"Got him back?" said the other. "Why, how is that? Where will he play?"
"Full-back, of course."
"But Marline."
"Marline will be given a chance to rest."
Thornton nodded.
"Knew it!" he muttered. "Rob is a good fellow, and this isn't a square deal. He won't be given a show. Merriwell is all right as a player, but he has no right to refuse to play and then come on after things are fixed and knock some other chap out. I'll tell Rob."
So, at the first opportunity, Thornton told Marline what he had heard Halliday say.
Marline was from South Carolina, and he was proud as Lucifer. In fact, his manner of always speaking of South Carolina as the "one" State in the Union was often little short of exasperating. He was haughty and overbearing, proud of his birth, inclined to boast, and utterly blind to his own shortcomings.
No one questioned Marline's courage. He came from a family noted for courage and daring. His great-grandfather was a patriot officer of Revolutionary times, and his father had won a commission in the Confederate Army in the War of the Rebellion. The blood of fighters and heroes ran in Marline's veins.
For all that, there was no one at Yale who could make himself more offensive than the boy from South Carolina. He had a way of sneering at everybody and everything outside his native State, and when he set out to call anybody down, the most withering and biting sarcasm flowed from his tongue.