With his heart filled with fury and his face flushed with shame, Uric hurried to his room. A sentry in the corridor, pacing slowly up and down, clucked like a setting hen.
Scudder fairly tore into his room. There sat Dick Merriwell, studying, by the window. Without a word, Uric caught up a chair and swung it over his head in a fury of passion uncontrolled, intending to strike Dick unawares.
The chair was caught and twisted from his grasp. At the same time he received a blow under the ear that sent him against the wall with a bang.
"Don’t try that kind of a game here!" exclaimed the harsh voice of Hugh Douglass, whom Uric had not observed, but who had been dusting the room, it being his week as room orderly.
Douglass was not a handsome chap, and he looked uglier than ever just now, as he glared at Scudder.
Dick Merriwell had turned like a flash and was looking on.
"What’s the matter, Douglass?" he asked.
"This fellow was going to hit you with a chair," answered Hugh. "He just came in and caught up a chair quick as a flash, but I don’t think he saw me."
"Why should he hit me?" said Dick.
"You know why!" panted Scudder. "You are to blame for it all! You’ve done everything you could to humiliate me since coming here! Now, you have all the fellows calling me Eggs! You are the one, Merriwell!"