In all Yale no man felt as bad as Hock Mason. He was proud, and he knew he was almost universally blamed for the loss of the game. Thinking the matter over, he could see that he was responsible. If he had caught both flies but one man could have scored off each of them, at most, and that would have left the score eight to six in Yale’s favor.
“I was a fool to try to play baseball!” he bitterly thought. “I’d never have tried it if it hadn’t been for Merriwell. He wanted me to do it.”
Then it occurred to him that such a thought was selfish in the extreme, and he was ashamed of himself.
“You’re a mighty mean chap, Mason,” he grimly declared, to himself, “to think such a thing about a man who has done as much for you as Merriwell! Don’t try to lay the blame on him!”
No shouting crowd met the returning players at the station and escorted them in triumph up Meadow, Church, and Chapel Streets. No band turned out to thrill them with its music. No shouting, cheering students surrounded them and strove for the glory of a hand-shake. On the campus no bonfire blazed and flared and reddened the foliage of the elms, its light being reflected back from the windows of the quad.
“There seems to have been a funeral somewhere,” said Jack Ready. “How sad it is! La! la! Makes me feel like weeping large, fat, briny tears. Oh, me! oh, my! How different this time is from some other times!”
“Keep your face closed!” grunted Browning. “Every time you open it, there’s such a rush of wind that I have to hold my cap on.”
“Some things are awfully sad to contemplate,” persisted Ready, who could not be easily suppressed. “It is said that in ’steen billion years the sun will burn out, and we’ll all freeze to death for want of heat. Isn’t that awful? And what would you say if I were to tell you that all our rivers would soon dry up?”
“I’d sus—say,” stuttered Gamp solemnly, “gug—go thou and dud—do likewise.”
Whereupon Browning shook with suppressed laughter, for all of the feeling of disgust that had possessed him ever since the ending of the game in Princeton.