at home, and seated himself. Dade closed the door, for he had a feeling that Pike desired to say something that ought not to go beyond the walls of the room.

“There’s only one thing in this whole business that I don’t like,” Pike began.

“You mean of the entertainments?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Merriwell!”

“There are others I like myself better than Merriwell.”

“That sounded funny. ‘I like myself better than Merriwell!’ Of course you do.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It seems to me that these ‘entertainments,’ as they’re called, are planned solely to cover Merriwell with glory. That’s the thing I don’t like. He proposed them, of course. Some way, he always proposes everything, and then the rest fall in like a flock of sheep following their leader. We’re not celebrating Merriwell’s victories, but the victories of Yale. Yet the fellows are already calling them ‘Frank Merriwell’s Entertainments.’”

“You’re warm!”

“I’m hot as a cake of ice!”

“I think I’ve seen you in that frame of mind before!” commented Dade, with the utmost coolness.

“Another thing I don’t like, and which I should think you wouldn’t like, is the way he has of pushing Starbright forward. He seems determined to make Starbright the king of the freshmen.”

Dade’s face darkened, and Pike saw that he had struck a vulnerable spot. Yet Dade only said coldly:

“I don’t need to be told that!”

“And you haven’t anything to say about it?”

“I’ve had a good deal to say about it, at one time and another.”

“You’re the real king of the freshmen, Morgan, and you know it. All your friends know it. It’s for the freshmen to say who shall be their leader. Yet here comes a senior to dictate who the freshman leader shall be!”

“I’d like to help it if I could. I don’t see any way to help it just now.”

Pike was silent for a moment.

“Perhaps not. Merriwell seems to have the whip-hand at present.”

He glanced toward the door.

“No need to fear that you’ll be heard outside of this room!”

“Well, about that snowball battle in the morning?”

“We’ll do up the sophomores, all right.”

“I hope so. But that wasn’t it. You ought to be able to do up Starbright, also, while you’re about it.”

There was not the encouragement in Dade’s face that he hoped to see, but he went on.

“I’ve heard of soldiers being shot accidentally by their own men! Stonewall Jackson was killed that way!”

Dade looked at him earnestly.

“You want me to do that work?”

“Well, I thought you might thank me for a suggestion. You hate Starbright. There’s your opportunity. When the fight is on, a snowball with a rock hidden in it would bring that big freshman down like a bullet if it was thrown right.”

Dade flushed, and, getting up, took a turn round the room.

“I’d do it myself if I were one of the freshmen fighters. As it is, I give you the suggestion for what it is worth.”

He began to feel that Morgan would accept and act upon the suggestion. Dade came back and sat down.

“I ought to thank you for that, Pike,” he said in a low tone. “I’m no better than I ought to be, and I presume that if you had come to me yesterday, I should have thanked you for this. But I don’t think I’ll try to do what you say.”

Donald Pike stared.

“Getting goody-goody?”

“No, it’s not that!”

“Just the same with all of them!” Pike snarled, under his breath.

“I don’t think I understand you if you meant that for me.”

“Well, you are just like all the others!” Pike asserted almost fiercely. “I don’t know why it is, for it hasn’t worked on me that way, but nearly every fellow who has started in here at Yale to down Merriwell has done one of two things: He has either become afraid of Merriwell and practically dropped out of the fight, or he has gone over to Merriwell.”

Dade’s face was again flushing.

“There was Buck Badger! I’ve told you of him before. He was the bitterest enemy Frank Merriwell had for a while, and he ended by becoming a Merriwell maniac. He thinks now that there never was another such man on earth. Why, I’ve been told that even Browning and Hodge, two fellows who can’t think unless Merriwell first gives them license, were once his enemies! You’re traveling the same road. I was Badger’s chum and saw how he went over to Frank Merriwell, and you’re struck with the same symptoms. What in thunder is the matter with all you fellows, anyway?”

“It was Starbright you wanted me to strike with a rock, I believe?” said Morgan, not pleased with this lecture.

“Yes.”

“Starbright isn’t Merriwell.”

“But he’s Merriwell’s protégé, and when you can’t strike Merriwell himself, the best way to get at him is to strike Starbright, or some other of his friends. But you needn’t do it if you don’t care to. It was merely a suggestion.”

“I’m still against Merriwell. Don’t let yourself forget that, Pike!”

“But you won’t be at the end of the year.”

“And I’m still against Dick Starbright.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve a reason for not trying to do what you suggest. It isn’t because I’ve suddenly grown too good. Perhaps I have a little honor left, Pike, though you mightn’t think it. Not enough to boast of, I presume!”

“You haven’t heard of it, but yesterday Starbright saved me from being half-killed by a tough that I met while out wheeling. The place was a lonely one in the suburbs, and I was wheeling with Miss Thornton. I met the tough in a drinking-den a few nights ago, and struck him with a beer-glass, after we’d had some words. When he saw me yesterday he came at me for revenge, tripped me off my wheel, and then, while I was too shaken up by the jar of the fall to be able to do much, he set on me, and would have pounded and kicked me to a jelly. Starbright happened along at that moment. He took a hand in the game—and I’m here to-day, instead of being in the hospital.”

Both were silent for a moment after the completion of the story.

“He did you a good turn, and maybe you’re right. But really, I didn’t think you had any soft spots about you.”

“You thought such a thing wouldn’t make any difference?”

“Yes, honestly, that’s what I thought.”

“And you thought I had no heart at all?”

Pike was quite blunt.

“I thought you had something like a gizzard doing duty for that organ. But it’s all right, of course! I suppose I’d feel the same way if any fellow should stand up for me in such a fight.”

“It wasn’t a fight on my part. I was clean knocked out. I would have been hammered to pieces.”

“Let the thing drop, then!” Pike begged. “And say nothing about it to any one. I didn’t know you had changed in your feeling!”

The sneer stung Dade Morgan.

“I thought I should never let an opportunity go by to strike at Starbright or Merriwell. I’ll get over this in a day or two. But I can’t forget quite so quick. Starbright will do or say something soon that will make me forget his favor, and then I presume I’ll be ready to hammer him up. But to-morrow, in that battle, I’m going to play fair, so far as he’s concerned, at least.”

“Good-by!” snarled Pike, rising. “You can keep your face closed about this, anyway!”

“See here, Pike!”

The voice was so hard and commanding that Don Pike stopped.

“I’m a fool! Don’t fancy for a minute that I would mention such a matter. You’ve stood by me, even though you’re not a freshman, and I don’t forget it. Some other time I’ll be likely to strike at Dick Starbright. Just now I feel a little queer about that matter, and I can’t. That’s the truth of it.”

“I’m going!”

