"You sneak!" he said softly.
Then, with the angry tears blinding his eyes, he hurried down to his room to unburden his heart to Joe Brewster.
Joe was wildly indignant and was all for dashing upstairs and "knocking the spots out of Graft!" But Kenneth refused his consent to such a procedure.
"I'll tell them the truth when they call me up," he said. "If they don't believe me they needn't."
Well, they didn't. Kenneth refused to incriminate Grafton and as all the evidence was strongly against him he was held guilty. The verdict was "suspension" as soon as Kenneth's parents could be communicated with. Grafton denied having smoked with Kenneth and got off with a lecture for permitting an infraction of the rules in his study. Joe stormed and sputtered, but as Kenneth had bound him to secrecy he could do no more.
That night Upper and Lower met in the second basket-ball game and Grafton Hyde played right guard on the Lower House team. Fate was kind to the Beds. Knox, Upper's crack right forward, was out of the game with a twisted ankle and when the last whistle blew the score board declared Lower House the winner by a score of 12 to 9. And Lower House tramped through the snow, around and around the campus, and made night hideous with songs and cheers until threatened by the faculty with dire punishment if they did not at once retire to their rooms. And up in Number 12 Kenneth, feeling terribly out of it all, heard and was glad of the victory.
Sunday afternoon he spent in packing his trunk, for, in spite of Joe's pleadings, he was determined not to return to Hilltop when his term of suspension was over. He expected to hear from his father in the morning, in which case he would take the noon train to New York on the first stage of his journey.
That night they sat up late, since it was to be their last evening together, and Joe was very miserable. He begged Kenneth to go to Dr. Randall and tell just what had occurred. But Kenneth shook his head.
"He wouldn't believe me if I did," he said. "And, anyhow, what's the use of staying while Whipple's here? He'd get me fired sooner or later. No, the best way to do is to quit now. I'm sorry, Joe; you and I were getting on together pretty well, weren't we?"
"Yes," answered Joe sadly. And then he became reminiscent and asked whether Kenneth remembered the way they kicked the furniture around that first evening and how Kenneth had joshed Grafton Hyde.