As for Hervey, being a true artist, he was quite oblivious to his audience. Being an outlaw in camp, he even carried himself with a certain swaggering independence and disdained to glance at the big bulletin-board in front of Administration Shack. He had worried a little about returning home and telling his stepfather what he should have told him the year before. But now he was not worrying. Would not he have Temple Camp eating out of his hand? If he had looked at that bulletin-board (the same which he had formerly disfigured) he might have seen something there to arrest his attention. But his thoughts were on high.
Things were certainly breaking favorably for him.
In less time than it takes to tell it, he was on the porch roof, then on the main roof of Administration Shack. Then he was shinning up the slender flagpole to the gasping consternation of the increasing crowd below. He could not hold the brass ball while climbing, so he laid it in his hat and held his hat in his teeth. The slender pole bent and swayed as up he went. If ever sheer rashness is eligible for reward, I suppose Hervey was a likely candidate. The bantering absurdity of Tom Slade’s remark was only too plainly shown by the swaying pole as that nimble figure, hat in teeth, ascended its tapering length.
Breathlessly the throng watched as the pole bent this way and that as if uncertain in which direction to break and send its victim crashing to the slanting roof, then mangled to the ground below. Breathlessly one or two of the more keen-eyed observers saw those legs tightening around the pole, saw one arm move loose.
He got the brass sphere in one hand and let his hat fall to the ground. It tumbled off the roof and was picked up by a tall, quiet boy who stood somewhat apart from the throng. They saw a hand groping at the very end of the pole, saw the brass ornament in place, saw that nimble figure slide down to the roof, then off its edge into the midst of the spellbound watchers. He was a hero; to them he was anyway.
“Hervey Willetts, you’re wanted in the office,” said a matter-of-fact voice. It was young Winthrop Allbright, the bespectacled young gentleman who was always digging in card indexes and writing in a big flat book in that awful sanctum. He held a fountain pen as if he had been but momentarily interrupted.
CHAPTER XXXVI
REACHED?
And so for the fourth time Hervey Willetts stood at the bar of judgment. He stood before the cage window in Administration Shack, hatless and with a long rip in his trousers. His mad, gray eyes, full of dancing light, looked through the filigree work at Councilor Easton. He would have preferred to see his old friend Councilor Wainwright, though of course it would have made no difference. The councilor had come over to the window at which young Mr. Allbright sat to speak to Hervey. He was not unpleasant, but cruelly brief.
“Hervey Willetts, there is no correspondence here affecting the arrangement by which you left last fall. I hope there is no misunderstanding on your part. Who sent you here?”
“My—my stepfather.”