David Ives : A Story of St. Timothy's

By Arthur Stanwood Pier

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Title: David Ives
A Story of St. Timothy's

Author: Arthur Stanwood Pier

Illustrator: Franklin Wood

Release date: February 22, 2024 [eBook #73016]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921

Credits: Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID IVES ***

DAVID IVES

[Illustration: “THEY THOUGHT MAYBE YOU’D RATHER BE ALONE”]

DAVID IVES

A STORY OF ST. TIMOTHY’S

BY
ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANKLIN WOOD

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1922

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

I. FAREWELL TO ROSEWOOD 1
II. A GENTLEMAN AND A SCHOLAR 22
III. HOSTILITIES 36
IV. FRIENDSHIPS 56
V. THE RETURN 73
VI. PROBATION 91
VII. BLINDNESS 108
VIII. WALLACE’S EXAMINATION 123
IX. DAVID’S ENLIGHTENMENT 137
X. MR. DEAN PROVIDES FOR THE FUTURE 151
XI. THE FAMILY MIGRATION 169
XII. THE NEW NEIGHBOR 183
XIII. HERO WORSHIP 196
XIV. ANTI-CLIMAX 218
XV. THE TORN PAGE 231
XVI. LESTER AND DAVID 242
XVII. THE FIRST MARSHAL 256
XVIII. RELINQUISHMENT 278
XIX. ATTAINMENT 294

ILLUSTRATIONS

“THEY THOUGHT MAYBE YOU’D RATHER BE ALONE” _Frontispiece_

“HOW DID YOU FIND THE EXAMINATIONS?” 30

TACKLED A RUNNER IN THE OPEN FIELD AND GOT A WRENCHED
ANKLE 70

“OH!” CRIED DAVID. HE CLASPED MR. DEAN’S HAND. “IT――IT
CAN’T BE SERIOUS” 114

DAVID IVES

• •
•

CHAPTER I

FAREWELL TO ROSEWOOD

The suburb in which David Ives lived and in which David’s father had
most of his medical practice was by no means one of the wealthy and
prosperous suburbs of the wealthy and prosperous city. It was a new
and raw-looking region; many of the streets were unpaved, littered
and weed-grown; and unfenced lots and two-family tenement houses were
alike its characteristics; there were numerous billboards along the
sidewalks; the trees were few in number and had grown half-heartedly.

But David, returning from the baseball field on a hot July afternoon,
saw nothing depressing in the neighborhood. He walked with his coat
flung over his shoulder and his cap in his hand. He had distinguished
himself at the bat; he was thirsty and thinking of the cold ginger
ale he would drink; he was hungry and thinking of the raspberries he
would eat; he was pleasantly tired and thinking of an evening to be
passed in comfort and interest over “David Copperfield.” A gust of
wind flung dirt and dust into his face and made him wonder why the
watering-carts so seldom visited Rosewood,――for such was the misleading
name of the suburb,――but the next moment he turned into a more shaded
and attractive street and forgot his displeasure in the satisfaction of
drawing near his home. He passed the Carters’ bungalow and the Porters’
Queen Anne cottage and the Jennisons’ mansard dwelling, and then he
turned up the flagstone walk that led between two narrow bits of lawn
to his father’s door.

The house was square and gray and shabby; there was a room thrown out
at one end of the wide front porch, and over the door that admitted
to this room hung a lantern bearing the words, “Dr. Ives.” The door
and the window were both open, and just before passing into the
front hall David had a glimpse of his father seated at his desk in a
characteristic attitude, with his gray head resting on his hand while
an invisible patient recited her symptoms. That the patient was a woman
David knew, because he heard the querulous drone of her voice――it was
just the drone that he associated with his father’s numerous charity
cases.

In the dining-room Maggie, the maid of all work, was setting the table
for supper.

“Where’s mother, Maggie?” David asked.

“Search me!” replied Maggie, who looked red and hot and at war with the
world.

As there was obviously nothing to be gained by complying with Maggie’s
request, David passed on to the parlor and the library, and not finding
his mother in either place, went upstairs three steps at a time. Then
he saw her sitting in her room, looking disconsolately out of the
window. So sad was the expression on her face that David forgot what
had been in his mind and exclaimed:

“What’s the matter, mother?”

Mrs. Ives rose and came toward him, with her arms outstretched.

“Oh, David dear, I can’t bear to have you go, I can’t bear to have you
go!” With her arms round his neck she was sobbing on his shoulder.

“Go where?” David was bewildered and distressed. “What are you talking
about, mother?”

She did not immediately answer, but went on weeping quietly. Then she
said: “I will let your father tell you about it. It is his decision.”

“Then it can’t be anything so very terrible, mother,” David said, and
he stroked and patted her while she clung to him.

“Not for you, perhaps, David, but it seems very hard to me. It may all
be for the best, but I don’t know――I don’t know――”

David could not help reflecting that his father was always the optimist
of the family and his mother usually the pessimist, and that therefore
it would be desirable to await his father’s unfolding of the mystery.
So he set about getting his mother into better spirits, which he did
by tweaking her ears, kissing her, and telling her that he did not
know where he was going or for how long, but that, wherever it was,
they could not keep him from coming back to home and mother. She was
a pretty little woman who looked scarcely old enough to have such a
tall and stalwart son, and as he held her in his arms she seemed to be
a kind of child mother――an anxious, diffident, confiding, appealing
little person, with sensitive lips and timorous, soft brown eyes. David
looked like her and yet not like her; his eyes were brown and shone
affectionately, but there was fearlessness rather than timorousness
in their glance; his lips were sensitive, but their curve showed a
resolute rather than a vacillating character; he had his mother’s wavy
brown hair. Soothing his mother, he smoothed her hair, he took her
handkerchief and dried her eyes with it. “And now does this come next?”
he asked, reaching for a powder-puff. So he got her to laugh, and her
face had brightened when he led her downstairs.

