“Why, you’ve all heard of old Abner Stone, who was sent to prison for counterfeiting, and who was shot while trying to escape.”
“Was that his father?”
“That was his father. Oh, he comes of a fine family! And he has the gall to come here among decent fellows—to try to attend the academy here! Wait till my father hears of this! He’ll have something to say about it. Father was going to send him to the reformatory once, and he may do it yet.”
Roger’s mind seemed made up now. “You know where my locker is, Stone,” he said. “You can leave there the stuff I loaned you.”
For a moment it seemed that the accused boy was about to speak. He lifted his head once more and looked around, but the disdainful and repellant faces he saw about him checked the words, and he turned despairingly away. As he walked slowly toward the gate, he heard the hateful voice of Bern Hayden saying:
“Better watch him, Eliot; he may steal those things.”
The world had been bright and beautiful and flooded with sunshine a short time before; now it was dark and cold and gloomy, and the sun was sunk behind a heavy cloud. Even the trees outside the gate seemed to shrink from him, and the wind came and whispered his shame amid the leaves. Like one in a trance, he stumbled into the deserted gymnasium and sat alone and wretched on Roger Eliot’s locker, fumbling numbly at the knotted shoestrings.
“It’s all over!” he whispered to himself. “There is no chance for me! I’ll have to give up!”
After this he sat quite still, staring straight ahead before him with eyes that saw nothing. Full five minutes he spent in this manner. The sound of boyish voices calling faintly one to another on the football field broke the painful spell.
They were out there enjoying their sport and football practice, while Ben found himself alone, shunned, scorned, outcast. He seemed to see them gather about Hayden while Bern told the whole shameful story of the disgrace of the boy he hated. The whole story?—no, Ben knew his enemy would not tell it all. There were some things—one in particular—he would conveniently forget to mention; but he would not fail to paint in blackest colors the character of the lad he despised.