While the unfeeling sun was coming up Wayne was going through a most remarkable adventure. Plainly he had won Professor Wheeler to his side, for together they were besieged in the school library and had barricaded the doors and windows with books, while from convenient loopholes they maintained a rapid and merciless fusillade of ancient and modern history, Greek and Latin text-books, geometries, and algebras upon the heads of the besiegers, who retaliated with chest weights, dumb-bells, single sticks, and Indian clubs until the air was dark with the flying missiles and the battle cries of the foes shook the building. Wayne and the principal had just clasped hands and sworn to perish side by side, fighting grandly to the last gasp for the right, when a whole covey of chest weights came through a window and smote Wayne on the head, and he awoke to see Don with a second pillow poised, ready to throw.
“Get up, Wayne; bell’s rung!”
Wayne yawned, pitched the pillow back at Don, and arose. He hadn’t slept well, and wished that Don wouldn’t always insist on his getting up so early. And he told him so. But Don was good nature itself that morning and refused to argue or get cross, and Wayne was perforce obliged to recover his wonted gayety, much against his inclination, and trudge off arm in arm with Don to chapel. And after he had got through with a hearty breakfast, even the thought that probation awaited him on the morrow failed to dispel his excellent spirits.
For, as Don had feared, the combined efforts of the three friends had failed to shake Wayne’s resolution. Don had pleaded, Paddy had begged, Dave had threatened; and Wayne had reiterated passionately his desire to suffer martyrdom on account of his principles, and had utterly and absolutely and finally refused to attend gymnasium work to-day or to plead illness in extenuation. The three friends had not appeared cast down—a fact at which Wayne wondered not a little. It looked as though they didn’t care whether he was put on probation or not, and he had gone to bed deeply pessimistic on the subject of friendship.
Wayne’s hour for physical training in the gymnasium began at three, and when, five minutes before that time, he issued from Academy Building resolved to proceed to his room and put in the momentous hour at hard study, he found Don and Dave and Paddy on the steps. The two latter youths at once locked arms with him, much to his surprise, for Dave especially was little given to such expressions of friendliness, and the quartet moved toward Bradley Hall.
“Why aren’t you and Dave on the campus?” asked Wayne.
“Oh, we didn’t like to leave you alone this afternoon,” answered Paddy, with a smile. “You see, we have your welfare at heart, my boy, and we are going to see that you don’t act silly and get put on probation, and not be able to go to Marshall with us next week.”
“If you mean not going to the gymnasium when you say ‘acting silly,’” replied Wayne, with much dignity, “why, then, I’m going to act silly.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Dave.
“What do you mean?” demanded Wayne, striving to withdraw himself from his friends’ clutches. They had almost reached the steps of Bradley, and now they stopped and faced about.