“Found her, did you?” said Maggie as they passed the dining-room.
Her tone was one of good-natured interest, but David did not feel it
necessary to reply. He had reached an age when he was beginning to
dislike Maggie’s familiar manners. Mrs. Ives admitted she was too much
of a coward to try to correct them.

As David and his mother entered the library, his ten-year-old brother
Ralph rushed in breathlessly, declaring his satisfaction at finding
that he was not late for supper. “I guess you will be, if you try
to get yourself properly ready for it,” remarked David, looking the
unkempt and dirty-faced small boy over with disfavor. Ralph thrust out
his tongue, but when David commanded him sternly to go upstairs and get
clean, with some stamping and scuffing he obeyed.

Across the hall rose the violent clamor of the supper bell, which
Maggie always rang as if she were summoning the neighborhood to a fire.
David and his mother had just seated themselves at the table when
Ralph came crashing down the stairs, bounced into the room, and hurled
himself into his chair, snorting and panting.

“Gee, you do make a noise!” David said.

“So do you――with your mouth,” Ralph rejoined promptly.

“Boys, boys!” sighed Mrs. Ives, and David turned red and restrained the
ready retort. It was hard, because Ralph looked across the table at him
jauntily, defiantly.

The entrance of Dr. Ives had a quieting effect on the provocative
younger brother. David, glancing at his father, had the uneasy, vaguely
apprehensive feeling that had frequently taken possession of him of
late. He was always expecting, always hoping that his father would
conform in appearance more nearly to the mental picture to which the
boy constantly returned――the picture of a tall man, straight and ruddy
and broad-shouldered, with laughing eyes and a collar that fitted his
neck snugly. It was disappointing――it was worse than disappointing――to
realize that his father’s shoulders looked thin and angular; that his
cheeks were pale, and his eyes, though kinder than ever, preoccupied
and less sparkling; that his collars were looser about his neck than
comfort required them to be. David often wondered whether his mother
had noticed it, and if so what she thought about it. He did not wish to
mention it first; if she was not worrying about it already, he was not
going to put a new reason for anxiety into her head.

“Well, David,” said Dr. Ives in his usual cheerful voice, “have you had
a talk with your mother?”

“I couldn’t tell him, Henry,” said Mrs. Ives plaintively. “I’ve left it
for you to do.”

“Mother said something about my going away somewhere,” added David.

Ralph looked from one to another while his round eyes grew rounder in
wonder and concern.

“Yes,” said Dr. Ives, evading his wife’s glance and speaking with great
cheerfulness, “I’ve decided to send you away to boarding-school, David.
To St. Timothy’s, in New Hampshire.”

“In six weeks,” added Mrs. Ives tearfully.

David felt a thrill of exultation and excitement, and then, because
of his mother’s sadness and his father’s forced cheerfulness, he felt
sorry. Ralph sat open-mouthed and subdued.

“Why am I going to St. Timothy’s, father?” David asked.

“Just what I wanted to know!” said Mrs. Ives. “Hasn’t David been doing
all right in high school?”

“Yes,” Dr. Ives admitted, “he has. But I think that now he is ready for
a change; it will be broadening and instructive. I think, moreover,
that both he and Ralph will be the better for being separated for
a time from each other. It will do David good to get out into a
world of his own, and it will do Ralph good to take over some of the
responsibilities at home that David has had. Those are some of the
reasons.”

Mrs. Ives shook her head forlornly. “I can’t see that they are
sufficient.”

“Well,” said Dr. Ives, “I want my boys to have the best there is――and
to be the best there are. From all that I can ascertain, St. Timothy’s
is one of the best schools in the country. David already knows what he
wants to be. He feels that he has a bent for surgery; he means to make
that his profession. I should be glad to have him model his career on
that of the best surgeon I know――Dr. Wallace. As far as I can I mean
to give him every opportunity that Wallace had. Wallace went to St.
Timothy’s School, and to Harvard College, and to the Harvard Medical
School. So shall David.”

“But Dr. Wallace’s father was rich, probably, and you are not,” said
Mrs. Ives.

“I feel able to meet all the necessary expenses, and I can trust David
not to be extravagant.”

“New Hampshire is so far away! And it will be so long before we see
David again!”

“We shall hope to see him in the Christmas vacation.”

“Yes, of course. But I can’t help feeling that David will be leaving
home for good; he will be coming back to us now only for visits! You
don’t want to go, do you, David?”

“I don’t know, mother,” David said, torn by various impulses. “Yes, I
think I do.” And then he jumped up and, going behind her chair, put his
arm round her and his face down on hers and kissed her.

That evening Dr. Ives had to go out on some professional calls; he
chugged away in the shabby little second-hand automobile that he had
bought three years before. “Some day, when all my patients pay their
bills, I’ll get a new machine,” he was accustomed to remark to the
family. He also was accustomed to declare that he rather enjoyed
tinkering the old rattletrap.

Now David, sitting in the library and perusing the catalogue of St.
Timothy’s School, suspected that for some time he had been the object
of his father’s many economies. Turning over the pages, he resolved
that he would justify his father’s faith in him, that he would work
hard and not be extravagant, and that he would come home showing
that he had profited by the opportunities given him by the family’s
sacrifice. And as he turned the pages the thrill of eager anticipation
grew stronger in him. He glanced over the long list of names――boys from
all quarters of the country, boys even from far corners of the earth.
David, who had never traveled more than forty miles from the city in
which he had been born and brought up, and who had never known any boys
except those in the immediate neighborhood of his home, felt a tingling
of romance as he read the names.

