"What's the reason Hoover isn't at school?" asks Pop, and while his face does not change the eyes study closely.
"He's afraid of trouble because some of that Metamora set tripped and hurt Snipe, running to a fire last Saturday."
"That's what you get for running to fires, sir. Young gentlemen have no business mingling with crowds and rowdies. That's why you lost the head of the class in Latin three weeks ago. You spent hours at that big fire down-town when you should have been at your Virgil."
Shorty reddens, but attempts no defence. He knows it is so. He knows, furthermore, that if the bell were to strike the next minute he'd be off like the wind,—Latin, and even Snipe, to the contrary notwithstanding. What he doesn't understand is how the Doctor knows all about it.
"Youngster," says the Doctor, after a moment's reflection, "I want Hoover back at school at once, and there must be no harming him in any way. What's more, I have told Lawton to stay away until I send for him. There are reasons for this, and you can say so to the class. To-night you will see him yourself, and he will tell you the whole story. Now, I must write to Hoover paterfamilias. Run along!"
But Pop is mistaken in one matter. Shorty does not see Snipe that night, nor the next day, nor the next. He waits vainly until late in the evening, then goes to the Lawrences', and Mrs. Lawrence, with scared face, comes down to ask what he means. George had asked permission soon after dark to go and spend one hour with his friend and chum and tell him his troubles. It is now ten o'clock. He has not been there, and he has not returned.
CHAPTER VII.
Forty-eight hours passed without a trace of George Lawton, and they were the saddest two days the First Latin ever knew. "All the life went out of the school with Snipe," was the way Joy expressed it, though no fellow in the whole establishment was credited with more mischief than the speaker. Lessons and recitations, despite the best efforts of Halsey and Beach and the lamb-like bleatings of Meeker, seemed to fall flat. Even the leaders went through with them in a style more dead than alive, and at every sound upon the stairs all eyes would be fixed on the doorway and matters would come to a stand-still in the class. It was plain that every boy was thinking only of the missing comrade and praying for tidings of him. The masters, too, were weighed down with apprehension—or something. Othello's dark face wore a yellowish hue, and Meeker looked the picture of nervous woe. His complexion, always pallid, now seemed ashen, and he started at every sudden sound. Thursday went by without a word of any kind of news. The class huddled together at recess, taking no notice whatever of Hoover, who skulked away for his smoke, followed by many unloving eyes but without audible comment, for Shorty had conveyed Pop's dictum to the class, and when Pop took his boys into his confidence, as, through some one or two of their number he sometimes did, and told them thus and so, there was no question. That class at least observed his wishes to the letter. Hoover had been told to return to school and no questions asked, and the First Latin was virtually pledged to the arrangement.