“Just remember that. And if you’ve any bets to lay, put them on the freshmen.”

“If they win, Starbright will get most of the glory! It doesn’t matter to me, though. I’m not trying to beat him in the race for the freshmen leadership. You are.”

Dade Morgan sat for a long time in silence after Donald Pike’s departure. Finally he roused himself.

“I wish the fellow hadn’t come to me with that!” he thought, rising. “Either that, or I wish that it hadn’t been necessary for Starbright to come to my help yesterday afternoon. I wonder what Rosalind thinks about it? I fancied she was somewhat cool to me after it. No doubt he is her hero now, and I’m nothing. Well, if he wants her again, he can have her!”

---

CHAPTER V
STARBRIGHT SHOWS HIS LEADERSHIP.

The crisp air that blew across the famous Yale quadrangle was filled with flying snowballs. The freshmen, under the leadership of Dade Morgan, were battling with the sophomores, under the command of Jack Ready.

At one end of the quadrangle a snow-fort had been built. It was held by the freshmen, and the sophomores were allowed twenty minutes in which to take it.

The plan of the battle, of Merriwell’s devising, contemplated after that the rebuilding of the fort and a change of sides, permitting the sophomores to hold the fort and the freshmen to become the assaulting party.

Behind the snowy walls of the fort and out in the open where the sophomores were collected were great piles of snowballs, the artillery, grape-and-cannister of the contending forces. The snow was in the best of condition for the purpose, balling readily under pressure into light yet compact missiles.

Ready had directed his men to begin with a fierce “rifle-fire” of snowballs, and then charge the fort before the freshmen could recover from the hail of balls; and the sophomores were doing their best to follow his instructions.

Nothing was to be used, however, but snowballs and snow. Tackling with the hands, and all rough work, such as kicking or striking or the use of other than snow missiles, was strictly barred, and every offender was to be summarily ejected from the fight, with the loss of his services to his side.

Merriwell stood with his old friends Browning and Hodge at one side of the quadrangle, all interested spectators. Merriwell was the umpire to decide on fouls of all kinds, with the power of expulsion from the play of every offender.

The freshmen behind the walls met the rain of freshmen snowballs with a counter-fire that was as hot as they could make it.

“Better save our ammunition for closer quarters!” Starbright advised, venturing to speak to Morgan.

The interference stung Morgan to the quick.

“Who’s commander here?” he snarled.

“You are. I only make the suggestion.”

Morgan moved away, and, as if to show that he disliked the interference, he gave commands that caused the freshman fire to grow even hotter. Seeing that this was the order, and determined to be in the front rank, Starbright flew to the nearest opening, and, with an armful of snowballs, rained them on the sophomores.

He had scarcely done this when he felt a crushing blow on the back of the head which tumbled him half-senseless on his face. As he rose, staggering, and felt of his head, he found blood trickling down over his fingers.

The ball that had struck him had “exploded,” and, noticing it at his feet, he saw that in its center there had been a ragged rock.

The air was filled with flying snowballs. Nevertheless, feeling wofully faint and dizzy, he turned squarely round, cowering meanwhile behind the snow embankment, and looked over the freshmen.

“Morgan did that!” he thought. “I’d bet anything Morgan did that!”

Yet it seemed strange that a commander should want to knock out one of his own men.

Starbright picked up the rock and looked at it. Then he thrust it into his pocket and again felt of his cut and bleeding head.

“Hello!” said Dashleigh, seeing blood on Starbright’s fingers and the stain of it on the snow.

“Hit with this!” said Dick, producing the rock. “It came near laying me out.”

The big fellow was reeling sick, but he tried to conceal it. And as there was no possibility of telling who threw the stone, he gathered himself together, tied up his head with his handkerchief, and again went into the fight.

Dade was now in front of him, at the head of his men, though a short time before, as Starbright knew, he had been in the rear.

As Dick straightened up and reentered the fight he saw a ball strike Morgan in the back of the head, saw the ball split open, and, as it fell, saw a ragged stone drop out of it.

Dade went down on his face insensible.

Dick half-wheeled to ascertain from what point the treacherous missile came, but at that moment he collided with Dashleigh and fell.

“Pardon!” Dashleigh bellowed, racing to a point that he thought needed defense.

The fire of the attacking party was slacking, and Dick felt sure that an assault was to come.

Morgan lay insensible, and Dick saw a red stain on the snow.

“Was that an accident?” was his thought. “Were they both accidents? If so, some of our men aren’t fighting fair, but are putting stones in the snowballs.”

It was so comtemptible a trick that his blood boiled and he felt ashamed that such men could be among freshmen.

But there was no time for thought. There seemed to be no time for anything, for, under the lead of Ready, the sophomores were advancing to the charge.

Outside, the students and other spectators were wildly shouting and whooping. The rain of snowballs had been so thick that the fall of Starbright and Morgan had not been perceived even by the keen eyes of Frank Merriwell.

“Take care of him!” Starbright commanded, speaking to two of the freshmen.

These two were not in the fighting-line, but had been detailed, with two others, by Morgan to manufacture snow ammunition.

The freshmen had been weakened by Morgan’s fall, and now were wavering and undecided. But the instant that Starbright sprang into position at their head and began to utter sharp, quick commands, they recognized his natural leadership and gave him instant obedience.

“Hold them back!” Starbright roared.

Fierce as the fight had been, the ammunition was not all exhausted; and the two men left for this purpose began to heap a great mound of balls at the feet of the fighters.

“Charge ’em!” came in the shrill voice of Jack Ready; and, with their arms filled with snow, the sophomores came on in a mighty, sweeping rush.

“Now, give it to ’em!” Starbright roared back.

Ready, in the lead, was right against the walls, with a dozen of his men at his heels.

“Snow! snow!” Starbright bellowed.

It was a signal agreed on, having been issued by Morgan before the beginning of the fight.

The snowballs in the hands of the freshmen were thrown; then great armfuls of snow were picked up and dashed into the faces and eyes of the advancing sophomores.

Ready mounted the wall and fell over on the inside. His men tried to emulate his example. Four of them came over with Ready, but the others were beaten back and almost smothered.

Then Ready and Starbright found themselves face to face. At it they went, each digging up snow by the armful and hurling it at the head and face of his opponent.

Ready fought blithely and chirpingly, pushing the snow out of his mouth and eyes. But a great armful fell on him out of the arms of the giant freshman, and Ready fell under it.

As if in a frenzy, Starbright danced about, heaping snow and still more snow on the prostrate freshman leader, until, from beneath his snowy covering, Ready was willing to confess his defeat.

“Let up!” he begged. “I’m not an Esquimaux! My maux is full now, clean down to my twinkling toes.”

The other sophomores had been overthrown, and the assault had failed.

The time was so nearly up that it was seen to be impossible for the sophomores to take the fort in the few minutes remaining. So there was a truce.

Two of Ready’s men had been hurt, and another of Starbright’s; but not by snowballs containing pieces of rock.

Morgan was so weak from the effect of the blow that it was seen he could not again assume the leadership of the freshmen.

Sitting on a heap of snow, white and weak, he looked up at Starbright, as the latter walked over to inquire about his injury.

“You did that, you sneak!” he hissed.

Starbright grew red.

“If so, who did that?”

Dick showed the wound in his own head.

“I was knocked down by a snowball just before you were, and my head was split open. I saw the ball strike you.”

“You were behind me, then?” said Morgan.

“Yes, and I saw the ball strike you, and saw that it held a stone. Here is the delightful piece of granite that struck me!”

Starbright produced it.

“Well, you know I didn’t throw that!”

“I thought you did, until I saw you get one of the same kind. Now I don’t know what to think!”

“Oh, I guess you threw it, all right!” Morgan grunted. “You were mad because I told you to mind your own business.”

Starbright walked away.

“I don’t know who did it,” he said to Merriwell, explaining the whole matter. “Dade thinks I threw the stone that struck him, but I wouldn’t be fool enough to bang up my own head in this way.”

“I’ll try to look into the thing,” was the promise. “Dade is too weak to go on with the play. It was a rascally piece of business, and I’m tempted to call off the battle because of it. The freshmen want you for captain during the continuance of the fight if it’s to go on. But you’re looking pretty weak.”

“Oh, I’m all right!” Dick earnestly asserted. “Give us another man in the place of Morgan, and we’ll take the fort from the sophomores, or know why!”

---

CHAPTER VI
CAPTURING THE FORT.

The snowball battle was raging again, with Dick Starbright captain of the freshmen and Jack Ready of the sophomores.

There had been some hasty preliminary work given to the manufacture of an abundant supply of ammunition. Now, with great heaps of snowballs near each man and deposited along the line of advance, and with other snowy heaps inside the reconstructed fort, the conflict was on once more.

“Don’t throw away your ammunition. Take time to aim, and throw to hit something whenever you throw. It don’t do any good to hammer the walls of the fort. Aim at the openings and at the men behind the walls!”

These were Starbright’s instructions, and his men were trying to carry them out. The balls for this reason, did not fly so thick and fast as when the sophomores were the attacking force, but they did quite as much execution.

Starbright intended to make the preliminary “rifle-fire” and “cannonade” comparatively short, and charge suddenly, in the effort to take the sophomores by surprise. But when his forces quickly ceased raining snowballs on the white fort and swept forward, they found themselves confronted by the sophomores leaping the walls and coming at them.

Ready had ordered a sortie in force, for the purpose of surprising the freshmen. In the front of the walls of the snow fort the contending parties came together.

Unfortunately for Ready’s plan, some of his men, seeing the freshmen coming, did not leap over the walls, but remained behind them; and these, now beginning to shoot snowballs at the enemy, rained their missiles alike on friends and foes. Within less than a minute it was hard to tell sophomores from freshmen, for each party, in attempting to shower and beat down the other with armfuls of snow, found its members transformed into snowy images of men, in which clothing and features were hidden under the white coating.

Again Starbright and Ready came face to face. For a moment they stopped, looking at each other as if trying to measure strength. Ready tossed back his hair with a flirt of his right hand that at the same time cleared the snow out of his face.

“I’m coming for you!” he panted.

“Here’s where the Giant of the Wheel evens the score!” Starbright laughed back.

Then, with armfuls of snow suddenly snatched up, they dived at each other, and the hottest fight of the whole field began.

Starbright had the advantage by being taller; yet Ready was as supple, lithe, and active as a panther.

The air was filled with snow. Other sophomores and freshmen were struggling almost as fiercely on every side, the sophomores trying to keep the freshmen out of the fort, and the latter desperately struggling to walk over the opposition and enter the enclosure.

Ready went down under Starbright’s assault, but clung to one of Dick’s legs, as this could not be considered, he thought, a violation of Merriwell’s rules.

But Starbright, not to be thus impeded, sprang for the fort, dragging Ready; and the latter, letting go with extraordinary suddenness, Starbright fell over the wall upon the inside.

A half-dozen other freshmen had scaled the wall, beating back the opposition, and these now engaged with the defenders of the fort within.

In less than ten minutes from the time of the beginning of the struggle the fort was in the hands of the victorious freshmen.

Dick seized the flag which had at first been planted on the wall, but which had been knocked down, and, mounting to the defences, swung it over his bandaged head and led the almost breathless freshmen in a cheer.

It was not loud, for the freshmen were too spent to give the cheer volume; but an exploding roar was added to it, coming from the throat of Bill Higgins, the cowboy, who had watched the fight with great interest at one side of the quadrangle, out of the way of the snowy bullets.

“Whoop!” Higgins howled, yelling again when the freshmen yells subsided. “I’d never believed so much fun could be got out o’ a little snow. B’jings, that’s a sport I’ll ’naugurate on the ranges soon’s I git back there. If I don’t wallop and throw down and bury Saul Henderson so deep that a badger can’t dig him out, I’m a liar! That’s the sport fer the short-grass country!”

He was speaking to Merriwell.

“Which Badger?” Frank quietly asked.

“Which badger? Why, ye don’t reckon I know the names of all the badgers of Kansas, do ye?”

Then, seeing the pun, he roared again.

Starbright came up to them, digging the snow out of his hair.

“How is your head?” Bruce asked.

Starbright put a hand to his bandage.

“Oh, I was so determined to do up Jack Ready that I forgot I had a head!”

“You didn’t fight as if you’d forgotten your head, anyway,” said Browning. “You kept it on your shoulders pretty well, I’m thinking.”

“Yes, that was a great fight, Starbright!” Merriwell declared warmly. “And you showed good leadership. I want to congratulate you.”

The words and the handshake that followed were more to honest Dick Starbright than had been the winning of the battle.

That evening Dade Morgan received another call from Donald Pike.

Dade’s head was bandaged, but he had otherwise entirely recovered. The blow of the stone hidden in the snowball had been a heavy one, sufficiently heavy to temporarily knock him out, but, with the exception of the cut on the head, which promised to heal readily, he had already thrown off its effects.

“Nice little souvenir of the fun of the morning!” said Pike, nodding at the bandaged head. “I guess you know you have Starbright to thank for that?”

“I did think so at first, but I don’t know now. He denies it.”

“Of course he denies it! He’d be an idiot to confess, wouldn’t he?”

“Then who struck him? I didn’t. How do you account for the fact that he was also hit on the head with a stone hidden in another snowball?”

“You’re easy, Morgan!”

“What do you mean by that?” Dade queried, flushing.

“Just what I say. You’re dead easy. Starbright threw that snowball. How do I know? Jimmy Seldon saw him!”

Dade straightened in his chair, while the dark look on his face deepened.

“Did Seldon tell you that?”

“Oh, I’m giving it to you straight! You were so soft that you declared you’d play fair in that battle, and the man you were to play fair with gave you that.”

“Then who hit Starbright?”

“He wasn’t hit. He fell as he was rushing toward the walls of the fort, and was kicked on the head by accident. The kick laid open his head; and he made a great fuss about it for the purpose of making you think that he, too, was hit on the head. That’s all there was to that. Seldon was in the rear at the time, and saw the whole thing!”

“Why didn’t Seldon come and tell me, then?”

“He’s ready to tell you now!”

Don Pike pushed the door open, and a stripling, with a pale, nervous face, entered. He came in hesitatingly and stood with hat in hand till Dade asked him to take a seat.

Morgan knew Seldon well, and did not highly regard him, though the fellow had been one of the twenty freshmen selected to take part in the snowball battle.

“We’ve talked it over, and Seldon is ready to tell you all about it,” said Pike, as Seldon dropped into a chair.

“Yes, I saw it!” Seldon avowed. “Starbright was behind you, and he aimed that snowball straight at your head, while pretending to be aiming it at the sophomores. I was so close to him that I’m sure I couldn’t be mistaken.”

“Did you see Starbright when he was struck?” Dade asked, his heart flaming again against Dick.

“No. I don’t think he was struck. He fell, and one of the fellows kicked him. I think so, anyway, for I saw a fellow stumble over him. A moment later I saw there was blood on Starbright’s fingers. But I’m sure he wasn’t hit by a ball.”

“Why didn’t you make a report of it to Merriwell, or to me?” Morgan demanded.

“Well, to tell the truth, I was afraid to.”

“Afraid to?”

“Afraid of Dick. He would say it was a lie, and perhaps try to take it out of my hide. So I kept still.”

“And only told Pike?”

“Yes. Pike and I have been pretty good friends, and we got to talking about the fight, and I told him.”

“And I insisted that he should come and tell you,” said Pike. “I thought you ought to know it.”

Morgan looked at Seldon.

“This is all right!” he declared. “I’m glad you came to me with it. You needn’t think I’ll blab and get you into trouble. It’s not my way.”

“I assured Seldon that it would be perfectly safe for him to tell you, though he was doubtful at first.”

“No, I won’t say anything about it. But I’ll get even with Dick Starbright!”

When Seldon had gone, Pike sat talking with Morgan for some time, trying to fan into fiercer energy the anger which Dade again felt toward the big freshman. Starbright was Merriwell’s friend, and Pike had come to hate Merriwell so much that he wanted to injure whomever Merriwell liked, though Frank had never done anything to win such enmity from Donald Pike. There are some natures, however, which increasingly hate the man they try to injure, and their hate grows more and more bitter with each failure. Pike really feared to test strength with Merriwell, hence resorted to the use of tools to accomplish what he feared to attempt himself.

Scarcely was Pike gone when Roland Packard came in with Gene Skelding. With Don Pike, they formed a trio who seemed to live on hate of Merriwell. They were no sooner seated than they began to talk of the snowball fight of the morning, and of the blow which Morgan had received.

“It was Starbright who did that,” said Skelding. “I know, because I saw it. I was standing near one of the monuments where I had a good view of all that was going on. I thought, when I saw him lift his hand to throw, that he was aiming at the sophomores, but when I saw you drop as if you were hit by a rifle-bullet, I knew whom he had aimed at.”

If Dade Morgan had doubted the story told by Jimmy Seldon, this would have driven away his doubts.

“It’s all right, fellows, and I’m obliged to you. I shall remember that little blow against Richard Starbright. You needn’t be afraid that I won’t. He did me a good turn the other day, and I was feeling a bit soft toward him, but I shall not hold back now.”

“I don’t know how you are going to even the score with him,” Packard craftily suggested.

“Oh, there are plenty of ways,” Morgan snarled. “I’ll find a way.”

“Or make one?”

“Or make one!”

“Well, you know that you can count on our aid in anything you want to undertake.”

There were times when Dade Morgan despised these tools. He saw their innate cowardice, but often he felt forced to use them, for he knew he could not fight the battle he had undertaken against Merriwell alone.

When his pretended friends had departed, he sat for a long time alone, lost in thought, trying to plan some means to “even the score” with the big freshman.

“I wish Hector King were here!” he muttered finally, as he prepared to turn out his light. “But he has disappeared since Merriwell unmasked him. Given up the fight, probably. Well, I haven’t given it up! I’ll have to be careful, though, and strike in the dark. Merriwell and Starbright are too dangerous for me to fight them in the open.”

Then he extinguished his light and crept into bed, where he lay awake a long time, discarding plan after plan as impossible or impolitic, and listening to some freshmen singing in another part of the building.

The silver moon crept aloft in the cold sky and looked down on the snowy and deserted campus.

Dade’s heart burned when he heard the deep, rich voice of Dick Starbright join in the rollicking college songs. Bert Dashleigh was with the singers, gleefully thumping his mandolin.

By and by Dade slept.

---

CHAPTER VII
ON LAKE WHITNEY.

The change in the weather had brought a change in the character of “Merriwell’s Entertainments.” Down by the famous fence on many a recent evening the “senior committee of three,” fresh from the gymnasium or athletic field, had discussed and laid plans for the merrymaking. The “committee of three” consisted of Merriwell, Browning, and Hodge, into whose hands everything had been committed. Their first plans had contemplated field-contests, burlesque football-games, and similar sports, but the freezing weather suggested something new and different, and they promptly accepted the hint of the weather-clerk, and made the change.

When, on Wednesday morning, it was reported that Lake Whitney would bear skaters, the “committee of three” decided instantly that races on ice-skates would be the proper thing for the half-holiday entertainment of the students that afternoon.

Except in spots, the ice was found sufficiently thick and firm, and the new attraction drew an immense crowd to the shore of the lake that afternoon. Huge bonfires were built, for the air was sharp and the ground still covered with snow, and a prettier picture can scarcely be imagined than that of the rosy-faced girls and young women clad in winter garments gathered round these bonfires, while they watched the skaters cutting figures and writing the names of themselves and their sweethearts in the glassy ice with their skates.

Inza and Rosalind were there, Inza having come out with Merriwell, and Rosalind with Dade Morgan.

