Frank Merriwell's brother

by Burt L. Standish

Roland choked and hesitated. That hesitation seemed to fan the man to a burst of fury.

“Fool!” he hissed, crouching. “You have tried to deceive the wrong man! Had you known me better you would not have done so! In my body flows the blood of the Spaniard, and I never forgive an injury! You betrayed me, and I will settle with you as we settle such scores in the West!”

Out flashed a slender dagger in his hand. Roland uttered a cry of fear as Mescal leaped upon him. The student tried to defend himself, but Mescal’s blade rose and fell.

“You devil!” gasped Packard. “You have stabbed me.”

Then, as Roland sank to his knees, Mescal broke away, flung the blood-stained dagger on the floor, and bounded to the door. One backward look he took as he disappeared, seeing the bleeding youth upon the floor.

Then he fled from the hotel and from New Haven.

Packard was not fatally wounded. The dagger had pierced the muscle of his arm, and the point had penetrated his side as far as a rib. The wound in the arm was the most painful, and the other was not dangerous. In the hospital Roland was skilfully treated, but he persistently refused to tell how or by whom he had been wounded.

Nor would he stay in the hospital when he found that his wound was not at all dangerous if properly cared for. He came out that afternoon and returned to the college.

He found the afternoon exercises on the campus taking place. The place was like an open arena, with temporary seats rising in tiers all round it. Those seats were packed with human beings, spectators and friends of the students. Already the classes had marched in, led by the band, and assembled on the benches in the middle of the arena, where they now sat sedately smoking long clay pipes and wearing caps and gowns. They were listening to the historians of the class, who were reading the class histories.

Packard looked on, feeling that something was occurring in which he had no part and no interest. His arm was in a sling, and this last enemy of Merriwell at Yale looked a forlorn and wretched figure.