Leonard assented, but with too little enthusiasm to satisfy the other. “If it was me,” Slim went on, “I guess I wouldn’t be talking like that to you. I’d be feeling too sore about losing my position.”
“Well, but it isn’t my fault he’s off the team,” objected Leonard, mildly.
Slim grunted again. “Never mind; he’s off, and that’s what counts!”
Leonard felt that there was something wrong somewhere in Slim’s point of view, but he was too tired to pursue the matter.
There was a short session against the second team on Thursday, and then the whistle blew for the last time, and the season on Alton Field was at an end. The second cheered and was cheered and, finally, followed by the onlookers, crossed back to their own field and started a fire. A battered and discarded football, bearing a leering countenance painted on with white pigment, was set atop the pyre and the scrubs joined hands and danced riotously around it. The fact that the football subsided into ruins with only a faint sigh, instead of expiring with a resonant bang, was accepted as an ill omen of Saturday’s game. But the omen did not appear to affect the second team spirits appreciably!
Friday was a day of rest, but there was an hour of signal drill in the gymnasium in the afternoon and a brief blackboard lecture by the coach in the evening. The latter was over by eight-fifteen, however, and afterwards Slim tried to persuade Leonard to accompany him to the final mass meeting in the auditorium. But Leonard had no mind for it, and Slim, realizing that his friend was having a mild attack of nerves, didn’t persist long. Going out, he stopped at the door to say: “I wouldn’t think too much about to-morrow, General; about the game, you know. Better get a good story and read. I’ll be back soon.”
Leonard was willing to follow the other’s advice, but it wasn’t so easy. And when he looked for the good story it wasn’t to be found. At length he decided to walk over to the library and get a book, although, since the auditorium was above the library, he had no intention of tarrying there. It was a nice night, just frostily cold and with a couple of trillions of white stars winking away in a blue-black sky. Even with his mackinaw unbuttoned he was quite comfortable. Long before he neared Memorial he could hear the singing.
“Cheer for the Gray-and-Gold!
Flag of the brave and bold—”
A long, measured cheer followed the last strain, and then came silence. No, not silence, for Leonard was close to the building now and could hear at intervals a word or two. Some one was speaking. There was a sudden burst of applause, quickly suppressed. Then he was entering the library. The long room with its mellow warmth and its two rows of cone-shaped green shades was deserted save for the presence in a corner of a small freshman hunched absorbedly over a book. Leonard paused outside the door, suddenly distasteful of libraries and books. Then he turned back and went down the steps again. It was far nicer outdoors, he thought. He would cross the grass to River street and walk around by Academy and Meadow to the farther gate. Probably by the time he reached the room again Slim would have returned, and then he could go to bed. Not, however, that bed held any great appeal, for he was quite sure he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep for hours.
Short of the first street light, that on the corner, he descried a shape ahead of him. Some one else, it appeared, scorned indoors to-night. The shape was tall and broad, and Leonard suspected one of the faculty, perhaps Mr. Screven, and hoped that he could get by without having to say more than “Good evening.” He couldn’t imagine anything more deadly than being obliged to loll along and listen to Mr. Screven’s monotonous voice. But, a few paces behind now, he saw that the solitary pedestrian was not Mr. Screven, was not, indeed, a faculty at all, but Gordon Renneker.