There was no prettier skater on the lake that afternoon than Dade Morgan. His movements were as graceful as those of a bird, and Rosalind watched him with pleasure, now and then casting a sly glance at big Dick Starbright, as if for the purpose of reading his face. She wondered in the depths of her heart if Dick were very jealous of Dade, and told herself that surely he must be.

As Jack Ready had boasted that he could beat Morgan in a mile race, and Dade had accepted the challenge, that was the first thing on the program.

“Oh, you can beat him!” Rosalind urged in the ear of her escort.

“Of course I can beat him!”

Dade made good his boast. Jack Ready had chirped of himself as a “winged wonder,” but Morgan beat him in at the finish more than twenty yards.

“Well, you see, it was this way,” Ready explained, stepping up to Rosalind as Dade moved to meet her. “I knew how you felt about it, and that took away my heart. No one can skate well with the wishes of a handsome young lady against him.”

“Oh, come off!” Morgan snarled. “I beat you fair and square, and you know it.”

Somehow, Morgan had never appreciated the humor of the fellow of the apple-red cheeks.

Ready wiggled his right hand in his bland way.

“There’s a fellow over there you can’t beat!”

“Who?”

“Dick Starbright.”

Rosalind’s dark face grew warm, for the words had been caught up by Dashleigh and some other of Dick’s friends.

Finding himself growing angry, Morgan assumed a smile.

“It’s all right! I don’t care to race with Starbright!”

At the same time he was anxious for the race, for he fancied that he would be able to defeat Starbright more easily than he had Ready. His face showed nothing of the anxiety and plotting that had recently harassed him, and as for the wound on his head, the effects of it had entirely passed away, though there was a scar concealed by the hair and the cap.

As Dick was nothing loath to meet his enemy in a skating-race, the matter was quickly arranged, with Beckwith for the starter and one of the athletic-trainers for the timekeeper.

As the contestants skated away, Morgan remembered that Rosalind had not insisted that he could defeat Starbright, as she had that he could defeat Ready. He wondered about it, and his heart grew hot.

“I’ll beat him, all the same!” he determined, and started in with clean, quick strokes, remembering to skate handsomely at the same time, for the eyes of the spectators were on him.

To all appearances, the big freshman did not seem to be so good or so fast a skater as his slighter rival, but the way he went over the ice was surprising. His stroke was longer, though not so quick, and it took him forward with astonishing speed.

Morgan tried to draw ahead of him, but found Starbright hanging doggedly at his heels.

Away they went like birds down to the half-mile point, and, turning there, came flying back, with about the same relative distance still between them, Morgan skating with all his strength and skill, and Starbright, seeming slow, but still right at Morgan’s heels.

The crowds on the shore began to cheer. Dade heard it and increased his efforts. Then he heard Starbright’s stroke quicken, and, to his dismay, saw the big fellow go by him.

The fight to the finish was pretty. Starbright still seemed to be skating slowly, and Merriwell, who was watching him, saw that the giant freshman had a lot of reserve force, and that he was not doing all that he could.

Dashleigh danced up and down and almost broke the ice through, so jubilant was he when he saw his big chum in the lead.

Rosalind was paling and flushing by turns, and even Frank, who glanced at her occasionally, could hardly determine whether she favored Starbright most, or Morgan.

In the final twenty-five yards Starbright seemed to lift himself and fly, and crossed the line easily and neatly the winner.

The smile was still on Morgan’s face as he returned to Rosalind’s side.

“My skates are dull,” he said. “I think I could beat him with another pair. But now we’ll see what Merriwell will do!”

One of the interesting things of the afternoon was to be a race between Frank Merriwell and Jack Simmons, a junior, who was everywhere noted as the “Skate King.”

The enemies of Merriwell were jubilant. They had openly boasted that Frank would never dare to meet Simmons in a race on ice-skates, though they were forced to concede that in nearly every form of athletics Frank was the best man who had ever been seen in Yale. But Frank, though he had defeated Jack Ready and some others, had never laid any claims to be a wonder on skates.

He had not wanted to enter a race against Simmons, for, in arranging the “entertainments,” his idea was to give others an opportunity to show what they could do. Therefore, he had no desire to exploit his abilities. But he had finally consented, when Simmons came to him and told him that he personally wished to make the race.

The excitement over the previous contests was tame compared with that now witnessed.

Frank came on the ice wearing the winged skates which had been given him by Inza Burrage the previous winter. They were as handsome as were ever turned out by a skate-maker, and on the heels, as ornaments, were pairs of tiny metal wings, in imitation of the winged sandals of Mercury.

Jack Simmons wore racing-skates of the most approved pattern. He believed that he was really the king of skaters, and he was anxious to prove his superiority to Merriwell in this great winter sport.

The cheering ceased when the skaters moved forward side by side for the line, which they crossed together. It broke out again as they sped away, and was renewed as the racers neared the half-way point.

“Merriwell is fooling again!” growled Hodge, who was standing with Inza.

The skaters neared the half-mile turn, with Simmons slightly in the lead.

“He will win, you may be sure,” said Inza. “Frank always wins!”

“Well, I’ve known him to fail, and often to come near failing by being altogether too generous. It’s not my way!”

Inza smiled sweetly and serenely.

“Oh, I know it isn’t, you fire-eater! You want to murder everybody who comes against you in a contest!”

“Well, if I could beat them, you bet I’d beat them, without any monkey-business!”

There was no “monkey-business” as Frank came down on the home-stretch. He walked away from the skate king with marvelous ease, the winged skates bearing him on as if they were truly winged.

Simmons spurted in an effort to lessen the widening distance, but found it impossible; and Frank shot across the line far in advance of him, with Inza clapping her hands in delight, and Hodge growling that he knew Merriwell had “monkeyed” in the first half of the race.

There were other races; between Beckwith and Browning, which Bruce won, between seniors and juniors, and between sophomores and freshmen; races of all kinds, from singles to team-races. Combined with all of this there were many exhibitions of fancy skating.

Some boys came down to the shore drawing their sleds.

“A sled-race!” said Inza.

Rosalind heard it. Inza was talking to Starbright, and Rosalind’s jealous heart was flaming.

“Starbright beat you before,” she whispered to Morgan. “Perhaps you can beat him in a sled-race.”

“How?” Dade asked.

“Why, don’t you know? When I went to school in our village the boys used to skate races, drawing girls on sleds. Every fellow was anxious to draw his sweet-heart in such a race, and to win, of course. You can do it!”

Something in Dade’s heart made him rebel against the proposition; but looking at Starbright, and feeling keenly the rankling sting of his recent defeat, he determined to offer the challenge. So he walked over to the big freshman and proposed the sled-race.

