“Wake up, Vinton!”
Dan started. Folwell was digging him with his elbow and grinning at him.
“Huh?” he asked blankly. But Folwell whispered to him to “shut up and listen to Payson, you chump!” And Dan listened. The next moment his eyes were on the table and he felt the blood creeping up his neck, around his ears and into his cheeks. Once he glanced up and met Loring’s face laughing back at him across the board. But there was more than laughter in Loring’s look and Dan’s eyes dropped swiftly again.
“And so,” Payson was saying, “although this victory of to-day belongs to us and to the whole school, yet it is essentially a one-man victory. And that one is here amongst us. It is his victory, not merely because, a new fellow this Fall, he worked hard and cut his way into the team; not merely because at the last moment, on a play which he himself invented, he made the winning score for us; but because, when two of our men, one of whom we simply couldn’t have done without, were charged with a misdemeanor and deprived of their right to play on the team, this fellow came forward and, innocent though he was, shouldered the fault and the punishment that those men might play and that Yardley might win. Yes, fellows, to-day’s victory was your victory, my victory, the school’s victory, but more than all it was Vinton’s victory!”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to follow the text that they illustrate, so the page number of the illustration may not match the page number in the List of Illustrations.
Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.