“And, as a punishment, you will keep to your room to-day and to-morrow. I forbid you to stir from it, and if I find you trying to sneak out, as you did last night, I shall take stringent measures to prevent you.”
The professor was a powerful man, and there was more than one story of the corporal punishment he had inflicted on rebellious students.
“But, professor,” said Jack. “I was going to have a practice game of baseball with the boys to-day. The season opens next week, and I’m playing in a new position. I’ll have to practice!”
“You will remain in your room all of to-day and to-morrow,” was all the reply the professor made, as he strode from Jack’s apartment.
CHAPTER IV
DISQUIETING NEWS
“Well, if this ain’t the meanest thing he’s done to me yet!” exclaimed Jack, as the door closed on the retreating form of his crusty guardian. “This is the limit! The boys expect me to the ball game, and I can’t get there. That means they’ll put somebody else in my place, and maybe I’ll have to be a substitute for the rest of the season. I’ve a good notion——”
But so many daring thoughts came into Jack’s mind that he did not know which one to give utterance to first.
“I’ll not stand it,” he declared. “He hasn’t any right to punish me like this, for what I did. He had no right to keep me in. I’ll get out the same way I did before.”
Jack looked from the window of his room. Below it, seated on a bench, in the shade of a tree, was the professor, reading a large book.
“That way’s blocked,” remarked the boy. “He’ll stay there all day, working out problems about how much a dollar will amount to if put out at interest for a thousand years, or else figuring how long it will take a man to get to Mars if he traveled at the rate of a thousand miles a minute, though what in the world good such knowledge is I can’t see.