While he read Ralph sat quiet over a storybook, and Mrs. Ives, with
a pile of mending in her lap, worked at intervals and at intervals
gazed wistfully at her older boy. He was her favorite, though she felt
guilty in admitting it even in her heart; Ralph had always been more
thoughtless, more unmanageable, a more trying kind of boy. It made her
feel quite helpless to think of dealing with Ralph alone after David
had gone. But that was not the worst to which she must look forward,
that was not the saddening thought. What weighed her down was, as she
had said, the premonition that when David went away it would be really
for good and all. It would be years and years before home would be more
than a place to which he made visits. Perhaps what was now, and always
had been, his home would never really be his home again. And his father
and his mother, who had always been so near to him, would never be
so near to him again. Tears filled her eyes and fell unnoticed while
David and Ralph read; she wiped them away furtively and determined to
be brave. Perhaps it was all for the best, and she would not begrudge
anything that was best for David. But it seemed such a doubtful
venture,――and David’s father did not look well,――but she was not going
to imagine that any more; it produced such a heaviness about the heart.
She was going to try to be cheerful; she had never been cheerful enough.

She anticipated the usual rebelliousness and struggle when at nine
o’clock she said, “Bed-time, Ralph.”

“All right, mother.” To her astonishment he spoke with the utmost
docility; he closed his book at once and came over and kissed her. With
the same unusual docility he went across the room and kissed David.
“I’m sorry you’re going away, Dave,” he whispered, and then he fled
upstairs.

David looked at his mother.

“He’s a pretty good kid,” he said. “He won’t give you much trouble――not
more than I’ve done.”

“You’ve never given any trouble, David.”

“Haven’t I?” He sprang up and went over to sit beside her. “Then don’t
let me begin doing it now. Stop looking so troubled about me. That’s
right, smile.”

She did her best, remembering that she had resolved to be cheerful.

Anyway, as the days passed and the time of David’s departure drew near
there was one development on which his mother liked to dwell and from
which she hoped and even dared to expect much. Dr. Ives had yielded to
her persuasion and, as the first vacation that he had taken in years,
was to accompany David on his journey. “A rest is all he needs,” his
wife kept assuring herself. “A rest and a change――and when he comes
back I won’t have to worry about him any more.” Dr. Ives had wanted her
to take the trip, too, but she had refused. She knew that he could
ill afford such an additional expense, and besides there was Ralph to
look after; no doubt Maggie was competent to care for him, and his Aunt
Hattie would be willing to take him in, but Mrs. Ives felt that the
absence of his father would give her the most favorable opportunity of
getting on the right terms with her younger boy. His sense of chivalry
would be more likely to awaken when he was not under the surveillance
of a masculine disciplinary eye.

David’s mother went with him to the shops and helped him to purchase
his slender wardrobe. A careful purchaser she was, leading him from
shop to shop in search of bargains, feeling with distrustful fingers
the material of the suit at last selected, insisting on underwear of
the thickest woolens and on pyjamas of flannel, for doubtless New
Hampshire winters were even colder than those at home. David felt that
he was rather old for his mother to be buying his clothes for him,――he
was sixteen,――but he had not the heart to assert any independence in
the matter, to intimate that he had outgrown the need of her guidance.

Likewise he restrained the desire to intimate to Maggie that her
criticism and comments were unwelcome. Maggie attacked him one day when
he was alone in the library.

“What’s all this, David, about your goin’ away to boardin’-school?” she
asked truculently, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

“Well, it’s true,” David answered.

“Ain’t there no good schools near home?”

“Yes, but not so good.”

“Funny thing that nothing but the best is ever good enough for some
folks.”

David, disdaining to reply, held his book up in front of his eyes and
pretended to read.

“It’s none of my business,” continued Maggie in a somewhat more pacific
tone, “but I think your pa and your ma both need looking after, and
you’d ought to stay home to do it. Of course what it means is, it’ll
all fall on me; things always does.”

“Nothing’s going to fall on you; what do you mean, Maggie?”

“Oh, it’s all very well to talk. But everybody can see your pa’s been
failin’ of late and is in for a spell of sickness, and your ma gets
upset so easy it’s always a matter of coaxin’ and urgin’ her along.”

“Father’s all right except that he’s been working too hard; a rest will
fix him up,” David declared. “And mother’s all right, too, except that
she worries.”

“Oh, yes, it’s all all right,” Maggie agreed with gloomy significance.
“All I can say is, they’re lucky to have me to fall back on. I can deal
with trouble when it comes.”

David disliked to admit to himself that this interview disturbed him.
But there was no escape from the fact that it did have a depressing
effect. He tried to assure himself that Maggie always delighted in
forebodings of trouble, but in spite of that he was half the time
wishing that he might withdraw from the adventure on which his
father was launching him. Every day the expression in his mother’s
eyes affected him as much as her tears could have done, every day he
was troubled by his father’s haggard look. He had of course learned
something about the burden in dollars and cents he was to be to the
family, and he wondered if there could really be wisdom in his father’s
decision. “It throws a big responsibility on me,” David thought gravely.

He suspected that in some ways his father was an impractical man and
that he was often visionary in his enthusiasm. He had never forgotten
how hurt he had felt once as a small boy when he had overheard his
mother say to her sister, “It’s no use, Hattie; if Henry once has his
mind set on a thing, the only thing to do is to give him his head.”
David did not know what had prompted the remark, but he had not liked
hearing his father criticized even by his mother.

In those days he noticed in his father a nervous exuberance over the
prospect, which, if it failed to quiet David’s doubts, served to
convince him of the futility of questioning. Dr. Ives talked gayly of
the interest and happiness David would find in his new surroundings and
of the increased pleasure they would all take in his vacations, told
Ralph that he must so conduct himself as to qualify for St. Timothy’s
when he grew older, and declared that for himself merely looking
forward to the trip East with David was making a new man of him.

One morning Dr. Ives went downtown with David in the shabby little
automobile to purchase the railway tickets. As they drew up to the curb
a tall man in a gray suit came out of the ticket-office; he was about
to step into a waiting limousine when Dr. Ives hailed him.

“O Dr. Wallace!”

“How are you, Dr. Ives?” Dr. Wallace nodded pleasantly and waited, for
Dr. Ives clearly had something to say to him.

David, following his father, looked with interest at the distinguished
surgeon whose career was to be an example to him. Dr. Wallace was a
younger and stronger man than Dr. Ives, and, so far as prosperity of
appearance was concerned, there was the same contrast between the two
men as between the shabby runabout and the shining limousine.

“Dr. Wallace,” said Dr. Ives, speaking eagerly, “I won’t detain you a
moment, but I want to introduce my son David to you. David’s going to
St. Timothy’s; I know you’re an old St. Timothy’s boy, and I thought
you might be interested.”

“I am, indeed,” said Dr. Wallace, and he took David’s hand. “What form
do you expect to enter?”

“Fifth, I hope,” said David.

“That will give him two years there before he goes to Harvard,” said
Dr. Ives.

“Going to Harvard, too, is he?”

“Yes, and then to Harvard Medical School――following in your footsteps,
you see, doctor.”

“That’s very interesting, very interesting,” said Dr. Wallace. “I must
tell my boy to look you up; you know, I have a boy at St. Timothy’s;
his second year; he’ll be in the fifth form, too.”

“And he’ll also be following in your footsteps, I suppose?” said Dr.
Ives.

“Not too closely, I hope,” Dr. Wallace laughed. “I’m very glad to have
met you; I wish you the best of success.” He shook hands again with
David and again with David’s father, then stepped briskly into his
limousine and was whirled away.

“That was a stroke of luck,” remarked Dr. Ives. “Now you won’t be going
to St. Timothy’s as if you didn’t know anybody. Young Wallace will be
friendly with you and help you to get started right.”

David accepted this as probable. He asked if Dr. Wallace was really so
very remarkable as a surgeon.

“Oh, yes; he’s the ablest man we have,” replied Dr. Ives.

“I’m sure he’s not a bit better than you, father.”

“Oh, I’m a surgeon only under stress of emergency and as a last resort.
The less surgery a family doctor practices on his patients the better
for the patients.”

“Anyway, you could have been as good a surgeon as Dr. Wallace if you’d
studied to be.”

“Oh, we don’t know what we might be, given certain opportunities.
That’s why I want you to have those opportunities――the best. So that
you can go far ahead of me.”

“I guess I never could catch up with you. And I don’t care what you
say, I think you’re way ahead of Dr. Wallace or any other doctor. I’m
sure you do more for people and think less about what you can get out
of them.”

“I shall have to think more about that now, I shall for a fact,”
said Dr. Ives, chuckling good-humoredly. “When you come home for the
Christmas vacation, David, you’ll probably find me turned into a
regular Shylock.”

“You couldn’t be that, and mother isn’t the kind that could turn you
into one. If only you had Maggie to manage you and get after patients――”

They both laughed.

But in spite of all the brave little jokes, in spite of all the loving
words and loving caresses, David’s last two days at home were painful
to him and to the others of the family. He caught his mother shedding
tears in secret; he felt her looking at him with a fondness that made
him wretchedly uncomfortable; he received a mournful consideration
from Ralph as disconcerting as it was novel; he could not help being
depressed by the grim and relentless quality of Maggie’s disapproval.
In such an atmosphere Dr. Ives desperately maintained cheerfulness,
assumed gayety and light-heartedness, and professed undoubting faith
in David’s adventure and enthusiasm over his own share in it.

The bustle and confusion of packing lasted far into the evening;
Mrs. Ives hurried now to the assistance of David, now of his father;
Ralph prowled round in self-contained excitement until long after his
bedtime. It was long after every one’s bedtime when David finally got
into bed; and then his mother came and knelt beside him and besought
him to think often of home and to do always as his father would have
him do. Together they said their prayers as they had done every night
when David was a little boy and as they had not done before for a long
time; and it made David feel that he was a little boy again, and that
he was glad to be so, this once, this last time in his life.

The next morning the expressman came for the trunks before breakfast;
and before breakfast, too, Maggie showed her forgiving spirit by
presenting David with a silk handkerchief bearing an ornate letter “D”
embroidered in one corner. After breakfast while the family waited in
the front hall, David bade Maggie good-bye, and for one who was usually
so outspoken and fluent, Maggie was strangely inarticulate, saying
merely, over and over, “Well good-bye, David, I’m sure; good-bye, I’m
sure.”

They took the trolley car to the station, and there after the trunks
had been checked they all went aboard the train. Mrs. Ives and Ralph
sat facing David and his father, and occasionally some one said
something――just to show it was possible to speak. David said, “Ralph,
you’re to take care of mother while father’s gone,” and Ralph said,
“I guess I know that.” Dr. Ives looked at his watch and said, “Well,
Helen, it’s time for you and Ralph to get off the train.”

That was the hardest moment of all――the last kisses, the last embraces,
the last words.

Then, for just a few moments longer, David gazed through the window
at Ralph and his mother on the platform――Ralph looking up solemn and
round-eyed, his mother smiling bravely and winking her eyelids fast to
stem back the tears. For a few moments only; then the train started,
and the little woman and the little boy were left behind.

CHAPTER II

A GENTLEMAN AND A SCHOLAR

For an hour Dr. Ives had been pursuing his solitary explorations of
the grounds and buildings of St. Timothy’s School. He and David had
interviewed the rector, Dr. Davenport, had been shown the room in the
middle school which David was to occupy and in which his trunk was
already awaiting him, and had inquired the way to the auditorium,
where David was now taking the examinations that were to determine his
position.

