"Oh, nothing."
"Nonsense; fellows don't fight for nothing. What was it? Any great secret?"
"Oh no," answered Jack, laughing: "it began about that lot of verses that was pinned upon the notice-board this morning. Grundy said Thurston was turned out of the team, and I said he wasn't."
The captain smiled thoughtfully, and going down on one knee examined the wounded cheek. "Put some cold water to it," he said, and then walked away.
That look was worth fifty bruises, and for it Jack would have continued the fight with Grundy to the bitter end. Diggory and Mugford fell upon his neck, and were loud in their declarations that in another round their champion would have "knocked the stuffing out" of his opponent. That this would really have been the case is, as I remarked before, rather doubtful; but one fact is certain—that the conflict caused the three friends to be more firmly established than ever in their loyalty to the side of law and order.
For a couple of days fellows continued to talk about the skit on the eleven, and to hazard guesses as to who was the writer. As the majority, however, pronounced it "a dirty shame," and spoke of the author as "some mean skunk," the poet wisely concluded to conceal his identity, and by the end of the week the matter was, for the time being, practically forgotten.
CHAPTER XV.
THE READING-ROOM RIOT.
Thurston followed up his withdrawal from the football team by a number of other actions which clearly showed a determination to spend what was known to be his last term at Ronleigh in living at open enmity with those who had once been his friends and associates. He never played unless it was in one of the rough-and-ready practice games, composed chiefly of stragglers, who, from being kept in and various other causes, were too late for the regular pick-ups, and came drifting on to the field later in the afternoon. He severed his connection with the debating society, and shunning the society of his comrades in the Sixth, was seen more frequently than ever hobnobbing with Gull and Hawley, or lounging about in conversation with Noaks and Mouler.
Fletcher senior, a mean, double-faced fellow, continued, as the saying goes, "to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds."