“Certainly not,” confirmed Mr. Langham. “We’ll put it off a day. That is——” He stopped and frowned. “Well, we’ll talk about it later.”
“I think I’ll be all right by morning, Chief,” said Sam.
“We’ll see, we’ll see, Sam. Mr. York, I want to thank you, sir, for the service you performed for us. It was very kind of you, very kind indeed. And I don’t believe anyone could have umpired more—er—more impartially, sir.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it,” answered Mr. York, with a jovial laugh. “You couldn’t have kept me away if you’d tried. By the way, Mr. Langham——”
The two dropped behind and remained in conversation until the camp was reached. Sam was taken over to the dormitory where the visitors were to sleep and, Steve and Mr. Langham assisting, got out of his clothes and had a wet bandage wrapped around his knee. The knee was swollen and lame, and Mr. Gifford shook his head over it.
“It will feel a lot better to-morrow, Sam,” he said, “but you’ll not be able to do much walking inside of a couple of days, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll make out somehow,” replied Sam. “You needn’t think you’re going to do me out of my fun.”
“A lot of fun you’d have,” said Steve grimly. “Best thing for you to do is to stay right here for another day and then catch up with us by train. We won’t make more than fifteen miles to-morrow, I guess.”
“Well, if it isn’t all right, I suppose I’ll have to,” answered Sam regretfully. “I don’t quite see how I managed to do such a fool stunt.”
“The Chief said something about waiting another day,” remarked Mr. Gifford, “but I’m afraid he can’t do that. In the first place, we’re putting a lot of these chaps out of their beds—some of them are sleeping on the floor in the other dormitories; and in the second place, if we’re to get back in time to get ready for Visitors’ Day we can’t afford to lose much time.”