Then Mr. Hodge was furious. “We’ll see about this, sir!” he said. “An ordinary boarding-school is not strict enough. You shall attend a military school.”
“I won’t!” said Bart.
But he did—for a month. Then he came home again. The principal said he was incorrigible.
“We’ll see!” said Mr. Hodge, and his face was black as a storm-cloud. “I’ll give you one more chance, young man. This is the last one! If you are expelled again—well, you need not come back here! You may shift for yourself!”
Bart knew he meant just that, but even then he did not care. He had such a bad disposition that he longed to be expelled in order to “spite” his father. “I’d like to show him that he can’t force me into anything!” muttered Bart.
And so, when he was packed off to Fardale, he went with bitterness in his heart. During the journey he regarded with satisfaction the possibility that he would soon be expelled from this school. He pictured himself as turned from his own home, set adrift an outcast. He pictured himself as a reckless youngster, going to sea, perhaps. He would see many strange lands, lead a wild life, be shipwrecked, make a fortune in some far country, come home and treat his bent and aged father with kindness and magnanimity, caring for him in his declining years. He would be able to say: “Well, father, you see I bear no grudge, even if you did treat me in a shabby manner when I was a boy. I’ve made myself what I am, no thanks to you. It’s all right; but I can’t quite forget.”
But this fancy did not give him so much satisfaction as another that came to him. In this he saw himself wandering homeless over the world, living a wretched life, drinking, associating with bad men, sinking lower and lower. At last, having fallen to the depths, he might drag himself back home. He would be met by a stern father, who still rebuffed him. On his knees he would beg for one chance. When he was refused, he’d go out and break into a bank or something. Then, as he stood in the dock to receive sentence for his crime, he would turn to his father, point an accusing finger at the cowering man, and cry out, in a terrible voice: “You are responsible for it all! My sins are on your head!”
Having such thoughts as these, Bart was in a rebellious mood that day when he stepped off the train at Fardale station. His first act had been to kick a poodle dog that came within reach of his foot. That kick had led him into trouble with a bright-faced stripling who had also arrived on that train. Later on he had fought this stripling in an open field on a moonlight night. The fight had been interrupted, but in his heart Bart knew the stripling would have whipped him if it had continued to a finish, and he hated the stripling with a hatred he fancied undying.
The stripling was Frank Merriwell, and so they were enemies when they first met at Fardale.
Certain it is that Hodge in those days was ready to stoop to almost anything in order to get the best of an enemy, and many were the questionable and unfair things he did.