“If he could read your thoughts he might. You do not know everything that has happened since Merriwell returned to college.”
“You mean since the Southern trip of the ball-team?”
“No; before that—while the men were training for the team. You know I trained and tried to get on.”
“Yes.”
“I failed.”
“Merriwell kept you off.”
“I ruined my chances one day when I tried to spoil Merriwell for any use this spring. I laid for him out along the road when the men took their run into the country. Had not the devil protected him, I’d fixed him by dropping a stone on his head. He fell down, and the stone missed his head by about an inch. Had he not fallen just at that instant—well, Frank Merriwell would not be running the Yale nine now.”
“He certainly has Satan’s luck! He’s a man who would not fall down once in five years, yet he fell just then.”
“Exactly. I thought I had fixed him all right, for it was rather dark, being in the early part of the evening. I hustled away from that place and got into the road behind him without being seen, coming up to him with others. And there he was, all right and well. But the stone——”
“Ah! the stone,” said Packard. “Did it recognize you and sing out, ‘Hello, Defarge?’”