Starbright was moody. Nothing seemed to arouse him from the dispirited, downcast state into which he had fallen. Being a big, strong fellow, in robust health, such an atmosphere was strange to him. Frank could not remember having seen the fellow just like that but once before, and that was when he was recovering from the spell of dissipation into which he had been thrown by the drug given him by his enemies.
Diamond had never seen Dick in a gloomy mood, and he was surprised by it. He tried to rally the freshman, saying he must be in love; but Starbright simply frowned and shook his head.
Dick was thinking of Inza as she had appeared to him once, and as she appeared to him now.
“They’re all alike!” he thought bitterly. “Rosalind was like Inza in many ways, and she threw me over for Dade Morgan. When she found out what a scoundrel Morgan was she tried to make up with me, but I was not quite so big a chump as she imagined. I think Inza is even worse than Rose, for she has deceived Frank right along. He is so honest and square himself that he never suspects others of deception. It’s useless to try to convince him, for he believes in that girl implicitly.
“I’m sorry for him, but it’s plain he is desperately in love with her, even though he may not really know it. Why, I fancy he’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have him! That being the case, he is in danger, for she is liable to decide at any minute that she’ll have him. If she should, she’d find a way to let him know it and to lead him into a proposal. How is that to be prevented? The only way is to convince him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is a treacherous, heartless flirt. But how can I convince him? I must find a way. I will.”
Starbright still seemed to feel that he had done Merriwell a wrong, and this added to his sense of duty toward the youth who had befriended him when he first came to college. Having become convinced that Merry would be led into a snare in case he ever married Inza, Dick determined to find a way to prove to Frank that the dark-eyed, haughty girl was unworthy of him.
“I must do it, even though it makes him despise me,” mentally decided the big Andover man. “It will be nothing more than an act of pure friendship.”
Jack Diamond’s story of his mistake had made not the slightest impression upon Starbright. Frank had hoped it would open the youth’s eyes to the folly of jumping at conclusions, but it had not, for Dick, like old Captain Starbright, his father, was hard-headed and set, once having formed an opinion.
A man of this character is almost always successful in life if he gets started on the right track, for he will stick and hang like a bulldog until he wins; but give him a wrong start, let him bend his energies in the wrong direction, and he will persist in a bull-headed way in carrying out plans that any one and every one else can see are certain to bring disaster upon him.
The bulldog determination and stick-to-it-iveness is all right if it is properly combined with reasoning ability. But the person who says he is right because he thinks so, and refuses to listen to reason or argument, is certain sooner or later to butt his head against a stone and knock out what few obstinate brains he possesses. There are men so constituted that they persist in declaring they are right, in the face of positive evidence to the contrary. Sometimes they shut their eyes so they may not see the evidence. This sort of bulldog persistency is simply “foolishness.”