It was Williams’s turn to grin.
“The fellow you told to shut up, you mean?” Nesbitt nodded.
“Oh, no one much; just Dick Hope, captain of the crew.”
[CHAPTER II]
INTRODUCING DICK HOPE
The sun was almost out of sight as Dick Hope crossed the yard toward Masters Hall, and the shadows of the buildings, stretching far over the ground, seemed to harbor many little gusts of icy wind, and looked dark and dismal in contrast with the broad expanse of golden, sun-bathed marsh across the river. Dick pulled his coat closer about him, ran up the old, worn granite steps of the dormitory, and gained the hallway with a sense of comfort and homecoming.
Securing his key from the matron’s room, he leaped up the first flight of narrow stairs and, half-way down the corridor, unlocked a dingy door which bore a big black figure 16, and, below it, a card with the inscription “Richard Fowler Hope.” The room was filled with the mellow light of the setting sun, and here and there the rays were caught—by the glass doors of the bookcase, by the metal top of the inkstand, or, less sharply, by the silver and pewter mugs ranged along the mantel—and were thrown back in golden blurs that dazzled the eyes.
Dick laid aside his coat and cap, took off his gloves, and thrusting his hands into his pocket, surveyed the apartment smilingly. It was awfully jolly to get back, he thought happily, as his gaze took in the shabby, comfortable furnishings and the hundred and one objects about the room so intimately connected with three and a half years of pleasant school life. An array of worn and soberly bound books lined an end of the leather-covered study table, and he took one up and fluttered its pages between his fingers; it was a good deal like shaking hands with an old friend. With the volume still in his clasp he moved to the mantel and examined the knickknacks thereon, the cups and photographs and little china things, all cheap enough viewed from a money standpoint, yet to Dick priceless from long possession. He felt a momentary heart-flutter as his eyes fell on one pewter mug ornately engraved with his name.
As he looked the mantel and wall faded from sight, and he saw a stretch of cinder track, pecked by the spikes of runners’ shoes; at a little distance a thin white tape. He saw himself, head back, eyes staring, struggling desperately for that white thread across the track. Again he heard the thud and crunch of the St. Eustace runner’s feet almost beside him; heard, far more dimly, the shouts of excited onlookers, and again felt his effortful gasps as he gained inch by inch. The captain of the track team had been the first to reach him as the tape fluttered to the ground and he turned, half reeling, onto the turf. And he had thrown an arm about him and lowered him gently to the welcome sod and had whispered three short words into his ear, words that meant more than volumes of praise: