Transcriber’s Note:

The few footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are referenced.

IN THE LINE

The Phillips Exeter Series.

By ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY.

FOLLOWING THE BALL.

Illustrated by Charles Copeland. Price,

$1.25.

MAKING THE NINE.

Illustrated by Charles Copeland and from

Photographs of Scenes at Exeter. Price,

$1.25.

IN THE LINE.

Illustrated by Charles Copeland. Price,

$1.25.

Down the two went in a whirl of legs.—Page 290.

PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES

IN THE LINE

BY

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY

AUTHOR OF “FOLLOWING THE BALL” AND “MAKING

THE NINE”

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND

BOSTON.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Copyright, 1905, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company.

Published, August, 1905.

All Rights Reserved

In The Line.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

TO MY ADVISERS AND HELPERS

F. P. D. AND W. P. D.

PREFACE

In the Line is a story of school life and football rather than of football and school life. In its football it is meant to supplement Following the Ball, as With Mask and Mit in its baseball will supplement Making the Nine, each book emphasizing a different department of play. The story is in no sense history, and no attempt has been made to describe actual persons.

The case for football presented in Chapters XX and XXII is believed to be a fair and candid statement of facts with regard to the game as they are known to those most familiar with it. American Rugby football is here, and here to stay, not because of its æsthetic virtues, but because it appeals irresistibly to the Anglo-Saxon heart. In twenty years, against ignorant criticism and bitter opposition, it has established itself in every section of the country. It has merits which can neither be argued away nor overborne by abuse; it has conspicuous faults. Eliminate “dirty football” and the playing of unfit or unfairly matched men, provide for the players proper supervision in their practice and strict officials in their matches,—and the dangers of the game, with all serious grounds of objection, will be removed.

Particular thanks for helpful suggestions as to guard play are due Mr. Joseph T. Gilman, a veteran of the Dartmouth eleven, whose mastery of the technique of his position has been proved in many a hard contest and against many a clever antagonist.

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY.

Boston, April, 1905.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

IN THE LINE

CHAPTER I
RAW MATERIAL

Wolcott Lindsay Senior, with Wolcott Lindsay Junior, and Wolcott Junior’s Mamma, arrived in Boston on New Year’s day, after buffeting for sixty hours against a furious northwest storm that left the great ice-coated liner looking like a glass ship taken from a globe on the nursery shelf and magnified a thousand times. Wolcott Junior, being a healthy, vigorous youth, with thousands of footpounds of energy running hourly to waste, and having the overweening confidence in his own powers which distinguishes some otherwise very attractive specimens of American boyhood, had found the restraint of the cabin extremely irksome. Had the voyage lasted much longer, he must have discovered some means of getting by the barriers which kept him in safe imprisonment. In that case there might have been no Wolcott Lindsay Junior, and no story of “In the Line” to be written.

“Junior,” as his mother called him, was not one to slip by a sentinel unobserved. Five feet eleven in height, unshod; one hundred seventy-five pounds in weight, unclothed; with heart and lungs unstrained by growth, and muscles already swelling in significant bunches and bands, he looked more like a college junior than a raw boy not yet eighteen, still unripe for entrance examinations.

“Ridiculous,” his father had said, lifting his eyes from their five-foot-six-inch level and measuring the whole length and breadth of his offspring,—“perfectly ridiculous to be so big! Why, if you keep on at this rate you’ll be as much out of place in an average house as a rhinoceros in a garret. And not yet even a sub-freshman!”

“Now, Wolcott!” expostulated Mrs. Lindsay, “you know that’s not fair. If you had told us we were going to stay in Hamburg two years instead of six months, we should have put him in a good school or had a tutor for him. It isn’t his fault if he’s behind; he hasn’t had a fair chance.”

At this the expression on the face of Lindsay père changed. “He shall have chance enough when we get home. No more conversation lessons in French and German, or reading novels for vocabulary, or going to the theatre for pronunciation, or rowing on the Elster with that learned fool, Herr Doktor Krauss; but old-fashioned Latin and Greek and mathematics in some good, stiff school, under a clear-headed American teacher. Too bad that the boy couldn’t have had a touch of the Hamburger Gymnasium!”

At this suggestion that hard things were in store for the young man, Mrs. Lindsay looked worried, and Junior assumed an air of indifference that cloaked his real feeling, which was one of joy to be coming home again to boys of his own race and kind, and of willingness to put up with any school or any work, however “stiff,” so long as it was American and with Americans.

Aunt Emmeline met them at the dock. Aunt Emmeline was Mr. Lindsay’s sister, like him and yet differing from him as sisters are wont to differ from brothers. Both were in a sense aristocrats; both thought much of the family name and the family history, but their points of view were widely variant. Mr. Lindsay felt strongly that the possession of ancestors who had served their generation faithfully and well, pledged the descendants to the same ratio of achievement. His constant fear was that he should fail to maintain the standard which the forefathers had set. Aunt Emmeline, on the other hand, regarded the family past as a legacy bequeathed for the glorification of the present. Gentle and charitable and good, she yet loved to think of the Lindsays as an essentially superior race, whom it behooved to keep themselves aloof from the common modern herd, and contemplate in reverence the ancient family greatness.

Both Mr. Lindsay and his sister were experts in the family genealogy. The brother loved to tell of the Lindsay who left a comfortable English benefice to guide a little flock in the wilderness; of the farmer who, with his two sons, ambushed a dozen Indians who attacked his house in the Pequot wars; of the young lieutenant who followed the desperate fortunes of Paul Jones, and was cut in two by a cannon-ball from the Serapis. Miss Emmeline took little interest in the pioneers and the farmers of the family tree. Her tales were of the laces and jewels of Barbara Wolcott, wife of the attorney-general; of the splendid plate lost in the mansion of the great-great-uncle in New Jersey, when pillaged by the Hessians; of the fine estate of the one Tory member of the family, whose daughter became the wife of Lord Stanley of Stanley Hall, Roebuckshire. Aunt Emmeline hoped that Wolcott would exemplify the fine manners and superior breeding of his be-ruffled ancestors; Mr. Lindsay that he might show some traces of the good sense, courage, and sterling worth of the builders and defenders of the colony. And in this hulking, overgrown fellow, no longer a boy and not yet a man, both felt some disappointment.

A few days were required to get the family used to solid earth again, and for picking up the threads of existence severed two years before. Meantime Mr. Lindsay made inquiries for a school for his son. He himself believed in the public schools, not as some of his neighbors, in theory and for other people’s children, but in theory and for his own. Mr. Lindsay had ever the courage of his convictions. So strong was this faith that Mrs. Lindsay, who favored a private school, and Aunt Emmeline, who adored St. Susan’s, had each abandoned her own pet scheme for “little Wolcott,” in the conviction that the public school was inevitable. When, therefore, the head of the family returned one day with the news that Junior, on account of the irregularity of his previous training, and the inflexible system which the public schools maintained, could not prepare at the Latin School without great loss of time, the discussion of schools over Junior’s head, or rather under his nose, became serious. With the public school out of the field, each lady thought to see her own choice adopted. Miss Emmeline’s arguments, boiled down, were that Dr. Cummin, at the head of St. Susan’s, was “such a good man” and some very nice boys went there,—boys, that is, of approved mothers and grandfathers,—and they certainly came back with lovely manners. Mrs. Lindsay urged that the private school offered good instruction, the companionship of boys of the neighborhood, and what was to her of much more account, the opportunity to keep the fledgling a little longer at home. Mr. Lindsay listened, questioned, and like a wise man took time to consider and talk with his friends.

And here was the undoing of both the fond mamma and the solicitous aunt. Mr. Lindsay met Friend Number One at his club at luncheon.

“Do you know anything about schools?” asked the father. “I am looking for the best place in which to put my son. I hear that St. Susan’s is very highly recommended.”

Number One looked at him a moment in thoughtful silence. “Do you? Yes, I suppose some people must recommend it.”

“I infer that you do not. What do you know against it?”

“I know this,” replied the man, energetically; “my nephew entered Harvard last fall from St. Susan’s with a reputation for piety and goodness that any saint might have envied. In three months that fellow had gone to pieces in the temptations of the unaccustomed life like a rotten ship dashed by a hurricane against a reef. He was about as well fitted for the freedom the college offers as I am for the prize ring. Why don’t you put your boy into a good private school right here in the city?”

A little later Mr. Lindsay fell in with Friend Number Two. “Do you know anything about private schools in Boston?”

“Private schools? Yes, there are two or three good ones here,—a little snobbish, of course, but good schools none the less. Ask Tom Smith about them. He’s got two boys in one of them.”

But Mr. Lindsay had no intention of consulting Tom Smith. Snobbishness was his pet aversion; the very mention of the possibility aroused a vehement prejudice. Without stopping to inquire whether the charge were true or false, he abandoned all thought of a private school for the lordly Wolcott Junior, and drifted on to Friend Number Three with mind swept clear of all prepossessions.

Friend Number Three had positive convictions. He was an enthusiastic partisan of the rah-rah sort, alive to the merits and blind to the faults of the school of his boyhood. He knew exactly the place for Wolcott Junior, democratic, cosmopolitan, of high standard of scholarship, with a system of government tending to develop moral independence, and boasting a history rich in names of men of action and service. It happened that the merits which the loyal alumnus ascribed to Seaton were precisely those which Mr. Lindsay thought it most important that a school should possess. It happened also that the next two men consulted gave opinions which either negatively or positively supported Number Three. As a result and despite the preferences of the ladies of the family, Wolcott’s school future was determined. Within a week after his arrival in Boston he was packing his trunk for Seaton.

It need hardly be said that this method of selecting a school, while unquestionably typical, would not always lead to the same result. Friend Number Four, for example, might have contradicted Number Three and Number One, and by lauding St. Susan’s to the skies, have sent the son of the house to the school of Aunt Emmeline’s choice. Or, if the case had been thoroughly investigated, the private school might easily have won the favorable decision. As it was, Mr. Lindsay, in considering the boy and his needs as well as his own ideals, proceeded rather more rationally than the average parent. Many a boy is placed in a particular school merely on the strength of a specious advertisement. Some are ejected from home rather than sent to school, the destination being of much less consequence to the selfish parents than their own relief from responsibility. Others again, through unwholesome dread of evil influences, are turned over to a family of under-masters who wait on them and think for them and keep them in prolonged infancy. But these are extremes of neglect or solicitude. In the end the school is but the opportunity, the vital force is the boy. If the boy is wrong, no school can make him right. Given the right boy in the hands of competent, conscientious men, and the form of the school makes little difference. So thought Mr. Lindsay as he said good-by to his strapping son at Seaton station; and he boarded the train with a clear conscience.

CHAPTER II
ACQUAINTANCES

Lindsay was registered as a middler. Being weak in Latin and Greek, and strong in French and German, he found himself spread over three classes, pushed ahead in modern languages, and degraded among the juniors in classics. To this mixture of classes and associates he resigned himself the more readily, as he honestly purposed to do what the school authorities advised, maintain his position in the middle and senior subjects and work his way up out of the junior class. But the experience of the first few days did not strengthen his confidence. To hear these young boys rattle off declensions and principal parts, run through synopses as he might run through the alphabet, give glib translations of passages through which he must toil his slow and painful way; to see how with every question on ablative or subjunctive, the air quivered with the hands of those eager to answer—all this, with the distractions of strange boys and their stranger acts added to the bewilderment of unfamiliar surroundings, plunged him in despair.

In the junior class were the Peck twins, Duncan and Donald. If ever two lads started in life with an exactly equal chance, it was this light-haired, snub-nosed, solemn-eyed pair. Externally as much alike as bullets cast in the same mould, they wore clothes of the same material and cut, bought neckties and hats by pairs, and from the spirit of fun which twinship seems to develop even in the sedatest couple, habitually appeared in the same dress at the same time. In actions, too, they were a unit; they attended the same recitations, held the same views, trained with the same set, and, in general, shared each other’s joys and sorrows and stood by each other in time of trouble in a manner most unusual to brothers.

Unfortunately, however, alike as were their appearance and interests, nature had endowed them with very different mental characteristics. Donald was an excellent scholar, in fact almost bookish, easily ranking among the best. Duncan on the contrary, who inclined decidedly to heaviness, bumped along at the bottom of the class, carried by the general momentum. If he ever was ready with an answer in the class room, the chances were that he knew as much about it as the receiver of a telephone knows about the message which passes through it. A prompt and correct answer in Duncan’s mouth was suspicious; it usually came from Donald, or some other sympathetic friend who understood the art of conveying information undetected, and who shared the delusion that in this way he was performing a neighborly service. Among boys who really knew the twins, the heavy Duncan with his slow, droll ways and never failing good nature was unquestionably the favorite. As a rule, however, since the majority could not distinguish them when they were together, and only their most intimate friends could identify them singly, the qualities of the brothers were lumped together in a composite, and credited to “the Pecks.” That this represented the just point of view, the conduct of the pair clearly showed, for each was a loyal admirer of the other, and inevitably shared in the other’s glory or disgrace.

The system of mutual coöperation which the twins regularly followed was responsible for Lindsay’s first failure in recitation. It occurred in junior Greek. The Pecks sat side by side as subdued as sleeping kittens, while Mr. Warner passed along the row with his questions. Donald responded promptly and correctly. The instructor beamed with satisfaction over the success of his method of instruction; the answers were flawless. Then Tom Riley—Wolcott did not know him at that time—had doubts about a contraction, and persisted in his doubts until Mr. Warner was forced to leave his chair and chalk the forms in plain view upon the board. The moment the instructor’s back was turned, the twins quietly shifted places, and waited in complacent patience until Riley was satisfied, when a second flawless recitation was credited to the Peck family. And while Wolcott was staring and trying to make out what was happening and which boy was reciting, the questions had passed from the twins’ row to his own, and he suddenly heard his own name called, felt the blood rush to his face as he strove to find the place and fix his fluttering attention. There was a moment of terrible silence, while the lines of type blurred themselves over the section marks, and the page seemed to swell and decrease like a landscape behind a moving lens; then the impatient hands began again their furious waving, another boy gave the answer which was hovering on Wolcott’s lips, and the fire of questions swept on to another row. It was certainly the fault of the twins.

In the middle class Lindsay sat between Laughlin and Marchmont, two neighbors as opposite as north and south, while just beyond was Poole. Laughlin was captain of the Eleven for the next year, a big, broad-shouldered, heavy-featured fellow of twenty-one, with a face on which rested the glow of rare physical health, and massive hands in which any book but the biggest lexicon seemed out of place. His clothes, though neither of fine quality nor of good fit, were well brushed and clean, and the broad thumb which lay at the folding of the book, covering completely the double margin, if roughened and hardened by exposure and labor, still gave evidence of the personal neatness of its owner. David Laughlin had not a quick mind,—that one could read in the expression of his face, in which honesty and determination were more apparent than alertness. But he learned his lessons as thoroughly as he knew how, gave his whole attention to the class-room work, and as a result ranked above many who were by nature cleverer.

Marchmont, Lindsay’s other neighbor, has been called the opposite of Laughlin. He was tall and slim, possessed delicate, intelligent features and white, shapely hands; wore clothes of fine material which in smoothness of fit and moderation of style showed the skilled hand of the city tailor; took a negligent interest in the recitation, and answered questions addressed to him with sufficient readiness to satisfy the instructor without displaying an unseemly eagerness for learning.

At the first glance Wolcott made up his mind that he should like Marchmont and dislike Laughlin. The impression which the latter conveyed, of roughness and brute force and determination to make his way in spite of early disadvantages, was repellent to the young man fresh from a European city where distinctions of class and wealth are everywhere magnified. Marchmont, on the other hand, had the appearance and manners of one familiar with the usages of good society.

Lindsay passed out of his first recitation with the middlers feeling much alone among the jostling crowd of chattering boys. Many glanced at him with curiosity, taking quick measure of the newcomer, but few wasted words upon him; an unknown boy stands at zero in the Seaton world. Laughlin brushed against him, nodded, said “Hello!” and asked if he had ever played foot-ball. When Lindsay modestly answered “a little,” Laughlin gave a sharp look at his shoulders and arms, and turned, apparently indifferent, to talk with another boy. Poole, a quiet, dignified lad, whose importance in the school world one could guess from the eagerness with which others addressed him, seemed disposed to be polite to the newcomer, gave him his hand and the information that he was “in the best class in school.” Marchmont joined him in the corridor and accompanied him to the entrance of Hale, where Wolcott had slipped into a room recently vacated. Yes, Marchmont was decidedly the most attractive fellow he had seen.

A senior, named Tompkins, living next door, was our hero’s first caller. The visit was an unusual honor, had Wolcott but known it, for new boys are ordinarily left alone until they have shown themselves worth knowing. Tompkins introduced himself and straddled a rocking-chair.

“Well, how do you like it as far as you’ve got?” asked the senior, glancing around the room to see what kind of things Lindsay had brought with him, and then making a general summing-up on the new boy himself.

“Pretty well,” replied Lindsay. “I don’t feel quite at home yet.”

“You’ll be homesick for about a week, dead homesick. After that you’ll begin to get used to things, like a prisoner to the jail. In two or three months you’ll think you’ve always lived here, and by the time you’ve been here a couple of years you’ll be so fond of the place that you’ll hate to leave it to go to college. Where do you live when you’re at home?”

“Boston.”

“Why, you’re right in your own dooryard! You’ve no call to be homesick. It might be different if you lived in a cañon twenty-five hundred miles away, as I do.”

“I didn’t say I was homesick,” protested Lindsay.

“That’s a fact, you didn’t! I wonder how I got the idea we were talking about homesickness.”

Wolcott looked sharply at Tompkins, suspicious, as every new boy in strange surroundings, that he was being played upon. But Tompkins merely blinked in return with his blank four-cornered eyes, and Wolcott’s suspicions vanished.

“I should think it would grow monotonous after a while,” he said, “just studying and reciting and going to chapel and the gymnasium.”

Tompkins grinned. “Beastly monotonous; but that programme doesn’t exist outside the school catalogue. The fact is there’s so everlasting much going on that it seems wicked to waste time on such ordinary things as studying and going to recitations. That’s what Smith and Wilder thought.”

And as Lindsay naturally wished to know about Smith and Wilder, Tompkins consented to explain.

“They had this room earlier in the year. Smith came all the way from Omaha for the benefits of the institution. He cut four recitations in two weeks and the third week he was on his way back to the West. Then Wilder turned up and took the room. He wasn’t a strong boy, his mother said, and she got him excused from gymnasium on a doctor’s certificate. I never heard whether all the cigarettes he smoked were on the doctor’s certificate, too, but he proved too sickly to stand the strain, and after a couple of months was sent home to his mamma. You’re the third.”

Lindsay smiled uneasily. “I hope there isn’t a hoodoo on the place.”

“Oh, no, nothing special. They fire here by platoons. According to Tom Riley this is a record year,—fifty-two to date—and the firing season is just under way. What are you, middler or senior? I saw you to-day in senior French.”

“I’m a mixture of senior and middler, with two subjects in the junior,” replied Lindsay, who was beginning to feel ashamed of his amphibious position.

“Then you must be with the two Pecks. I’d give a silver dollar to be with that combination. They’re more fun than a box of monkeys!”

“They room in this entry, don’t they?” asked Lindsay.

“Very much so, and they’re always running in and out, singly and in pairs, and always up to some shine or other. If you didn’t know that there were only two, you’d feel sure there was at least a bushel of them.”

“Instead of half,” said Lindsay, smiling.

“Just half,” returned Tompkins. “Know any fellows yet?”

“Two or three have spoken to me. Marchmont, who seems a very nice fellow, and Poole, and that big Laughlin.”

Tompkins rose. “You’d better be a bit careful about making friends until you know who’s who. In a school like this it isn’t so easy to shake friends as it is to make ’em. But you won’t be going wrong to tie up with Phil Poole, if he gives you the chance.”

But Lindsay’s thoughts were not so much with the present members of the school as with the exiles. “If they fire as many as you say, I shouldn’t think there’d be any bad ones left.”

“Oh, bless you! fellows aren’t fired merely because they’re bad! Some are unlucky, and some are lazy, and some are considered better off elsewhere, and some are too big blockheads to keep. There are really only two punishments in this school, firing with warning and firing without. So they drop off pretty fast. The main thing, if you want to stay here, is to behave yourself and do your work. Come and see me.”

And Tompkins withdrew his body from between the door and jamb, where it had been resting during his last speech, leaving the new boy with many unuttered questions on his lips and much wonderment in his mind.

CHAPTER III
THE NEW MANDOLIN

Wolcott’s acquaintance grew apace, though limited mainly to fellows of his own class section or dormitory entry, or of his own table at the dining hall. His section presented a wide range of Seaton personality. Tompkins, who having failed his preliminaries had fallen into this section in two subjects, declared that it had samples of everything the place offered except Japanese, Cubans, and twins—and the privilege of twins Wolcott enjoyed in another class.

There were the few greater athletes—members of the school teams; the many minor athletes—members of the class teams; the natural students who did nothing but study; the natural loafers who studied as little as possible; the son of the multi-millionaire with resources unlimited; the son of the laborer, with no resources except his own head and hands; the religious boy with a strong purpose, who helped keep on a high level the moral tone of the school; the rattlehead without purpose, always on the verge of expulsion; the literary boy, the musical boy, the embryo artist, the natural clown, the politician. With most of these Wolcott was soon on speaking terms, aided in his knowledge of them by the personal anecdotes with which any general conversation bristled.

Marchmont’s desire to be friendly was shown in an early recitation, when in a very inconspicuous way he supplied Wolcott with a date for the question in Greek history which the instructor had suddenly shot at him. To tell the truth, Wolcott was not entirely satisfied with this method of reciting. He meant to inform Marchmont that he preferred to answer his own questions without assistance. After the recitation, however, Laughlin presumed to take him aside and tell him in very plain language that it wasn’t a good plan to let fellows prompt him in class; it was against the rules and risky, and anyway didn’t pay in the long run. Wolcott thanked the giver of this unasked advice with cool politeness and head held high. And when, immediately after, Marchmont appeared at his elbow and invited him to “come up to the room for a few minutes,” he accepted with ostentatious alacrity, merely to show his disapproval of the liberty which the football player had taken.

Marchmont’s very attractive quarters, on the second floor of a private house, were fitted up in unusually good taste. The occupant was indeed a very different fellow from Laughlin. It was evident that he had not spent his summers at manual labor, and his winters in hard study and close economy. Marchmont’s family belonged to the more pretentious circles of New York society. He himself had already been in several schools, had travelled more extensively than Wolcott, and spoke with an air of worldly experience and wisdom with which the new boy could not but be impressed. As Wolcott hurried home for the geometry lesson, for which he had meant to save two good hours, he was dismayed to find that his call had extended well into the second hour.

The next day Marchmont made a return visit. On Lindsay’s table lay the mandolin which he had hardly touched since he entered school. Marchmont took up the instrument and lightly fingered the strings.

“Has a good tone,” remarked the visitor. “Get it in Hamburg?”

“Yes. Do you play?”

“A little. I belong to the Mandolin Club. Play something.”

He held out the mandolin to its owner, who took it with reluctance and with some clumsiness of touch, due rather to shyness than inability, drummed through one of the modern banjo airs which all amateurs inevitably learn.

Marchmont nodded approval. “That’s good. Do you play by note?”

“Yes, I think I can do better with the notes,” replied Lindsay, sinking back in his chair with obvious relief. “I don’t remember things very well.”

“You ought to be in the Mandolin Club,” said Marchmont. He took up the mandolin and played over a few bars of the music that Lindsay had just performed—carelessly and with his thoughts evidently upon some other subject, yet with an ease and finish that called to Lindsay’s lips an exclamation of admiration.

“It’s the proper club to belong to, if you’re musical,” went on Marchmont; “has the nice fellows in it, you know—fellows like Poole and Planter and Reynolds. The common crowd go into the Glee Club. Laughlin is head bellower there.”

“Can he sing any?” asked Lindsay, smiling.

“About as you would expect from a big, rough bull like him. You know it takes something more than a deep voice and a big chest to make a singer.”

“I don’t suppose I could get into the Mandolin Club,” said Lindsay, longingly.

Marchmont considered. “It’s pretty hard to get a fellow in at this time of year. Of course, if you are a cracker-jack, the one and only great player, the Club would probably stretch a little and let you in.”

“But I’m not,” said Lindsay.

Marchmont considered further. “I’ll tell you what,” he said at length, “I have some influence in the Club, and I’ll try to persuade them that you ought to come in. What can you play best?”

Lindsay enumerated the half-dozen tunes of his repertoire which he was least likely to bungle.

“You take ‘Bluebell’ and practise it until you can do it asleep. Then I’ll give Poole and Reynolds the notion that you’re a mandolin artist, and bring them round to hear you. They’ll ask you what you can play, and when you name several things, I’ll call for ‘Bluebell.’ You can have an encore ready in case it’s demanded, and I’ll plan it so that the bell will ring, or something happen to break off the trial at that point. I think we can work it all right.”

Lindsay hesitated. “That doesn’t seem exactly a square deal.”

“Oh, it’s all right. You’ll do as well as most of ’em when you get in and have some practice.”

For the next few days Lindsay toiled over “Bluebell,” until the occupant of the room above began thumping on the floor whenever the familiar strains sifted through to his ears. Then came the appointment of an hour for the hearing, and the dreaded visitation of the critics. It was a serious moment for the musician, when, after the little introductory farce which Marchmont had arranged, he took his mandolin and boldly launched forth on the hundredth presentation of “Bluebell.” What mattered it if the last bars did receive a staccato accompaniment by heels on the floor above? The committee were suitably impressed, heard the encore with approval, and adjourned with the assurance that the candidate should have their unanimous commendation—and the commendation of the committee, Marchmont confided to him later in the day, was always equivalent to an election. Lindsay shook his hand in a fervor of gratitude.

That evening Poole walked up from the post office with Laughlin and Durand.

“At last we’ve got another mandolin,” said Poole; “that new Lindsay. You know we’ve been looking for one a long time.”

“Any good?” asked Durand.

“Not remarkable, but decidedly better than nothing. We’ve simply got to have some one to make the balance. Marchmont has promised to help him, too.”

CHAPTER IV
WEIGHED AND MEASURED

From this time on Wolcott began to feel himself a part of the Seaton life. Through the Mandolin Club he added several very agreeable fellows to his list of acquaintances, while his vanity was flattered by the thought that he was no longer the last of four hundred, but one of a selected few. As an immediate result he was thrown much more with Marchmont, with whom he undertook to practise regularly, and soon became intimate.

There was much in the character of Marchmont to impress the new boy. His attitude was always that of a person superior to those about him. He seemed to look up to no one,—instructor, scholar, senior, or athlete. The faculty he regarded as good enough in their way, but narrow-minded. Laughlin he either derided as a country boor, or contemptuously praised as a Roman noble might have praised a successful gladiator. Tompkins was a cowboy, Poole a prig, Planter a very decent sort of a fellow. Lindsay he seemed to count as one of his own class—a distinction of which Wolcott was made to feel the whole complimentary force.

In his general point of view Marchmont differed wholly from the average Seatonian. He had no particular ambition, unless to get through school without being expelled, or to slip safely into college. He cared little about lessons, but much about the condition and the perfection of his attire. He had no interest in athletics except as a passing show; his notion of proper exercise was horseback riding and fencing. He could talk, when necessary, on almost any subject, but his favorite topics were automobiles, horse-races, and the theatre. While the democratic spirit of the school did not please him and he found few fellows wholly to his liking among his classmates, his chief grievances seemed to be the food served at his boarding-house, and the necessity of getting up for eight o’clock chapel. The first he tried to remedy by little messes prepared in his room on a chafing dish; the second, being irremediable, he had to endure. He was not popular, for his manners were too supercilious to please the average boy, who is instinctively democratic and always admires the fellow who can do something rather than the fellow who claims to be something; but in a certain small coterie he ranked as king.

Lindsay’s introduction to work in the gymnasium was a novel experience. Here he was stripped, weighed, measured in height, girth of limbs and chest; tested in strength of back and arms and legs. Later he was given a chart with his measurements and strength plotted in lines upon it, so as to show his relative condition compared with the average for his age; and a card with directions as to the particular exercise which he needed to develop his weaker parts. All this the boy took, as he took much that was new to him in the school, with curiosity and temporary interest.

There was one circumstance, however, in connection with the examination, that made a deeper impression. When the measurements and the testing were over, Mr. Doane asked, “Did you ever play football?”

A week before entering school Wolcott would have answered immediately “yes.” But he had heard so much, in the few days that he had spent at Seaton, of the hard games played, of the great contests with Hillbury about which the athletic life of the school centred, of the high standard of the school teams, and what “playing football” really meant to the Seatonian, that he had almost said “no.”

“A very little,” he replied.

“I think you have football in you,” went on the director. “By that I mean that you have fine, solid organs, and muscles developing well; while from the little I have seen of you, I should judge that you might be quick. A heavy man who is quick is a prize to a football team. Should you like to play?”

Wolcott’s eyes brightened. “Of course I should!”

“Then try to build yourself up as your card directs. You must strengthen those abdominal muscles, and harden up your legs and arms. I suppose you have heard of Nowell, who fitted here?”

“The old Harvard tackle?” asked Wolcott, eagerly.

The director nodded. “He was a fine type of the hard trainer. Whenever I think of Nowell the picture in my mind is of a solid, brawny, determined boy standing in the corner of the gymnasium where the heavy dumb-bells lie, and swinging his pair of three-pounders the appointed number of times. He did that in addition to his class exercise without shirking, day in and day out, for months—stuck to it while the other fellows were amusing themselves, till he got to be a regular gymnasium joke. Many a time I’ve seen some rascal standing in front of him mimicking his motions, and laughing at him. It was his turn to laugh when he made the Harvard Varsity the second week he was on the field.”

“There aren’t many fellows with Nowell’s ability,” said Lindsay.

“There are not many with his determination,” corrected the instructor, with a smile.

The next day Laughlin stopped Lindsay outside the academy. “I’ve been talking with Mr. Doane about you,” said the captain. “He thinks you are good material for football. I want you to take hold with us and try hard to get yourself in shape to do well in the fall.”

“I don’t believe I could do much,” Wolcott replied doubtfully. In reality he felt flattered and eager; yet the dictatorial abruptness of the speech disconcerted him, and Marchmont’s criticisms of the plebeian captain had left their impression on his mind.

“It is a question of trying, not of doing,” said Laughlin, seriously. “You can’t tell what you may turn out to be, if you try. It’s a great thing to win a Hillbury game; it’s fine just to play in one, but to win,—win fairly and squarely, because your team’s better and plays better,—why, it’s like winning a great battle.”

“But you didn’t win last fall.”

Laughlin’s heavy jaws came together. “No, we lost, and deserved to lose. But it mustn’t happen twice. It won’t, if we take hold of it right and get every man out ready to do his best and help the school on, whether he makes the team or not. If you don’t make the first, you can play on the second and learn football all the time and help a lot. A good second goes far toward making a good first. Take hold with us and try, try as Nowell did, and Melvin did, and big Curtis and all those fellows who used to be here. It doesn’t so much matter whether you make the team or not; if you don’t make it, a better man than you will, and the better you are the better he’ll have to be to beat you out.”

Lindsay’s was one of those temperaments which kindle slowly from within; the internal fire must burn fiercely before the blaze appears. The captain’s words appealed to him and stirred him; and yet as his eye rested on the gray flannel shirt, neat and fresh though it looked with the harmonious black tie, and eminently appropriate as it really was to the work that Laughlin was on his way to do, Marchmont’s sneers at the “coal-heaver captain,” and sweeping condemnation of all attempts to tie up socially “such fellows and fellows of our class,” came instantly to his mind. Theoretically he had not accepted Marchmont’s sentiments; practically they were already affecting the atmosphere of his ideas. The thought of the cynic’s scornful laugh smothered his enthusiasm like a wet blanket.

“I’ll think it over,” he said indifferently. “There really won’t be much of anything to do until next fall.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” replied Laughlin, earnestly. “What you can do next fall depends on what you do now. Ask Doane, if you don’t believe me. Every time you do your gymnasium work you want to think: this work is for the eleven and the school. And when you’re tempted to do things outside that you’d better not do, you want to think: this is the place where the ‘no’ counts three times, for myself and the eleven and the school. That’s the way Melvin did when he learned to kick, and he made the Harvard Varsity in his freshman year just on his punting. That’s the way we’ve got to do here. Football players don’t grow wild like huckleberries in a pasture. They’re made, and made with hard work.”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Wolcott, carried away by the other’s earnestness.

“Good! That’s the talk. Now I must be getting a move on, for I have two furnaces to clean out this morning. We’ll talk about it some more in a day or two.”

Later in the day Wolcott had a practice hour with Marchmont.

“I see you’re getting thick with Laughlin,” observed Marchmont, as he adjusted the strings of his mandolin. “Going in for football?”

“He wants me to try,” answered Lindsay, non-committal.

“I hope you may like it,” returned Marchmont. “The idea of lying in the mud with two or three foul, sweaty porkers clutching me by the neck doesn’t appeal to me. There’s one good thing about athletics for such fellows.”

“What’s that?”

“They get a bath a good deal more often than they otherwise would. Shall we try something new to-day?”

CHAPTER V
IN THE GYMNASIUM

The winter gymnastic exhibition occurred in Lindsay’s third week at school. Influenced by Marchmont’s contemptuous declaration that such things were a bore, he had at first decided to stay away; but a lack of more attractive occupation for the half holiday, and a strong though unconfessed curiosity to see what was doing, drove him to a change of plan. In the gymnasium he found himself in good company, for Poole and Tompkins, who had seemed rather inclined to let him alone since his intimacy with Marchmont had developed, sat near him, and in their common interest in the events were more cordial and friendly than they had ever been.

Everything was novel and delightful to the new boy; and the older ones, who had seen the same thing before, seemed as much interested as he. What struck him most was their enthusiasm, their eager interest that every boy should do well, the pride they showed in the work of their fellows because they were their fellows, because what they did was in a way a school achievement.

First came some kind of a squad drill. Then Guy Morgan and Durand, seniors, and Eddy, a middler, gave a performance on the horizontal bar. The first was the expert, as every one knew, but he kept himself in the background until the others had shown their skill, when, after a few less difficult feats, he brought the event to a pleasing end by his own peculiar triumph,—the giant swing. He was the only boy in school who was master of that swing, and though many had seen him perform it a dozen times, they were never tired of watching him.

To-day, with the exhilaration of the public performance, the lithe, strong body seemed alive with nervous elasticity. A quick snap brought him waist to the bar; a hard fling with his feet backward lifted him into position for the downward swing, which in turn was to furnish the momentum necessary for the rise on the other side. Downward he swept at full length, rigid yet mobile, keeping his feet well behind; up he floated on the other side of the circle until nearly at the zenith, when a quick shift of hands on the bar and a cunning snap of the body carried the dragging feet suddenly forward and left the gracefully curving figure for an instant poised on the hands aloft in perfect balance. Then slowly the athlete gathered headway again for the new descent and the new rise to another balance. It was no less the accuracy in calculating the momentum to be gained in the downward rush and spent in the upward rise than the grace and strength and deliberateness of the motions that gave the performance its perfect finish.

“That was just right!” Tompkins was saying, as the applause died away. “And how dead easy it looked! You’d never think it took him two years to learn it, would you?”

“I don’t know,” Poole answered thoughtfully. “As far as I can make out, it takes a lot of hard work and practice to do anything in athletics, anyway. That’s why so few really try. Most of them are too lazy to do the plugging.”

“How that little Eddy has come on!” said Tompkins, taking up another subject with the usual boy abruptness. “You’d never think he was the same fellow that used to dope around Bosworth’s room last year. You’ve had a hand in that change, I guess.”

Poole smiled and shook his head. “It’s no work of mine. All I’ve done is to encourage him occasionally.”

“Well, he hangs to you like a Man Friday, anyway,” answered Tompkins.

So they chattered on through the tumbling and parallel bars, the rope climbing and the pyramid building. At last the centre was cleared and the mats were adjusted for the wrestling. There were only two or three bouts, and these short—just enough to show the quickness and strength of the contestants. The last pair were Durand and a larger fellow named Frieze. For a few seconds they eyed each other like two warlike cats, each crouching slightly with arms held close to the chest, and edging in a short arc of a circle round his antagonist. Then Durand made a feint, Frieze caught for a hold, and in an instant they were flopping on the mats like two puppies at play; yet apparently to no purpose, for both were soon on their feet, breathing harder and again cautiously edging for an opening. Frieze made the next start, leaping for a neck hold. Durand ducked under, and Frieze, folding his body down on the back of his opponent so that the two together formed an animated vaulting-horse, and putting all his strength into the effort to sweep Durand off his legs, rushed him furiously across the cushioned space. In a moment more they were two yards off the mat on the hard floor of the gymnasium.

Durand ... walked deliberately back to the cushioned space.—Page 47.

The official reached out to stop the absorbed strugglers and bring them back to safer territory. But Durand suddenly straightened up, still clutching the legs of his bewildered antagonist, and lifted him on his shoulders like a bag of meal. Thus balanced head downward in the air, Frieze clung fast, not knowing what to do in the unusual predicament; while Durand with rare presence of mind walked deliberately back to the cushioned space and threw his helpless burden flat on the mattress with a force that carried the thrower himself in a somersault over the prostrate form.

A burst of spontaneous applause smote the timbers of the roof.

“Wasn’t that great!” cried Poole, turning with glowing face to Lindsay. “Why, if Durand had smashed him on the floor out there, he’d have broken every bone in the fellow’s body. That’s the bully thing about Durand: he always knows what he’s about. What a quarter-back he’d make if he were only big enough for the game! Just think what he’d be if he were as big as you are!”

“A second Nowell,” said Tompkins.

“Such a fellow would have a reputation in school, wouldn’t he?” asked Wolcott.

“You can bet your hat he would,” replied Tompkins, “and out of school, too.”

“Tommy knows,” observed Poole, with a meaning smile. “He’s pitched on a winning nine.”

“And never will again,” declared Tompkins, tragically.

The words were evidently spoken in jest, yet underneath, but half covered by the air of mock tragedy assumed, rang clear the real tone of bitter disappointment and regret. Poole said not a word in reply. Wolcott himself, unfamiliar as the school spirit still was to him, understood partially, and was silent. He had heard among the first items of school gossip that Tompkins, who had pitched for the school the year before, had failed his preliminaries and been forbidden by the Faculty to play again. The tale, related among a dozen others, had at the time made little impression on him. Now, with the example before him of the glory of what was really but minor athletic achievement; with these two gloomy faces beside him, heavy and despondent at the reminder of Tompkins’s disability, he got his first true notion of the serious part played by athletics in the life of the school.

Instantly Laughlin’s words came back to him, “It is a great thing to win a Hillbury game; it’s fine just to play in one!” The gymnasium suddenly stretched to the dimensions of a football field; the circle of good-natured spectators swelled to a mighty crowd, filling the benches, tier on tier all about the great rectangle, enthusiastic, wild, hoarse with cheering; and in the centre, watched by thousands of eyes, he stood, Wolcott Lindsay, holding his place in the line of red. The signal is for him, the ball comes back, with one tremendous impulse in which his whole body seems to bound like a mighty steel spring he sweeps his antagonist back and opens a way for the ball!

It was the impulse of the athletic temperament, the call to action of nerves and muscles yearning for the conflict. But Wolcott knew only that it was a vision—a vision that quickly faded, leaving him to the sad reaction of fact. There was no Lindsay the football player, but only Lindsay the tenderfoot, the calf, who had no more chance of making the eleven than Marchmont or the twins or little thirteen-year-old Simmons, who sat in the corner seat among the juniors, and answered all the questions.

Outside he met Laughlin, flannel-shirted and mittened.

“How was the show?” asked the captain. “Good?”

“Fine! Weren’t you there?”

“No; had to shovel snow all the afternoon.”

Laughlin went whistling on to his room and his lessons.

“Snow shovellers and furnace cleaners!” thought Lindsay, bitterly. “Those are the fellows who make football players. I guess March isn’t so far out when he calls them brutes and bullies. It can’t be a gentleman’s game.”

Almost unintentionally he took the direction of Marchmont’s room.

“Well, how did it turn out? Dull as a sermon, wasn’t it?”

“Not exactly,” replied Lindsay, hesitating to own his opinion in the face of authority. “Some of it I thought pretty good.”

Marchmont laughed: “That’s because it’s new to you. The poorest circus has it beaten by a mile. I’ve read a novel ’most through this afternoon.”

Lindsay moved toward the door. He really had no reason for a call, and many reasons for being at home at his desk.

“What’s your hurry? You can’t study after the dead strain of that kind of a show. Let’s have a couple of hands of poker. We’ll make the ante small.”

Marchmont opened a drawer for the cards, while Lindsay picked up his hat.

“I really must go,” said the visitor, shamefacedly. “I’ve got work I really ought to do.”

“Well, sorry you can’t stay,” replied Marchmont, smiling politely. “We’ll try it some other day.”

Lindsay trudged home in ill humor, cursing himself for not having the courage to say frankly that he did not play cards for money, and conscious that Marchmont understood him full well. All together it had been an afternoon of very mixed impressions.

CHAPTER VI
INDUSTRIES OF THE TWINS

On the Sunday after the gymnasium exhibition came a snowstorm. It began long before dawn and piled the snow higher and higher all through the hours of daylight, slackening only as the early twilight fell. Marchmont was not the only student who found in the weather an excuse for staying away from church; but he was possibly alone in preparing his luncheon at home, and so establishing his excuse on a consistent basis. At his boarding-house the Sunday dinner came fortunately at night.

Wolcott tucked his trousers into his high arctics and ploughed joyously through the heavy drifts, his cheeks tingling, his heart beating strong, his whole muscular system delighting in resistance to the elements. There were few people at church. Tompkins presently came in and dropped into a place at the end of the pew bestowing on Wolcott a nod and a droll, friendly smile. In that droll smile of Tompkins, Lindsay could measure the progress of his five weeks in school. Very different had been its effect a month before, as it had flashed abruptly over the Westerner’s puggy countenance in that same pew. Now Wolcott could receive it as from a friend, and return it with some sense of equality. Then his cheeks had burned deep red with humiliation at the trick which had been played on him.

It was a very simple trick. On his first Sunday in Seaton, Wolcott had found on entering church a pew with a single occupant, a light-haired, broad-faced fellow in the somewhat worn clothes which Tompkins clung to by preference, as to old friends. The rusty youth politely moved along to make room, and Wolcott took his seat close by the aisle. As the ushers appeared with the plates for the offering, Wolcott, whose father had instructed him to do his part toward supporting the church which he attended, glanced guardedly about to learn if possible the standard of giving which prevailed among the Seaton students. His neighbor, whose appearance certainly gave no indication of wealth, drew out a bill and held it in conspicuous readiness for the plate. The newcomer reasoned quickly, “If that fellow gives a dollar, my part is at least two.” He had just time to reach this conclusion, and hurriedly fish a bill from his pocket, when the plate was before him. Dropping his two dollars into it, with a sense of dignity maintained and duty done, he passed it on for his schoolmate’s contribution. The latter, however, had suddenly changed his purpose. He took the plate gravely, deposited a cent upon it, and solemnly handed it back. Then, with a half-perceptible wink at his gaping neighbor, and his droll smile breaking for a brief moment the expressionless expanse of his face, he composed himself for the rest of the service. As for Wolcott, he did not need to hear the smothered chuckle behind him to be assured that his neighbor had deliberately cajoled him. He did not regret the money, for it was spent in a good cause; but to prove easy game for a booby like that was a serious blow to his dignity.

The next day, knowing that the incident would go the rounds, he had decided to make the best of it and start the tale himself. Poole heard it with a broad grin of genuine delight.

“Just like Tommy! You ought to have seen him last year before Melvin squelched him. We were all dead sure he’d be fired. He’s comparatively harmless now.”

“I just wish he’d tried some one else, that’s all,” said Lindsay, haughtily.

Poole laughed and glanced keenly at his companion. “You mustn’t take it so seriously. There’s nothing personal about it.”

“I suppose he thought I looked rather simple,” said Wolcott, with a smile that seemed a bit forced.

“Not at all. He knew you weren’t used to things yet, and so he tried his little game. You ought to see him and the twins. There’s nothing simple about them!”

“Does he try his tricks on them?”

“Does he? Well, I guess! They’re giving it back and forth all the time. There hasn’t been a week since the Pecks entered school when Tommy wasn’t laying for the Pecks or the Pecks for Tommy. Just keep tabs on ’em and you’ll see.”

And for the next few days Wolcott had kept tabs, as well as was possible for a fellow who was still groping bewildered in the maze of new experiences. One evening he dropped into the Pecks’ room to ask about a lesson. The boys were laboring at their desks with a great air of diligence. They looked up eagerly as he opened the door, and then glanced at each other and laughed.

Wolcott, with the self-consciousness of a new boy, and with the recollection of his increased contribution still fresh, turned violently red. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded, determined that at any rate these two youngsters should not flout him.

“Oh, nothing,” returned Peck Number One, whom Wolcott assumed to be Duncan. “We thought it was some one else.” Then the pair laughed together, and Wolcott knew that his fears were groundless.

“Just stay here awhile and you’ll see some fun,” said Number Two. “There, they’re coming out now!”

A door opened farther up the hall, there was the sound of voices, then of stamping and loud words.

“They’re trying to get ’em up!” said Number One, giggling excitedly.

Number Two tiptoed to the door and opening it slightly let in the sound of scraping and maledictions. “For editors of the Lit, they use pretty poor language,” he said.

Wolcott could repress his curiosity no longer.

“I think I’ll go out and see what’s up,” he said. “If there’s anything doing, I should like a sight of it.”

In front of Tompkins’s door was a group of four, bending over several pairs of rubbers. Tompkins on his knees was laboring with a screw-driver to loosen one from the floor.

“Can I help you?” asked Lindsay, with mock politeness. The contribution trick still rankled in his memory.

“Yes, go and drown those two Pecks!” growled the irate Tompkins, as he freed one rubber from the floor and attacked another. “They’ve screwed down the whole lot. I’d like to wear out every blessed rubber on their backs!”

“How do you know they did it?” asked Lindsay, much interested.

“Because I saw one as I came up,” said Planter, eagerly. “I was late to the meeting and almost ran over one of them right near the door.”

“Which one?”

“Yes, which!” grumbled Tompkins, “the one with the mole on his shoulder-blade or the one without? Of course he doesn’t know which. They’re as much alike as two leaves on a tree. The only thing to do is to lynch them both.”

Lindsay returned to the Pecks’ room, where the twins were waiting in gleeful suspense.

“Who are they, anyway?” asked Wolcott.

“The editors of the Literary Monthly,” answered Donald, pompously, “meeting for the first time with the new member, Mr. Tompkins.”

“I wish they’d print their parting remarks on the rubber question,” chuckled Duncan. “I guess ’twould be the last number of the Lit that board would publish.”

The sounds from without now indicated that the rubbers had been rescued, and on the feet of their owners were travelling down the stairs. Presently the door shook under a tremendous thump, and the angry Tompkins appeared on the threshold. He was really angry, there was no disguising the fact. The twins looked and trembled,—momentarily trembled,—for the presence of their heavy-limbed caller soon reassured them, and their awe before the senior’s wrath was no match for their glee at his discomfiture. So they grinned up at him with tantalizing coolness, and Donald, who was nearest the door, invited him to sit down.

“I didn’t come here to sit down,” Tompkins began furiously; “I came to punch your two heads for you!”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” said Duncan. “You don’t mind telling us why, I hope?”

“I don’t need to. You know what I mean too blamed well. You screwed down those rubbers in front of my door. Planter caught one of you at it.”

“Which one?” asked Donald, with a snicker.

“How does he know?” retorted the angry senior. “It makes no difference, anyway. One’s as bad as the other, whichever did it. If I thrash you both, I can’t go far wrong.”

“That wouldn’t be square,” said Duncan. “If one of us did it, that one ought to be punished; but you’ve got to prove him guilty. Isn’t that right, Lindsay?”

Lindsay nodded; he owed Tompkins one himself.

Tompkins snorted. “If you think you’re always going to crawl out of that hole, you’re mistaken. Just keep on with your monkey tricks, and one of these days one of you’ll wake up with a black eye, and then for a couple of weeks you can be told apart.”

On this prospect the Peck brothers had no comment to offer. So Tompkins continued less violently: “I don’t care so much about what you do to me; when you strike at my friends, it’s a different matter. They come to see me, and get their rubbers punched full of holes. I tell you I won’t stand for it.”

“I’ll tell you what, Tommy!” exclaimed Duncan, swelling with a great idea, “let’s start a subscription to buy them some new ones. We’ll get two long sheets of foolscap, head them ‘Subscriptions to buy new Rubbers for the Editors of the Lit,’ and send them round. A cent apiece all over school will pay the bill and more.”

“I guess that won’t be necessary,” said Tompkins, who had no desire to become a school joke. “The thing can’t be settled in that way.”

“It’ll pay up for that gym scheme you put up on us,” suggested Donald.

“Overpay,” said Tompkins, significantly, as he turned to go. “I’m owing you now.”

Only a few weeks had passed since these things happened, and yet, as Wolcott sat in church that stormy morning waiting for the service to begin, these scenes and others flitted before his mind like recollections of a remote period. He had learned much in the short interval of ways and places and fellow-students. Poole, Durand, Planter, Tompkins, and the twins he counted friends; and with Marchmont he was intimate. The teachers he knew in name and lineage, history, peculiarities, faults, and virtues. He no longer mentioned them to his associates as Professor A and Dr. B and Mr. C; they were Peter and Swipesy and Moore, and so on down to the unfortunate latest comer, Mr. Owen, who struggled thrice daily against fearful odds in Room 10.

On the next day the sky was again clear, and Wolcott as soon as his first recitation was over put on his snowshoes and started out for an experimental tramp, in preparation for the expedition of the Snowshoe Club in the afternoon. Being out of practice, and quite well aware that he presented a not altogether graceful figure, he took a cross-cut over the garden fences to an outlying field. As he passed the boarding-house where Laughlin waited on table, he glanced up at the kitchen window, and beheld the broad chest and massive face fronting a dish pan, and the big hands working with cloth and plates. The captain nodded cordially, but Wolcott hardly returned the greeting.

Dish washing! That was certainly the limit. A school captain washing dishes! Shovelling snow, tending furnaces, could be forgiven; but dish washing, never!

CHAPTER VII
NO THOROUGHFARE

That same afternoon Marchmont and Whitely were amusing themselves in Stone’s room; that is, Whitely and Stone were pretending to study, while Marchmont, who was above such pretences, was twirling Stone’s geometry on the point of a pencil.

“Did you fellows know that Rogers isn’t coming back?”

Stone looked up from his work. “Let that book alone, can’t you!” he exclaimed, as he snatched the geometry from Marchmont’s pencil. “Drill holes in your own books!—How do you know that?”

“Jack Butler had a letter from him this morning. He’s gone abroad with his family.”

“Too bad,” said Whitely. “Ted was a blamed nice fellow. There’ll have to be a new class president elected to take his place. I suppose they’ll just move up the vice.”

“That’s Laughlin,” observed Stone.

“Laughlin!” sneered Marchmont. “Is that jay always going to carry us round in his pocket? I think it’s about time we struck for a decent man!”

“Butler would make a good president, wouldn’t he?” remarked Stone. “I wish he had some one to back him.”

“Why shouldn’t he have some one to back him?” demanded Whitely, starting up. “And why shouldn’t we have some voice in naming the officers of the class? Laughlin got the football captaincy away from Butler; it’s right that But should be president. Let’s put him in!”

“Can we?” asked Stone.

The trio made a hasty count of the forces to be relied on. “How about Poole?” asked Whitely.

“Oh, he’s for Laughlin, sure,” answered Stone.

“Then Eddy’s gone, too. And Benson?”

“We might get him,” said Stone, “if he’s worked right.”

“And that new fellow, Lindsay,” continued Whitely, turning to Marchmont. “You’ve got him well in hand, haven’t you?”

“I guess so,” returned Marchmont, smiling. “He’s rather green and innocent, and has some kindergarten notions which he’ll have to get rid of, but he’ll come round in time. I think I can deliver the goods there all right.”

So they ran over the catalogue of their intimates. It appeared that about a dozen could be counted on at the outset.

“Let’s pledge these and gradually build up a party,” said Whitely, when the list of sure men was at last complete. “I believe we can get such a start before the election that they can’t get near us.”

“It would be great to give that fellow a good, hard fall,” declared Marchmont, with enthusiasm. “He certainly needs it.”

In the evening Wolcott dropped in, as happened frequently nowadays, for a half hour with Marchmont.

“Kind of all-round man, Laughlin is, isn’t he?” commented Marchmont, as Lindsay sprawled on the couch before the open fire and recounted some of his experiences of the day. “Football captain, scholar, musician, pillar of the church, butler, furnace tender, dish-washer—it isn’t every fellow from the woods who has a record like that. I don’t think I should want him to handle my china.”

“What I don’t understand is why the fellows generally seem to have such a high opinion of him,” said Lindsay.

“It’s the fashion to be democratic here,” answered Marchmont, wisely. “And then he’s a football player, and that makes up for almost everything. He oughtn’t to have been captain; there’s where the mistake was made. Of course you’ve got to encourage such fellows, and it’s very creditable in them to try to make something of themselves and all that; but when you come to the important offices, they ought to go to fellows of a better class, who could represent the school decently.”

“Perhaps he was the only candidate.”

“No, there was Butler, who played guard on the other side. He’s an awfully nice fellow, though perhaps not so good a player as that big bruiser. The choice lay between the two, and Laughlin got it.”

“He certainly thinks he’s all right,” remarked Lindsay, a little spitefully. “He’s given me advice, on several occasions, about what I ought to do and not to do here in school.”

“And whom you ought to know, and where you ought to go, and how you ought to amuse yourself, and so on. He’s probably advised you against smoking, and told you always to tell the truth when you report.”

“That’s about it,” confessed Lindsay.

“That reminds me: have I ever shown you my postern gate?”

Lindsay stared blankly. “Postern gate!”

“Yes, my secret entrance. Come here.”

Lindsay followed his companion into a closet, where Marchmont lifted the oilcloth and showed a rectangular outline on the floor where several boards had been sawed through. These boards, which had been fastened together underneath to form a trap door, he lifted, disclosing a square opening between the floor timbers into the closet below.

“That shelf under there takes out, so as to give room to get through,” explained Marchmont, proudly; “and the box on the shelf prevents the old lady from getting on to the game.”

Wolcott gazed into the dark, mysterious hole in amazement. The job was cleverly done, and yet of what use could the hole be?

“Who rooms underneath,” he asked; “Salter?”

Marchmont nodded.

“I didn’t know you were so thick with him.”

“I’m not. I don’t care a rap for him. This isn’t meant for his benefit, it’s for my own. Salter’s a virtuous chump, who’s always in at ten o’clock, and always tells the truth when he reports. He’s a good little boy, but not good enough to volunteer information. If I come down into his closet and go out his window, he isn’t bound to tell of it, and of course nobody asks him whether his ceiling’s tight.”

“I still don’t see much use for it,” said Wolcott, slowly. “If I am out after ten, I simply say so, and tell why; I don’t mind that.”

“Supposing you don’t want to tell why,” replied Marchmont, dryly, as he replaced the oil-cloth and led the way back into his room. “Supposing you’re on probation or study hours or something of that sort, and want to be out. All you have to do is to say good night to Mrs. Winter, lock your door, and you have your evening.”

“You’ll have a chance to use the thing pretty soon, if you’re only waiting for probation,” said Wolcott, laughing. “You’re getting below my level in some studies, and that’s mighty close to the danger line.”

“If I never get below your level, I shan’t care,” returned Marchmont. “I’m tutoring now with Haynes White. He’ll probably pull me up before probation comes. If he doesn’t, let it come. I’ve been there before.”