He threw open a closet door, disclosing upon the floor three or four shots, two hammers, a fifty-six pound weight, several pairs of spiked shoes--clear evidence that he still retained, as he had said, his native love of the game. "Now, then," he said, "if one of you will take a shot, I'll take the light hammer, and Randall here can pick out a pair of shoes; then we'll be all right to start. Hullo, here's Joe."
As he spoke, the door opened, and a little boy of nine or ten, dark and swarthy, with big, wide-open, black eyes, peered into the room; then, seeing the visitors, promptly dodged out again. McDonald laughed. "That's the little fellow you heard yelling for help that night," he explained. "No one seemed to want him, and his father hasn't been heard from since, so I've kind of adopted him, for the present. He's a good little chap, and smart as a steel-trap. But shy as a squirrel when he sees strangers around."
Once arrived at the field, McDonald proceeded to put Dick through his paces. He watched him high-jump with great approval. "Good, man, good!" he cried. "You've got an elegant spring, and a very nice style, besides. I'll have you jumping fine, by next May." But over Dick's shot-putting he was not so enthusiastic, and at the hammer-throwing he shook his head. "No, no," he cried, "you haven't got the first principles. You stand wrong. Your weight is wrong. You swing wrong. You do everything wrong. Here, let me show you. I wish I dared throw, myself, but I suppose I'd rip my shoulder open. Now look--"
For ten minutes he explained, illustrated, had Dick throw, again and again. And finally he good-humoredly gave it up. "I can show you," he said. "But you've thrown the wrong way so long that it's going to be a job. Let the hammer go, for the next month or two, and when spring comes we'll go at it. I'll have you so you'll be throwing a hundred and seventy feet. No reason in the world why you shouldn't. It's like all the other things. It's knack--knack--knack--that counts. You've got weight and size enough to throw it, and when I get the double turn drilled into you we'll surprise some of these boys from the other schools. You see if we don't."
The afternoon shadows were lengthening across the fields as the boys started on their homeward way. And all through the tramp their tongues wagged ceaselessly of their new friend, his accomplishments, his interest, the medals he had given his rescuers, and most of all, how much his knowledge might mean to them, and to their chances in carrying off in triumph the coveted cup. Truly, it had been an eventful day.
CHAPTER VI
[A QUESTION OF RIGHT AND WRONG]
An air of gloom hung over the breakfast-room. Search as one might, up and down the long tables, it would have been hard to find one smiling countenance. Most of the boys were eating absent-mindedly, as if they had small relish for their food; their foreheads were wrinkled and knotted, as if their thoughts were far away. To any one at all acquainted with school affairs, the trouble was not far to seek. The first day of the mid tear examinations was at hand.
Of all these troubled faces, perhaps Dave Ellis' was the most moody and depressed. English Thirteen--how he dreaded it! He had sat up almost all night, in defiance of the rules, stealthily flashing an electric bull's-eye on his notes, and now, with aching head and jaded nerves, he was paying the penalty. His brain was in confusion. Names of books and authors sang themselves over and over in his mind. Now an absurd, annoying jingle, "Fielding, Smollett, Richardson; Fielding Smollett, Richardson;" and then, no sooner had he managed to stop the monotonous refrain than off it went again, "Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray; Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray." He groaned, turned desperately to his cup of coffee, gulped down half of it at once, scalded himself, and then--it was all of no avail--the tune began once more. Suddenly, and without warning, he thought of another name, and to his horror, everything connected with it had gone wholly from his mind. He glanced despairingly across the table at Allen. "Harry," he cried, "for goodness' sake, what school did Jane Austen belong to? And what did she write?"
Allen gazed gravely back at him. "Jane Austen?" he repeated. "Why, she was the head of the Romantic school. She wrote The Maniac's Deed, and Tracked to his Doom, and The Bandit's Revenge. She's been called the founder of the Modern Romance--Old Sleuth, you know, and Nick Carter--"