Dick set the direction and the pace without saying anything. The course led out Maple Avenue to the country road leading to the bridge whose portal arch bore in figures two feet high the numerals of their class. For the entire mile they tramped along side by side in silence. Dick did not speak, and Larry, borrowing something from that manhood which he was just touching on its hither side, respected his companion’s silence.
It was quite dark when they came to the bridge, though there was a slender sickle of a new moon hanging a few degrees above the western horizon. The bridge approach was guarded by a low concrete wall, and when they reached the wall Dick sat down on it.
“You haven’t had your supper yet, I know, and I won’t keep you very long,” he said in a sort of strained voice. Then he went on: “I—I’ve brought you out here to tell you good-bye, Larry. I’m canned—sent home.”
“What!” Larry almost shouted the word.
“It’s so. One of the profs.—Morton, he was kind of sorry for me, I guess—gave me a hint yesterday. That’s why I went around to Mother Grant’s last night to try to find you. I got the faculty letter to-day.”
“But, Dick—what on top of earth have you been doing?”
“The letter says it’s something I haven’t been doing—keeping up with my classroom work. But that’s only a part of it, and not the worst part, either. You see, Dad’s a Sheddon old-grad., and they’re trying to let him down easy.”
“What is the worst part of it, Dick?”
“Don’t you know?” the canned one asked, in the same dull monotone.
“No more than the man in the moon.”