For an hour Dr. Ives had been alone, and he was beginning to realize
what the loneliness of his journey home would be, what the gap in the
family life would be. From the time when he and David had started
East they had been together every moment; his happiness in the
companionship of his son and the novelty of the vacation journeying
had kept his spirits buoyant; but now the shadows had begun to come
over his imagination. He had taken pleasure in viewing the wide playing
fields and the circumambient cinder track and in thinking of his boy
happy and active there on sunny afternoons. He had taken pleasure in
looking in upon the rows of desks in the great schoolroom, on the empty
benches in the recitation rooms, on the quiet, booklined alcoves in
the library, and in thinking of his boy passing in those places quiet,
studious, faithful hours. He had enjoyed visiting the gymnasium and
picturing his boy performing feats there on the flying rings and taking
part with the others in brave and strengthening exercises. He had stood
by the margin of the pond and in imagination had seen canoe races and
boys splashing and swimming; even while he looked the season changed,
and he had seen them speeding and skimming on the ice while their
skates hummed and their hockey sticks rang, and always his boy had been
foremost in his eye.

But now, though he had walked neither far nor fast, Dr. Ives found
himself suddenly overcome with fatigue; he was near the study building
and he sat down on the steps to rest. He grew tired so easily! He sat
still for some time and was just rising to his feet when the door
behind him opened and a tall man of about his own age, with a gray
beard and heavily rimmed spectacles, came down the steps, glanced at
him and said:

“You’re a stranger here, I think. Can I be of any assistance to you?”

“No, thank you,” said Dr. Ives. “I have a son in that building yonder,
taking an examination. I’m just killing time till he comes out.”

“In that case wouldn’t you like me to show you round the place? I’ve
been a master here for nearly forty years.”

“To tell you the truth,” Dr. Ives answered, “I’ve been wandering round
till I’m played out. I was just on the point of going to the library in
the hope of finding a chair.”

“I can offer you a more comfortable one; my rooms are in that yellow
house――just beyond those trees. I’m at leisure for the rest of the day,
and I shall be glad of your company. My name is Dean.”

In Mr. Dean’s pleasant rooms Dr. Ives was soon unburdening himself;
the elderly master’s sympathy and friendliness invited confidences.
So in a way did the character of the rooms, about which there was
nothing formal or austere. They were the quarters of a scholar;
although bookshelves crowded the walls, the library overflowed the
space allotted; books were piled on the floor and on the table and on
the chairs――books of all descriptions and in all languages, books in
workaday bindings and in no bindings at all, ponderous great volumes
and learned little pamphlets, works of poets and novelists, historians
and essayists, philosophers and naturalists, from the days of ancient
Greece to the end of the nineteenth century. From the depth of the
big leather chair in which Dr. Ives found himself he looked across
a massive oak table covered with papers, books, and pamphlets in a
bewildering confusion and saw the thoughtful, kindly face of his host;
he felt that Mr. Dean was a man on whose courtesy, consideration,
and wisdom any boy or parent might depend. It was the master’s eyes
that were so assuring, so inspiring, so communicative――gray eyes that
sparkled and twinkled and watched and seemed even to listen; the
spectacles behind which they worked deprived them of no part of their
expressiveness; the smile that hardly stirred in Mr. Dean’s beard
sprang rollicking and frolicsome from his eyes. They were eyes that
seemed to miss nothing and to interpret everything wisely, kindly,
humorously. So in a little while Dr. Ives was confiding his hopes and
dreams about his son, and some――not all――of the misgivings that he had
never breathed to his wife.

“Of course,” he said, “I realize that probably most of the boys here
are the sons of rich men――rich at least by comparison with me. And
for some time I wondered if it were altogether wise or fair to David
to put him into a school where, financially, anyway, he would be at a
disadvantage.”

“It all depends upon the boy,” said Mr. Dean. “Not all our boys are
rich――though most of them are. The spirit of the place is to take
a fellow for what he is. If your boy is the sort who is simple and
straightforward――as I have no doubt he is――he has nothing to fear from
association with the sons of the rich. Is he an athlete?”

“He runs――he’s a pretty good quarter-miler. And he plays baseball. But
he hasn’t any false notions of the importance of athletic success.
You’ll find him a good student; he led his class at the high school.”

“We give a double welcome to every boy who comes with the reputation of
being a good student; we have unfortunately a good many who have not
been brought up to appreciate the importance of study.”

“David knows the importance of it. He knows that he’ll have to study in
college and in the medical school, and the earlier he forms the habit
of work the better. Dr. Wallace, whom of course you know――I’ve said to
David that Dr. Wallace couldn’t be what he is if he hadn’t early formed
the habit of work.”

“I wish that his son would form it,” remarked Mr. Dean. “Lester Wallace
is not one of our hard workers.”

“No doubt he will develop; otherwise he could hardly be his father’s
son. Dr. Wallace is our most able and brilliant surgeon. Indeed, it’s
largely because I should like to get my boy started on a career similar
to his that I have brought David to St. Timothy’s.”

“Well,” said Mr. Dean, “I’ve had a good opportunity to note the
careers of those who have passed through the school. And, generally
speaking, those after lives have been most creditable have been the
boys who while they were at school received from their fathers the
most careful, sane, and intelligent interest――not those whose fathers
felt that boarding-school had taken a problem off their hands. A good
many fathers do feel that. It’s an extraordinary thing, the number
of intelligent, successful, wide-awake Americans who do not seem to
realize the importance of holding standards always before their sons.”

“I suppose,” Dr. Ives suggested, “that the very successful and active
men are too busy.”

Mr. Dean shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that. A physician like
yourself is probably much more busy and active than many of those
eager, money-making men. No; the trouble with them is their egotism
and ambition. They feel that their offspring derived importance and
distinction from them, and they expect vaingloriously to shine in light
reflected from their offspring. But there’s an interval when they
regard their offspring as not much else than a nuisance, and for that
interval they turn them over, body and soul, to a boarding-school to
be developed into youths such as will shed luster on their parents.
The school might possibly do it if there were no vacations, but three
weeks at home at Christmas often undoes the good of the three preceding
months at school.”

“You seem to be a pessimist about the value of home life for a boy.”

“No, not in the least. But I am a pessimist about the influences
prevailing in the homes of some of our excessively solvent citizens.
Boys of fifteen and sixteen go home and with other boys of the same
age constitute a miniature aristocracy, a miniature society, that
copies the vices and mannerisms and foppishness of the grown-up social
aristocracy, and that is encouraged and even educated in all the
vulgar, useless, expensive, and demoralizing details by this purblind
aristocracy. I tell you, Dr. Ives, there are boys in this school that
the school is struggling to save from the pernicious influences to
which they are exposed at home――but their fathers and mothers can’t be
made to see it. Fortunately, there are not a great many of them. Our
most common difficulty is with the boy whose father is too busy to give
any thought to him, to stimulate him, or help him, or advise him. Well,
it’s easy to see that your boy’s father is not that kind.”

“No,” said Dr. Ives. “David and I have always been too close to each
other for that to happen.”

“You’re starting home to-day?”

“Yes, I’m just waiting round to see David again; my train leaves in a
couple of hours.”

“The examinations close very soon. I will walk over to the building
with you; I should like to meet your boy.”

So it happened that on emerging from the test David found himself
shaking hands with an elderly gentleman whose kindly eyes and pleasant
voice won his liking.

“He looks like the right sort,” said Mr. Dean, turning to Dr. Ives with
a smile. “How did you find the examinations?”

[Illustration: “HOW DID YOU FIND THE EXAMINATIONS?”]

“Not very hard,” replied David.

“Good; then you’ll be in the fifth form without a doubt; the Latin
class will assist us to a better acquaintance. Good-bye, Dr. Ives;
we’ll take good care of your son.”

Dr. Ives looked after the tall figure of the master as he swung away,
gripping his stout cane by the middle, and said:

“David, my boy, there’s a gentleman and a scholar. Be his friend, and
let him be yours.”

“Yes, father,” David said obediently.

They walked slowly to the building in which David had his room, climbed
the stairs, and sat down by the window. Dr. Ives looked out in silence
for a time, wishing to fix in his mind the view that was to become so
familiar to his son――the grassplots bounded by stone posts and white
rail fences, the roadways, lined with maple trees, the clustered
red-brick buildings above which rose the lofty chapel tower in the
sunlight of the warm September day.

“This should be a good place to study in, David,” he said. “It’s in the
quiet places that a man can prepare himself best.”

“I don’t know how quiet it will be to-morrow,” said David, “when about
two hundred and fifty old boys arrive.”

“Oh, yes, it will be lively enough at times, and I’m glad of that, too.
And you’ll go in for all the activities there are; I needn’t urge that.
The thing I do want to emphasize, David, is the importance of making
full use of all the quiet hours.”

“I will do my best, father.”

“And you will remember, of course, that it’s more necessary for you
than for most of the fellows you will associate with to practice
economy.”

“Yes, father, I shall be careful.”

There was silence, and during it they saw a motor-car turn in at the
gateway and a moment later draw up before the steps of the building.
They both knew what it meant, yet each shrank from declaring it to the
other.

“Write to us often, David,” said Dr. Ives. “You will be always in our
hearts; we shall be thinking and talking of you every day. Don’t forget
us.”

David found himself unable to speak. He shook his head and squeezed his
father’s hand. They sat again in silence for a little while.

“Well, my boy――” said Dr. Ives.

Hand in hand they went along the corridor and down the stairs. Outside
the building the father turned and took his son into his arms. That
last kiss became one of David’s sweetest and saddest memories.

It was surprising even to himself how soon he fitted into place.
His seat in chapel, his desk in the schoolroom, his locker in the
gymnasium, his place in the dining-hall――at the end of a week he
thought of them as if they had always been his. In the same short time
he was recognized as the fellow who was likely to lead his division of
the fifth form in scholarship. His uncomfortable zeal for study and his
tendency to forge instantly to the head of his class, regardless of
being a “new kid,” were not conducive to the attainment of popularity.
So, although in superficial ways the school soon became a second home
to him, he felt that in the things that counted he remained a stranger.

He was disappointed in his expectation that Lester Wallace would come
forward and welcome him. When in Mr. Dean’s Latin class he first heard
Wallace called on to recite, he glanced round in eager interest. A
stocky, smiling, good-natured-looking youth was slowly rising to
his feet; his voice, as he began to translate, was lazy, yet had a
pleasant tone; his manner when he came to a full stop in the middle
of an involved sentence that had entangled him suggested that he was
humorously amused by a puzzle rather than concentrating his mind on
the solution. He acquiesced without rancor in Mr. Dean’s suggestion
that he had better sit down. Later when David was called on to recite,
he wondered whether Wallace was looking at him with any interest; he
wondered whether the name of Ives had any significance for Wallace.
Apparently it had not, for after the hour Wallace passed David on the
stairs without pausing to speak.

When the noon recess came some of the fellows, instead of dispersing to
the dormitories, lingered in groups outside the study building. Among
them was Wallace, and with the faint hope that Wallace might now come
up to him, David lingered, too. He was too shy to make any advances to
one who was an “old” boy, too proud to court the friendship of one who
was obviously well known and popular; yet Wallace, with his pleasant,
lazy voice, twinkling eyes, and leisurely air of good nature, attracted
him. While he stood looking on, a girl, perhaps fifteen years old,
came through the rectory gate just across the road; she was tossing
a baseball up and catching it and now and then thumping it into
the baseball glove that she wore on her left hand. She was slender
and graceful, and the smile with which she responded to the general
snatching off of caps seemed to David sweet and fascinating; her large
straw hat prevented him from determining how pretty she was, but he was
sure about her smile and her rosy cheeks and her merry eyes.

