“Are you mad, Mapleson?” he cried; “we shall have the whole faculty down upon us if you trifle with such a plaything, and then there will be a fine row.”
The other sophomores now gathered around and tried to pacify their enraged leader, but he only grew the more furious and vowed that he would yet have the Yankee’s heart’s blood for his insolence in laying hands upon him.
“No, no, Mape, you drove him to it,” interposed one; “you can’t blame him, and you would have done the same had you been in his place.”
“Who ever heard of a ‘fresh’ getting the upper hand of a half-dozen ‘sophs’ before?” he retorted, angrily. “You’re a set of cowards, every one of you.”
Two of the students seized Mapleson by the arms, and he was forced from the room, muttering threats of vengeance as he passed out.
When Geoffrey was at length left alone, he closed and locked his door, and then sat down and fell into troubled thought.
He was sure that he had made a bitter and lasting enemy of the young man, and he regretted it, for Geoffrey Huntress was one who loved to be at peace with all mankind; but he could only wait patiently to see how the matter would end, and having reached this conclusion, he resumed his interrupted studies. But he could not put his mind upon them, for all at once the remarkable resemblance between himself and the young Southerner began to haunt him.
Could it be possible that any of the same blood flowed in their veins? If so, how?
Why was Everet Mapleson the favored son of a proud and wealthy father, while he had been a poor, demented outcast, abandoned in the streets of a large city and left to his fate.