CHAPTER XVI
A SHOCK FOR THE COACH.
Dick Merriwell had no connection with the faculty of Yale, in an official sense. But his relations with the dean and with most of the professors were cordial in the extreme. They were men who understood fully that the work of teaching was supplemented by the athletics that had grown to be so great a part of Yale life. Men studied and learned the things the faculty had to teach; and, if they did that well, the faculty had no further direct interest. But the professors who really amounted to anything knew perfectly well that the men who went out of Yale really well equipped for their careers, were the ones who, like Dick Merriwell, had taken part in athletics and other activities of college, and had so fitted themselves for their life work.
So it was that Dick really had a good deal to do with the members of the faculty. Many students who shone in athletics were likely, at certain times, to neglect their work. The rules at Yale on this point are very strict. Unless a man keeps up in his college work, he is not allowed to play on the teams. So, when a team man showed signs of falling back in his work, the dean would usually drop a little note to Dick Merriwell, and the universal coach, skillfully and tactfully, would make the lazy one understand that he must keep up in his work or forego the pleasures of athletics.
Dick was especially interested at this time in the seniors, so soon to leave Yale and go out into the world for themselves. He wanted all of them to graduate with credit—Sherman, Taylor, Gray, and the others who had done so much to make the season a great one for Yale on diamond, track, and river. Few of them gave him any concern at all. The period of examination was nearly over, and he had no reason to believe that any of the men in whom he took an interest were likely to fail in their examinations.
And it was a terrible shock to him, therefore, when, on the very eve of commencement, as he sat in the baseball dressing room, Sam, the old rubber, brought him some papers that he had picked up.
“Doan’ know who all these hyah papers b’longs to, Marse Dick,” said Sam, handing him a folded packet. “Ain’t nevah done learned to read.”
“All right, Sam,” said Dick. “Some one dropped them, I suppose. I’ll see who they belong to and give them to their owners. Thanks.”
Idly, he looked at the papers. He had no intention of reading them, or trying to find out their nature, but he had to look to see who should receive them. He was dressing early after a brisk afternoon’s practice, to keep an engagement that evening, and the players had not yet come in. And, as he looked at the papers in his hand, his face went white.
They were complete notes of a course in which the examination had been held that morning, a senior course in history, arranged so that they could be easily and conveniently referred to. He knew the way in which they were arranged—it was a system of cribbing very old, but very seldom used at Yale. And the thing that appalled him was the name at the head of the sheet—for it was that of Sam Taylor. Swiftly he ran through the other papers—they were simply a part of the same crooked device, and one of the other sheets was marked as the property of Bob Gray.