CHAPTER IX
A COUNCIL OF WAR
Almost unable to believe my eyes, I gazed fixedly at the damp, bare spots of ground where our dear old cannons had rested for so long a time. Like all the students at Belmont I had grown so accustomed to the old pieces of artillery, and they had become so intimately associated with my college life, that I had learned to look upon them as a part of the institution itself, and I could not get used to the fact that they were gone—that the two Belmont cannons had actually been moved away, and that I was simply staring at vacancy. It all seemed so unreal, that for a moment I wondered whether I was awake or dreaming. As if in echo to my thoughts, I heard Dick Palmer’s voice beside me.
“The old cannons gone! Why, it doesn’t seem like Belmont College now.”
“No,” answered Tony Larcom, “it isn’t the same place at all. The campus looks as if it had had two big front teeth pulled out.”
“Then we must set about refilling the cavities,” said some one.
We looked around.
Clinton Edwards was standing with his hand on Ray Wendell’s shoulder. It was to Ray in particular that he addressed the words. Ray said nothing.
Edwards shook Ray’s shoulder slightly.