CHAPTER II
THE FIGHT IN THE DARK
The mood lasted. Jeff Thatcher said very little as he went to the coat-room adjoining the dining hall and discarded his street clothes for the white coat of a waiter, for Thatcher earned a good portion of his tuition expenses by waiting on one of the scores of tables in the big student dining hall.
Usually he found a great deal of fun in his work at the tables, for there was always a lot of good-natured badinage and joking passed among the fellows. But somehow this evening, as the students filed into the big hall, he felt quite different than ever before. It seemed to him that most of them, and especially the Freshmen, looked at him reproachfully, and about all of them there seemed to be a suggestion of strained quietness as he approached.
At first Thatcher could not account for it. But suddenly he realized, with a sense of shock, that they too believed that he had played unfairly, that he had fouled Gould and that he had lost the game for his team by trying unsportsmanlike tactics and being caught at it. He was loath to think that this was true. He could not believe it at first. But when in the lull between serving students and clearing off the tables he stopped to realize that even Buck Hart, the captain of the team, and the other players as well had thought that he was guilty of the offense, he understood the rest of the fellows, some present as spectators and hearing the referee’s decision, and others getting the news by hearsay, could be of the same opinion.
This hurt Thatcher more than he believed was possible. Always he had taken great pride in the fact that no one could question his sportsmanship. He had played fair in the most desperate situations, and he had preferred to lose rather than resort to fouling, cheating or disobeying the rules of the game. And now to have the fellows believe that he had committed this offense hurt him to the quick. How could they believe it? he asked himself, how could they think that he would do such a thing when they knew his record for clean sportsmanship?
Jeff Thatcher, like a tortoise, literally crawled into his shell; at least his sunny disposition did. It vanished into the depths of his soul and he became morose, almost sulky, which was far from his normal attitude. Silently he served his table to the end of the meal. Then, instead of joining the rest of the squad of waiters at their special tables which were set in the dining hall after the rest of the students had departed, he hurried away to the coat room and took off his white coat.
Attired once more in his street clothes, he hurried to his room in Carter Hall and put on his overcoat, determined to take a walk, he knew not where, or do something to be alone with his unpleasant thoughts.
Brooding over his misfortunes, he left Carter Hall and started across the hard, frozen ground of the campus. There was a suggestion of snow in the air—a cold March snow, for the backbone of winter had not been broken and for weeks bitter weather had lingered with them. Snow was in the air now and no doubt of it. Indeed, as Jeff passed under an arc light at the bend in the road that led behind the gymnasium building, he noticed vagrant flakes floating down the shafts of light. But he gave them small heed, and like a grumpy old turtle, which he felt he resembled very much, he turned up the collar of his coat and tramped on into the shadow of the gymnasium building.
Suddenly, out of the blackness, two figures loomed up. Thatcher, because he was thinking and thinking hard, saw them only when he almost collided with them. Not recognizing them he tried to avoid them by going around them, but one, the bigger of the two, stepped in front of him again and growled in an ugly voice: