The officer, indignant as he was, let out a guffaw of contemptuous laughter: “Lord love you, kid, if that’s the best lie you can tell, what’s the use of education?”
Winfield realized the hopelessness of such self-defense. It was less shameful to confess the misdemeanor than to be ridiculed for so impotent a pretext. He suffered himself to be jostled up the aisle and tossed into the patrol-wagon with the first van-load of prisoners. He counted on a brief stay there, for it was a custom of the college to tip over the patrol-wagon and rescue the victims of the police.
This year’s Freshmen, however, lacked the necessary initiative and leadership, and before the lost opportunity could be regained the wagon had rolled away, leaving the class to eternal ignominy.
CHAPTER VI
Deprived of its ringleaders, the mob fell into such disarray that it was ready to be cowed by the manager of the theater. He had waited for the police to remove the chief pirates, and now he addressed the audience with the one speech that could have had success:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve lowered the curtain and I’m going to keep it lowered till the hoodlums settle down or get thrown out. The majority of people here to-night have paid good money to see this show. It is a good show and played by a company of ladies and gentlemen from one of the best theaters in New York, and I propose to have them treated as such while they are in our city. We are going to begin the play all over again, but if there is any further disturbance I’ll ring down the asbestos and put out the house lights. And no money will be returned at the box-office.”
This last argument converted the mob into a sheriff’s posse. The house-manager received a round of applause and the first Freshman who rose in his place was subdued by his own fellow-classmen.
Bret Winfield spent the night in a cell. He slept little, because the Freshmen hardly ceased to sing the night long; they were solacing themselves with doleful glees. Winfield could not help smiling at his imprisonment. Don Quixote was tasting the reward of misapplied chivalry.
The next morning he made no defense before the glowering judge who had played just such pranks in his college days and felt, therefore, a double duty to repress it in the later generation. He excoriated Bret Winfield especially, and Winfield kept silence, knowing that the truth would gain him no credence and only added contempt. The judge fined the young miscreants five dollars each and left their further punishment to the faculty.
On his way back to his rooms after his release, Winfield met Eugene Vickery, and said, with a wry smile, “Hello, ’Gene! I’ve just escaped from the penitentiary.”