“Here you are, Ruth!” Lester Wallace held up his hands.

She threw the ball to him, straight and swift, with a motion very like
a boy’s, and yet oddly, indescribably feminine. He returned it, and she
caught it competently.

“Isn’t any one going to play scrub?” she asked. At once Wallace cried,
“Yes; one!” She cried, “Two!”――and they danced about while the others
shouted for places. When they had all moved off toward the upper school
with the girl and Wallace in the lead, David followed, partly out of
curiosity and partly also out of reluctance to dismiss quickly such a
pleasant person from his sight.

He watched the game of scrub behind the upper school and was struck by
the girl’s skill, her freedom and grace of action, her fearlessness
in facing and catching hard-hit balls, and also by the rather more
than brotherly courtesy of all the fellows; they seemed to try to give
her the best chances and yet never to condescend too much. Apparently
she and Wallace were especially good friends; she reproached him
slangily, “O Lester, you lobster!” and he was often comforting or
encouraging――“Take another crack at it, Ruth!” “Beat it, Ruth, beat
it!” and once in rapture at a stop that she had made, “Oh, _puella
pulchrissima_!”

Looking on, David felt there was another person in the school besides
Wallace that he would very much like to know. He ventured to ask a boy
standing by who the girl was.

“The rector’s daughter――Ruth Davenport. Peach, isn’t she?”

“Yes, peach,” said David.

He continued to look on until the ringing of the quarter bell for
luncheon put an end to the game.

CHAPTER III

HOSTILITIES

Afterwards, looking back upon those early days at St. Timothy’s,
David sometimes wondered whether he had possessed any individuality
whatever. It seemed to him that he had been merely a submerged unit
that had brief periods of consciousness,――of homesickness, of pleasure,
of suffering,――but that for the most part was swept along on its
curiously insensate way. He remembered the sharpness of contrast
between the day when he first saw St. Timothy’s and the day when the
school formally opened――the quiet, depopulated aspect of one and the
bustling and populous activity of the other. From that opening day life
seemed to flow in currents all about him and to drag him on with it,
passive, bewildered sometimes, sometimes struggling, sometimes swimming
blithely, but always in a current that bore him on and on. Each morning
it began, with the streams of boys flowing at the same hour toward the
same spot, from the dormitories to the chapel; then from the chapel
to the schoolroom; finally from the schoolroom back to the dormitories
again; afterwards to the playgrounds, where they trickled off into a
lot of separate bubbling little springs, only to be sluiced together
again at the distant ringing of a bell and sent streaming back to the
school.

Gradually David made friends; gradually, too, he came into hostile
relations with certain fellows. Chief among his friends was another
new boy and fifth-former, Clarence Monroe, whom he sat next to at
table. They were, as it happened, the only new boys at that table,
and their newness might of itself have bound them together. But they
quickly discovered sympathetic qualities――love of reading and of the
same authors, keenness for baseball and for track athletics, and, in
the circumstances most uniting of all, kindred antipathies. For the
sixth-formers at the table, of whom there were several, seemed to feel
that their sanctity was invaded by the two “new kids” and were disposed
to be offish and censorious. One of them in particular, Hubert Henshaw,
who sat opposite David, made himself disagreeable. He was apparently a
leader in certain ways.

“The glass of fashion and the mould of form,” commented Monroe
satirically to David. They were reading Shakespeare in the English
class, and David replied:

“Yes, perfumed like a milliner. I think it’s all right for a fellow to
keep anything up his sleeve except his handkerchief.”

“I always feel there’s something wrong with a fellow that always has
his socks match his necktie,” said Monroe.

But though they indulged themselves thus freely in shrewd comment
when they were alone together and revenged themselves in imagination
by such criticism for the slights and indignities put upon them, they
could not resent effectively the treatment that Henshaw and, under
his leadership, the others administered to them. There were frequent
comments on the ignoble character of the fifth form and the scrubby
quality of its new kids. Henshaw occasionally expressed the opinion
that the school was deteriorating: “There was no such rabble of new
kids when we were young.” He went on one day to say, looking meanwhile
over David’s head: “Many of them even seem not to have decent clothes.
Has any one seen more than two or three new kids with the slightest
pretense to gentility?”

David recognized the thrust at him and his clothes and said, “I’ve seen
one sixth-former with plenty of pretense.”

It was not a smart retort, but it caused the blood to gather in
Henshaw’s forehead, and for the time being it silenced him. But the
episode rankled in David’s mind. It was the first intimation he had
received that the discrepancies of which he himself had been aware
between his dress and that of most of the fellows had been noticed by
the others. No one but Henshaw had been unkind enough to comment; even
Henshaw’s friends at the table had looked uncomfortable when he made
the remark; but David, thinking of the pains and the careful thought
and the enforced economy of expenditure with which his mother had
assisted him to purchase his clothes, and of the satisfaction that she
had taken in their appearance, was wounded not merely in his pride but
in his affection. From that moment he hated Henshaw.

It disappointed him to learn, as by observation he soon did learn, that
Henshaw, though a sixth-former, was a friend of Wallace’s. They were
often together, walking from the dormitory to the chapel or lounging
in the dormitory hall. Their intimacy was explained to David when one
evening while he was sitting in the hall waiting for the dinner bell
Wallace came up and said:

“Hello, Ives; my cousin, Huby Henshaw, tells me that you come from my
town. I wish I’d known it earlier.”

He seated himself beside David and continued with cheerful geniality:

“How are you getting on? I know you are a shark in lessons, of course;
all right otherwise?”

“Pretty fair, thanks.”

“Funny I didn’t know about you till Huby happened to mention it.
Whereabouts do you live――what part of the town? How did you happen to
come here?”

