"He! he! he!" snickered Uric, rubbing his chin with satisfaction. "I don’t wonder. I’d as lief be called Chickens and Hen Fruit as to be in your shoes. You went back on me, and now you’re getting paid for it. Why, even the fellows who do not like Dick Merriwell won’t have anything to do with you."
"Will you get away from me!"
"Oh, yes! I don’t want to fight with you. Hal Darrell will attend to your case. Bet you anything you like he does you up inside of fifteen minutes."
It seemed that Lynch would hit the taunting plebe, but Scudder, laughing in a most provoking manner, edged away.
Jabez was beginning to feel himself truly something of an outcast, and, in an unreasoning way, he blamed it all on Dick Merriwell. A year before, during the football season, he had been popular as one of the Fardale team; but now Merriwell was playing in his old position, and he, having refused to take any other, was off the team entirely. And all his efforts to injure Dick had miscarried wofully, to his unspeakable disgust. Besides that, not even when Dick was unable to fill his place on the team had Jabez been asked to come back and play there for a single game, which had made him unspeakably angry and revengeful.
Lynch had not fancied that Darrell, a yearling, would rebuff him, a first-class man, for usually yearlings looked up in reverence and awe to the first class. Besides that, Jabez had imagined that Hal’s openly expressed dislike for young Merriwell would form a bond of sympathy between them, and he had counted much on this in his advances toward the other.
But Darrell was a peculiar fellow. Although he hated Dick, he was not ready to join hands with any one like Lynch, for all the way through he was loyal to Fardale, and he knew Lynch was not. Originally he had sympathized with Jabez, thinking him misused; but the course the fellow had taken had thoroughly disgusted Hal, and his satisfaction was great when he learned that Jabez had lost heavily betting against Fardale.
Jabez was incapable of understanding a fellow like Darrell, just as he was incapable of understanding Dick Merriwell. With him it was anything in order to obtain revenge on an enemy, and, to accomplish his vengeful ends, he would have willingly sacrificed the Fardale football-team and rejoiced to see it go down in defeat before its antagonists.
Both Lynch and Darrell were selfish and egotistical, but there the likeness between them ended, for the former was unscrupulous and without honor, while the latter intended to be square, and honorable, and just, although he sometimes failed.
But both Jabez and Hal fully believed that Dick Merriwell would not hesitate to resort to anything to prevent them from getting on, and it is probable that Darrell hated Dick as intensely as did Lynch. But Hal had another reason for disliking Dick. He was truly smitten by the charms of Doris Templeton, and, until the appearance of young Merriwell, he had seemed to have a clear field. Knowing that it was the wish of their parents, he had fancied that some day Doris would become his wife, although, of course, that day was regarded as quite remote.