“If Miss Burrage doesn’t object,” said Dick, his fair face flushing. Inza did not object. She had seen and read the jealous look of Rosalind Thornton, understood its meaning, and was willing that the race should take place, believing firmly that Starbright could win.

“I think it would be delightful,” she said. “Only, if I should fall off while you are going so fast, your skates might run away with you, Mr. Starbright, and take you into the woods.”

Merriwell might have objected if he had been consulted, but this was outside of the program, and he had no wish to interfere. At the same time, he did not quite like the look in Morgan’s eyes.

The race was to be across to the opposite point of land, and back; and as there were to be no official starters and timekeepers or red tape, the arrangements were quite simple.

The sleds were brought forward, the girls seated themselves, and Starbright and his enemy were away, each dragging his fair load in the race across the ice.

Rosalind now and then gave Inza a stab out of her dark eyes, but the other dark-eyed girl affected not to notice this as they were whirled on almost side by side.

The character of the ice made a divergence from the direct line necessary, thus increasing the distance to be skated.

Dick, who was not “playing” with Dade Morgan, even if Frank Merriwell had been “playing” with the skate king, reached the opposite point first, and turned to retrace his way.

Looking back as he carefully swung the sled round, he saw the crowd on the opposite shore waving handkerchiefs and caps, and heard their encouraging cheers. Then an increased desire to defeat Dade Morgan by as great a margin as possible came to him.

When Morgan turned the point, more than twenty yards behind Dick, his face was white and set. This second defeat meant much to him. He had not thought when he entered into it so readily that its result might mean his permanent defeat for the freshman leadership by his rival, but now his heart told him this was the peril before him.

To be twice defeated in one afternoon by Starbright might bring about the enthronement of the big freshman as the undeniable leader of the freshmen athletic forces.

“I will beat him!” he hissed. “He shall not defeat me again!”

“I’m not afraid!” Rosalind encouraged, feeling also the sting of defeat. “Go as fast as you can!”

Thus urged, Dade swept forward on the home-stretch with all his might. He saw that an advantage could be gained by pressing nearer the dangerous ice, and to get that advantage he swung inward.

“We’re going so fast that there isn’t the least danger!” he told himself. “At this speed, one could safely pass over the thinnest ice.”

Then he swerved still more.

Suddenly Starbright, who, taking the safe course, and was losing by this device of his opponent, heard the cracking of ice and a scream. He stopped, turning his skates sidewise, and almost being thrown by the sled, which ran against his heels.

Then he saw a sight that chilled his blood. The ice had given way under Rosalind’s sled, and she had been thrown into a yawning opening.

She was struggling wildly in the icy waters.

The momentum had carried Dade across in safety, and the dropping of Rosalind from the sled had pitched him headlong.

Before he could recover, Starbright had skated back past him, and, without hesitation, seeing that nothing but prompt action could save the imperiled girl, had leaped into the water to Rosalind’s assistance.

The lake was instantly covered with skaters hurrying to the scene of the disaster, among the foremost being Merriwell and Hodge.

Starbright secured a grip on Rosalind’s jacket, and though the icy waters seemed to strike a chill to his bones, he succeeded in holding her head up, and swam slowly with her to the edge of the broken ice.

A half-dozen fellows threw themselves on the ice in a line, with Merriwell in the lead, crawled to the dangerous and crumbling brink, and thus drew Starbright and Rosalind out to safety.

Fortunately, carriages were in waiting, and into these the soaked skater and the equally soaked and half-drowned girl were quickly placed, and the drivers lost no time in getting their charges into the city.

“I’m awfully sorry!” said Inza, as she and Frank returned to town. “It was partly my fault. But I didn’t think Morgan would be such a fool.”

“There is no telling what a fellow will do when he is angry or jealous!”

“Or a girl, either,” said Inza. “I could see that Rosalind was both when she saw me talking with Starbright.”

---

CHAPTER VIII
DONALD PIKE’S PLOT.

There was no more disgusted individual in New Haven that night than Donald Pike. All his scheming and lies seemed to have come to naught. Morgan had not only done nothing to Merriwell or Starbright, but had been badly worsted in every way.

He met Gene Skelding, and they talked it over, but could get no cheer out of the situation. Roland Packard came along, in an equally unamiable mood, and after walking round a while together, the worthy trio climbed up to Chickering’s rooms.

They found Rupert and some of his friends trying on various sorts of costumes for the masked-ball of that night.

This was another of Merriwell’s “entertainments,” and it seemed that nearly everybody who had a right to go was going.

“You fellows make me sick!” said Pike.

“What troubles you now, Donald?” asked Chickering.

“Lotht on the watheth thith afternoon, I’ve no doubt!” lisped Veazie.

“A plague on the races!” Pike growled.

“Why do we fellows make you sick?” queried Julian Ives, looking at himself admiringly in the long mirror. Julian had arrayed himself in a glittering imitation of chain armor, and was going to the ball in the character of a Knight of the Round Table.

“For thinking of going to that ball.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mith it for anything!”

“You’re just like all the rest of the fools, Veazie!”

Veazie looked immensely fierce for a moment; then concluded to change his attitude, and mildly inquired:

“I don’t underthand you?”

“You’re just helping Merriwell out! Can’t you see it? Now, look here! Yale wins a lot of victories—beats Carlisle, Princeton, Harvard, and everything else that comes its way. The claim is made by Merriwell’s friends that Yale’s glorious victories of this season were made possible because Merriwell had the running of things. Merriwell sits back and smiles and fans himself and believes that he is ‘it’!

“Then the idea is conceived that it would be the proper thing to celebrate the victories of Yale. Immediately Merriwell is put in charge of that, as if the other things were not enough. He and his two inseparable chums, Hodge and Browning, are the committee of arrangements. They are called the ‘committee of three,’ and they proceed to run things to suit themselves and favor their friends. Again they contrive to cover Merriwell with glory. Everything is Merriwell. Will you kindly tell me if we are celebrating the victories of Yale or the victories of Merriwell?

“And here, now, I find you fellows arraying yourselves in chain armor and other togs, for the sole purpose of going to Merriwell’s mask-ball, that you may help it out with your presence and commendation. After it’s over you’ll come home, saying what a tremendous success it was, and so help to stick another star on the gilt crown of Yale’s little tin god. I’m sick of it!”

Julian Ives drew his long sword, and, holding it in hand, stood posed before the mirror.

“Too late to help it now,” he said, “even if all you say is true, and I guess it is. The way the fellows are talking, that ball is going to be a howling success, and it will be that whether I stay or go. So I’m going!”

