“Now, Hop, I’ve got the floor,” exclaimed Egan, who was lying at his ease on his room-mate’s bed.
“I don’t care if you have. There’s no gag-law here.”
“Go on, Hop,” shouted the boys.
“It will take me but a moment,” said Hopkins, while Egan settled his uninjured hand under his head with a sigh of resignation. “When the mob went to work to disarm us, one big fellow stepped up to Egan and took hold of his gun. ‘Lave me this; I’m Oirish,’ said he. ‘I’m Irish too,’ said Egan. ‘Take that with me compliments and lave me the gun;’ and he hit the striker a blow in the face that lifted him from his feet and would have knocked him out of the front door, if there hadn’t been so many men and boys in the way. That fellow must have thought he had been kicked by a mule. At any rate he did not come back after the gun, and Egan was one of the few who got out of the car as fully armed as he was when he went in.”
Hopkins could be irresistibly comical when he tried, and his auditors shouted until the room rang again. They knew that his story was exaggerated, but it amused them all the same. Egan did say that he was Irish (Hopkins often told him that if he ever denied his nationality his name would betray him), and it was equally true that he floored the man who demanded his gun, and with him one or two of his own company boys who happened to be in the way; but he said nothing about “compliments” nor did he imitate the striker’s way of talking. Among those who felt some of the force of that blow, was Captain Mack.
“That explains how I got knocked down,” said he. “The rioters were trying to drag the professor out of the car, and we were doing all we could to protect him, when all at once some heavy body took me in the back, and the first thing I knew I was sprawling on the floor. I thought I should be trampled to death before I could get up.”
When Hopkins struck the ground he stood still and waited for some of the mob to come and knock him on the head; but seeing that they were looking out for themselves, and that some of his comrades were making good time up the track in the direction of Bridgeport, he started too, doing much better running than he did when he stole farmer Hudson’s jar of buttermilk, and passing several of the company who were in full flight. The bullets sang about his ears and knocked up the dirt before and behind him, and Hopkins began looking about for a place of concealment. Seeing that some of his company ran down from the track and disappeared very suddenly when they reached a certain point a short distance in advance of him, Hopkins stopped to investigate. He found that they had sought refuge in a culvert, which afforded them secure protection from the bullets; but Hopkins was inclined to believe that in fleeing from one danger they had run plump into another. There were strikers as well as students in there; and as he halted at the mouth of the culvert he heard a hoarse voice say:
“You soldier boys had better not stop here. You have made the mob mad, and as soon as they get through with those fellows in the car, they are going to spread themselves through the country and make an end of everybody who wears the academy uniform. I heard some of them say so, and I am talking for your good.”
“And I will act upon your advice,” said Hopkins to himself. “It is a dangerous piece of business to go along that railroad-track, but I don’t see how I am going to help it.”