Three nights later Merriwell’s “entertainments” concluded with a banquet at the New Haven House, which witnessed a crush.
When the toast came round, “To Yale!” Merriwell responded in his usual happy way.
“There was one thing I should have been pleased to say in that little speech,” he remarked to a number of friends later, “but it wasn’t the time and place.”
“What was that?” asked Browning.
“It’s a bit of news which I must convey to Starbright and Morgan. As the result of an investigation, I have discovered who threw the rocks in the snowball battle which struck those two fellows.”
Hodge was at once interested.
“It was Jimmy Seldon! I ran the thing down, and then confronted him, and he confessed. The fellow has fancied from the start that he is an athlete, and that he ought to be the real leader of the freshmen. It was a case of unappreciated and unobserved genius! He brooded over it. Perhaps it turned his head. Anyway, he went into that fight determined to knock out the men he fancied had without merit been chosen above him. When the opportunity came, he threw his prepared snowballs.”
“You’ll report it?” Bruce asked.
“As he left Yale and New Haven this morning, and isn’t coming back, it isn’t worth while!”
“You told him he would have to go?”