The pistol cracked. The line shot forward, over hurdles, through hurdles, stampeding for the tape. Sam stumbled, caught his step again and dashed blindly on. He sprang for the last hurdle as another was leaving it. A blue N was first, the W second, Sam an unplaced third. The starters were calling the sixth heat.
It was all over in ten seconds—the set, the start, the struggle, the finish, Sam’s dream of achievement. He slipped into a corner by his schoolmates and tried to forget his disappointment in watching the efforts of his friends. He saw Kilham of Hillbury beat out Fairmount by a foot in the finals of the hurdles. He cheered vigorously when Gay took the forty. He groaned in dismay as Bruce was pocketed on the curve of the track in the six hundred and forced behind. When Weatherford won the thousand yards and Brewster the mile, and Jones soared a handbreadth above the bar after all rivals had failed, he exulted with pure delight. At such times the sight of the success of his school almost comforted him for his own failure. But when unfamiliar letters were in the van, when the Seaton runners were lost in the field of pursuers, then the fruitlessness of his own effort recurred to him afresh, and the folly of his hopes. Abashed, he glanced up at the indistinct face in the distant gallery and wondered whether his father felt himself the victim of false representations. Exactly what his father did think he had no opportunity to discover. When Sam looked for him after the pole-vault, his place was empty; Mr. Archer, having stayed to the limit of his time, was hurrying for his train.
The next day Sam approached the groups of chattering acquaintances with some dread of sarcastic comment. His fears were needless. Kendrick and Taylor and a few others remarked sympathetically on his “hard luck”; Duncan Peck made a creditable effort to be encouraging; but the majority showed no concern whatever in his failure. This contemptuous indifference on the part of the many, this assumption that he didn’t count or that nothing was expected of him anyway, stirred Sam’s fighting blood. He did not need the consolation which Collins gave when he spoke of the event as “just practice,” nor the inspiration of Bruce’s gay derision of himself for being blocked off on the track. The public disdain was stimulus enough to a proud spirit. Sam’s resolution to brook no discouragement until time had fully proved his incompetency dates from that day.
But there were other interests in Sam’s daily life besides hurdling. His lessons were going, some well, some tolerably, some ill. In French he did not get ahead, and consequently he did not gain in favor with Mr. Alsop. In truth, it is to be feared that Sam did not try his very best for the lord of his entry. The experienced had informed him that if one did well enough with two or three teachers to make himself solid with them, they would defend him against those with whom he did ill. As Sam’s schedule was a full one and some neglect was inevitable, he followed his inclination and neglected Mr. Alsop. That gentleman did not relish neglect; it offended his dignity and cut through the smooth coating of his self-satisfaction. Mr. Alsop would never have struck an enemy whose hands were bound, but he did not hesitate to assail in the classroom with personal flings and stinging sarcasms the luckless boy who incurred his displeasure. Unable to strike back, the boy endured in silence and nursed his sense of unjust treatment with sullen, unforgiving wrath. Mr. Alsop meant well, but he lacked the instinct of fairness.
In the dormitory entry there were troubles for which Sam and Birdie Fowle were generally held responsible by Mr. Alsop,—Sam as the accessory who was too clever to be detected, Birdie as the criminal occasionally caught in the act. Some one, supposed to have been Birdie, had thrown water out of a window in the vain attempt to reach a boy who was hurling taunts from below. Mr. Alsop had called up Fowle and charged him with the offence. Birdie had acknowledged his sin. The teacher, instead of welcoming this frankness as an encouraging symptom, and by tact and kindness inspiring in that careless youth the desire to keep the peace, read him a harsh to the indignant satisfaction of the boy that the fellows were right when they said that honesty was not the best policy in dealing with profs. Injustice being the rule, one might as well be actually bad, as good and always suspected of badness.
Soon after this the day’s collection of waste paper in the wire grate in the basement was set on fire, causing small damage, but much excitement throughout the well and great chagrin to the official regulator thereof. Fortunately for Birdie, his presence at recitation at the time enabled him to prove a complete alibi. Right upon the heels of this act of vandalism some miscreant, in the middle of the evening study hour, set off a cannon cracker in the entry. Mr. Alsop, who was at home, tore open his door and rushed savagely up the stairs. Through a dense cloud of smoke he descried John Fish standing in his doorway.
“What is it, Fish?” Mr. Alsop demanded angrily.
“Some one’s set off a cannon cracker, sir,” answered Fish. “I was just coming out to see if I couldn’t catch the fellow.”
Doors were open now about the stairway, heads peered over from above.
“Could you tell where it came from?”