There was small likelihood that Julian would lose any opportunity to put himself on exhibition.

“Well, you’re a set of fools! That’s all I’ve got to say!”

Don Pike was too uneasy in mind to remain long in Chickering’s, and strolled out shortly, leaving Roland Packard and Gene Skelding still there. As he went away a thought came to him.

“Just the thing!” he said.

“What is?”

Bertrand Defarge clapped him on the back.

Pike started and bit his lip.

“I didn’t know I was talking to myself!” he said. “It’s a bad habit, and I shall have to break myself of it. Going to the ball?”

“Certainly. There will he hosts of pretty girls there, and I shouldn’t want to miss it.”

“Another fool!” Pike growled, as he and Defarge separated. “No matter what Merriwell plans, not only his friends but his enemies turn in to make a success of it. Is it dead luck, or is the man positively a genius?”

Hurrying away now to a costumer, Pike hired a cowboy-suit as nearly like that worn by Bill Higgins as he could get, and, with the long lasso that went with it, sneaked back to his rooms.

“Higgins has been drinking a little,” was his thought, “though the fellow has been awfully mild for a plainsman. He wasn’t drinking any to-day, to be sure, but who’s to say that he didn’t fill up this evening? He’s made himself a general nuisance here, whooping things up for Merriwell. He’s Merriwell’s protégé quite as much as Dick Starbright is. If I can bring him down and roll him in the gutter of disgrace, it will be a little something.”

The trick he contemplated was a small one, worthy of a smaller brain than Pike was usually supposed to possess.

In an angle of the wall near the steps which he had seen Professor Warburton ascend but a few moments before, Donald Pike crouched in his cowboy garb. Hiding his face was a mask which he had also obtained of the costumer.

“If I can just rope Warburton, and make him think it the playful work of Bill Higgins, I couldn’t ask anything better. Warburton is a fellow who would hate a creature like Higgins by instinct.”

Warburton was, indeed, a man of considerable pomposity and self-importance, whose dignity would have been outrageously offended by such a thing as Pike contemplated.

“If I can do it, and Warburton makes a row over it, as he surely will, Higgins will be in such bad odor that Merriwell will feel precious small. If the thing gets to the faculty, or into the courts, so much the better. I’d like to have the newspapers of New Haven make a few roasting comments on Merriwell’s dear friend from the Western ranches.”

Don Pike had taken roping-lessons from his former chum, Buck Badger, and could throw a rope reasonably well, though he could not be called an expert. He felt sure, though, that if Warburton came down the steps in his customary leisurely way that there would be no difficulty in getting the noose over his head. Even if it only struck him, that would answer, for it would show what Higgins’ intentions were and serve to prove, also, that Higgins was intoxicated.

Pike expected Warburton to come out as he went in, but the man who appeared on the steps five minutes later was masked and wore a cowboy-suit which looked, in the rather dim light, identically like the one worn by Pike himself.

“That costumer lied to me!” was Pike’s thought. “He said I had the only cowboy-suit anything like that. And I had no idea that Warburton would think of attending that ball! He’s masked close and tight, and does not intend to reveal his identity.”

If Pike had been given time for thought, he might have reached radically different conclusions. He was not given time, and thinking that if he made a mistake he could run away and the thing would not be serious, he let fly with his rope at a venture, and caught the supposed Warburton round the neck, giving, at the same time, a sharp jerk on the rope. Then he turned to run.

The roar that went up was disillusioning; but not more so than the noose that now dropped over Pike’s own neck.

“What in time d’ye mean by that?” came in the voice of Bill Higgins himself.

Then Higgins began to draw in on the rope, pulling the startled youth toward him. Pike tried to cast the noose off, and, failing in that, sought for his knife.

All the while Higgins was drawing the scared student toward him, making the air blue with his exclamatory questions and objurations.

“I’ll learn ye some sense!” Higgins howled. “I’ll wring yer neck fer ye, b’jings! I’ll hang ye up on one o’ these hyer trees fer the crows to eat! That’s what! Why, you stepfather to a hoss-thief——”

He almost fell to the ground as the rope parted under a cutting slash from Pike’s knife, and, having freed himself, Pike darted away, with Higgins bellowing at his heels.

Merriwell and Browning came down the steps, having heard the outcry.

“What’s up?” Frank demanded.

Higgins turned back, finding Pike too light-footed for him. He brought with him the rope which Pike had dropped in his flight.

“Some feller slammed this hyer round my neck as I come down the steps!” Higgins declared. “One o’ yer dinged student friends, I reckon, fer no real cowboy’d do another cowboy sich a measly trick as that. Playin’ cowboy! Well, if I git my hands onto him, he won’t monkey no more with yer Uncle William!”

---

The mask-ball was the success Don Pike had known it would be. Everybody praised it and its excellent arrangements.

Three nights later Merriwell’s “entertainments” concluded with a banquet at the New Haven House, which witnessed a crush.

When the toast came round, “To Yale!” Merriwell responded in his usual happy way.

“There was one thing I should have been pleased to say in that little speech,” he remarked to a number of friends later, “but it wasn’t the time and place.”

“What was that?” asked Browning.

“It’s a bit of news which I must convey to Starbright and Morgan. As the result of an investigation, I have discovered who threw the rocks in the snowball battle which struck those two fellows.”

Hodge was at once interested.

“It was Jimmy Seldon! I ran the thing down, and then confronted him, and he confessed. The fellow has fancied from the start that he is an athlete, and that he ought to be the real leader of the freshmen. It was a case of unappreciated and unobserved genius! He brooded over it. Perhaps it turned his head. Anyway, he went into that fight determined to knock out the men he fancied had without merit been chosen above him. When the opportunity came, he threw his prepared snowballs.”

“You’ll report it?” Bruce asked.

“As he left Yale and New Haven this morning, and isn’t coming back, it isn’t worth while!”

“You told him he would have to go?”

“Well, I talked with him! He said he was going, anyway, for he has failed in his examinations. Perhaps that was one of the things that made him desperate. He is better out of Yale than in it, and Yale is better without him than with him.”

“And who roped Higgins?” asked Hodge.

“I don’t know about that, but I think it was Don Pike. He is likely to go out of Yale, too, very suddenly, unless he mends his ways!”

“A few other villains came near being unmasked in this series of entertainments!” droned Browning. “I’m keeping my weather-eye on Dade Morgan.”

“If it will show that scoundrel up in his true light, we’ll have another series!” said Hodge.

Then he arose and proposed this toast:

“To the confusion of the few enemies of Frank Merriwell! To the success of his legion of friends!”

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CHAPTER IX
ROSALIND’S REWARD.

“I should like to know what you mean by that, Mr. Morgan?”

Rosalind Thornton stood before Dade Morgan, her pretty lips trembling.

He had made an evening call on her at the residence of her aunt, and was now on the point of taking an early leave. They were standing together at the foot of the stairs, under the red globe of the swinging hall-lamp near the outer door.

“You don’t know how pretty you are in that mood, Rose! But perhaps you do know? It tempts me to steal a kiss.”

Rosalind Thornton was, indeed, a pretty girl, and never more so than at that moment. A flash of hurt pride made her winsomely attractive—so attractive that Morgan almost relented from the purpose he had formed in his heart.

She drew back and put out a little hand.

“You have no right to say such things to me!”

There was a glow of fire behind the unshed tears. Morgan laughed in his usual reckless, nonchalant way, and hurt Rose by saying roughly:

“Well, I didn’t call to take you out riding this afternoon, as I promised to do—because I didn’t care to!”

How handsome he was as he stood there looking at her with eyes as dark as her own. She was as fully alive to his good looks as he was to hers. There was a mysterious something in his strong, athletic form; in the resolute face, smiling mouth, and white, even teeth. Dade Morgan was undeniably a handsome youth, aside from a trick he had of dropping his lids down over his eyes, to shut out the strange glitter that occasionally took the beauty out of them.

It was the magnetism of his beauty and strength that had made pretty Rosalind Thornton willing to hurt the honest heart of big Dick Starbright—had made her willing to turn from him and accept the pleasant company of this man, who was his confessed and deadly enemy.

Rosalind’s affections were warm and womanly, but they were not of an enduring type. She was, besides, of a petulant, jealous disposition. She had at first accepted Dade’s attentions in the thought that this would bring Dick Starbright to her feet as a willing and devoted subject. Then she had suddenly found herself captivated by Dade’s good looks and winning smile, and wavered in her affection for Starbright, telling herself that, if Dick did not care to come back, Morgan would be as acceptable, perhaps more so.

“I suppose I’m a fool, Rose!”

He again moved toward her. Once more she put out a detaining hand.

“Yes, I think you are; but do not call me Rose, please!”

“Rosalind!”

“Nor that!”

He laid his hand on his heart in mock gallantry.

“Miss Thornton, any fellow is a fool who doesn’t fall in love with you!”

“Thanks!”

The laughing smile which he so admired and which he hoped to coax back to her eyes did not make its reappearance.

“You are quite angry?”

“You didn’t care to keep your word this afternoon!”

Her lips again trembled as she thought of it—thought of the pride and pleasure with which she had gowned herself—the triumphant pride, which had made her desire to sweep in Dade’s carriage in grand style past her former lover, Dick Starbright, whom she was still anxious to draw after her, as a conquering captor draws a captive.

Dade laughed and dropped the lids over his eyes.

“Well, to tell the truth, I came up here to-night principally to say that I don’t care to go out driving that way any more.”

The girl’s cheeks paled.

“You’re an awfully pretty girl, Miss Thornton——”

She put out her hand again, but he went on.

“I don’t need to tell you that, for you know it. But there’s no use of keeping this thing up, you see. You might begin to think that I—I care for you. To be frank, I don’t. I suppose you’ll say that’s brutal.”

She dropped into a seat on the stairs. Dade looked at her a moment, still handsome and smiling.

“I hope you aren’t crying,” he said, crossing to her side. “When you seem so distressed, you know, it makes me—makes me almost lo—care for you!”

He tried to take her hand. She dashed it away, and turned toward him. She was undeniably crying now. A strange thrill came to his heart. He began to think he had been blunt and harsh. His pride was flattered. It was something to make a pretty girl cry—it evidenced the fact that he was attractive to women. And he began to ask himself why he had not been content to go on and make her believe that he cared for her? His vanity was lashing him, not his conscience.

“I don’t think you care to talk to me any longer,” she declared, in a low, icy voice. “At least, I don’t care to continue the conversation. I thought you something which you are not—a gentleman! You were going, I believe?”

“But perhaps I don’t care to go. Perhaps I—perhaps I prefer to stay. If we can go on with the understanding that what we’re doing is just for fun, just for a jolly time and to make Dick Starbright——”

“You were going, I believe!” she icily repeated.

Her eyes were very bright now, and, with the exception of a red spot glowing in each cheek, her face was white. The tears had dried.

A step was heard on the outer step, making Dade start. He stood in a listening attitude and heard footsteps departing. Some one had been on the piazza, and was now going away. Morgan stood a moment in silence, then opened the door and looked out. The electric light was more than half a block distant, and the light in front of the house was not good. Yet he saw a tall form moving down the street.

“If I didn’t know that he couldn’t be guilty of such a thing, I should say that our good friend Starbright had followed me here this evening and had been eaves-dropping,” he said, as he withdrew his head and shoulders from the doorway and closed the door.

“I don’t want to leave until we have settled this matter!” he continued, still feeling that perhaps he had acted too hastily, and that Rosalind was altogether too pretty and winsome a girl to be thrown over in that manner, even if he did not care for her.

“It is settled, I think!” she declared; then turned from him and began to mount the stairs.

He looked after her, flushed and angry. He had come to the house with the deliberate intention of telling her that he did not care to take her driving any more, or to continue their further intimate acquaintance, and had half-broken down in it because of her beauty and evident distress. Dade Morgan loved himself better than anything else in the world, and his self-pride had been hurt. Some way he did not feel as care-free about the matter as he had fancied he would. He had never cared for Rosalind Thornton, and had used her merely as a weapon with which to strike Starbright, but this was somewhat like the weapon striking back at him when he sought to discard it.

Yet he did not try to speak to her again, though a strange and fiery light came into his eyes, which, through force of habit, he besought to conceal. Then he put on his hat, opened the door without saying “Good night!” and was soon trailing down the street after the person he had fancied was Dick Starbright.

“Well, she’s off my hands!” he reflected, as he hurried on. “I guess it’s better that way, though she is deucedly handsome, and I might come to like her in time, if I could ever like anybody! But that finishes it, unless I really want to go back. I think I can do that, if I care to try the trick. Likely I sha’n’t care to try it. I wonder if that was Starbright? It would be a joke if she’s been playing double, and Starbright has been calling here all the time. But, no, he wouldn’t do that. Starbright isn’t a chump, whatever else he is!”

He failed to see Starbright or any one resembling him.

“Taken an electric for down-town, I suppose!”

Then his thoughts went back to Rosalind.

“Umph! Women cry easily; but crying sometimes makes them pretty!”

Hurt, angered, humiliated, Rosalind had rushed into her room, thrown herself on her bed, and was crying as if her foolish little heart were about to break.

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