“In a way, because of your father,” David answered. “My father is a
doctor in Rosewood, and he wants me to be a surgeon like yours. He
thought that, since your father came here to school, I had better come
here, too.”

“I must write and tell dad about it: he’ll be awfully pleased. I guess
he’ll think you’re more of a credit to him than I am.”

“Oh, I guess not,” said David. Then, prompted by Wallace’s friendliness,
he went on to tell of his meeting with Dr. Wallace and of hoping that
Wallace would come up to him――just as he had done.

“Dad forgot all about it,” said Wallace. “I’m glad you told me. You
room in the north wing, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in the south. Come and see me sometime.”

Apparently Henshaw had not poisoned Wallace’s mind, whether he had
tried to do so or not, and for his cousin’s sake David was for a little
while more kindly disposed toward Henshaw.

But the era of good feeling could not last. Two days later, as David
and Monroe were passing after breakfast from the dining-room into the
outer hall, Henshaw thrust his way up to them.

“Ives,” he said, “we’ve all got mighty sick of that necktie. Is it the
only one you have?”

“Oh, shut up, Hube!” It was Wallace, at Henshaw’s side, who spoke; even
in the stupefaction of his anger David saw that on Wallace’s face a
look of concern was overspreading its habitual good nature; Wallace was
plucking at his cousin’s sleeve. “Shut up, Hube; you make me tired!”

“If you sat at our table, that necktie would make you tired. What’s the
reason that you never make a change, Ives? Is it your only one?”

David’s eyes were hard and glittering. With a suddenness that startled
every one he gave Henshaw a resounding slap on the cheek with his
open hand. Henshaw staggered from the blow and stood for an instant,
blinking, gathering pugnacity, while his cheek showed the livid marks
of David’s fingers. Before he could retaliate, Mr. Dean was sweeping
the crowd aside and exclaiming in a stern voice, “Henshaw, Ives, what’s
this?”

They both looked at him, silent, equally defiant. David felt that he
could justify himself and that he must not――a feeling that intensified
his bitterness. Why should an act prompted by righteous indignation
disgrace and discredit him before the man who had been ready to
befriend him?

“You may go now.” Mr. Dean’s eyes were as stern as his voice.

The two principals in the row were escorted by a crowd out of the door
and down the steps. At the bottom Henshaw turned and said to David,
“You’ve got to fight me for this.”

“It will be a pleasure,” David answered bitterly.

Meanwhile Wallace and Monroe had remained behind, close to Mr. Dean.
Wallace was the first to speak.

“Mr. Dean,” he said, “I hope you won’t report Ives. He simply had to
slap Huby’s face.”

“Why?”

“Huby insulted him.”

“Henshaw’s always insulting him,” broke in Monroe. “At the table he’s
always saying nasty things. Ives couldn’t stand it any longer, Mr.
Dean.”

“What was the remark that provoked the blow?”

Wallace repeated it as he remembered it; Monroe’s version was
essentially the same.

“I am glad to have your evidence,” said Mr. Dean. “However, there is no
question that Ives infringed the rules, and for that he will have to be
punished.”

“It isn’t fair!” protested Monroe.

“Possibly not. Sometimes it is necessary to be unfair in the interests
of discipline. At any rate, you both may feel that you have done Ives
and me a service by telling me the facts in the case.”

Wallace and Monroe alike wondered what the service had been when
after chapel they heard David’s name read out on the list of moral
delinquents for the day: “Ives, disorder in dormitory, one sheet.” That
meant an hour of work that afternoon on Latin lines.

David, hearing it, flushed with mortification. So Mr. Dean had chosen
to judge him harshly. It was natural enough; so far as Mr. Dean had
been aware, there were no mitigating circumstances.

His thoughts wandered from his books that morning. He continued to
make creditable recitations when called on, but at other times he did
his work listlessly and with many pauses. He was not afraid to fight
Henshaw; he wanted to fight him; he wanted to administer a punishment
more severe than that one resounding slap on the face. And yet he
hated fighting; he had never engaged in a fight at the high school; he
remembered the most savage fight there that he had ever seen, how he
had stood by, fascinated and yet disgusted, too, by the blazing fury
in the combatants’ eyes, their dishevelment, their blood-marked faces,
the animal wrath with which they mauled and grunted and battered. He
had been disgusted by it all, by his own interest in the spectacle, by
the gloating eyes of the other bystanders. It revolted him now to think
of presenting such a spectacle himself; and yet he knew that unless
Henshaw came to him and apologized he would fight him as long as either
of them could stand.

In the five minutes’ intermission before the Latin class Wallace and
Monroe came and told him of their interview with Mr. Dean. That cheered
him; so did Wallace’s remark: “Henshaw’s my cousin, but he makes me
awfully tired at times. I’m with you and not with him in this.”

At the end of the Latin recitation when David was going out Mr. Dean
said, “Ives, one moment, please.” David stopped while the master
gathered up books and exercises. “If you’re going up to the dormitory,
I’ll walk along with you,” said Mr. Dean. And as they walked along the
corridor he asked, “Where did you get your feeling for the language?”

“For Latin? I didn’t know I had it.”

“Oh, yes, you have, to quite a marked degree. I hope that you’ll
continue to cultivate the language――not, like so many, abandon it at
the first opportunity. There are very few persons nowadays who read
Latin for pleasure――with pleasure. You will be able to do it if you
keep on, for you have the feeling for the language. It will help you in
acquiring other languages.”

They passed out of the door, and then Mr. Dean said abruptly:

“No doubt it seems harsh to you that I should be punishing you alone
for the disorder this morning. Well, discipline often must stand on
technicalities. Yours was the only visible breach; so you have to
suffer. I want to say, however, that I realize there are occasions
when self-respect, to vindicate itself, must defy rules――and this
appears to have been one of those occasions. If Henshaw affords you
the opportunity, I trust you will complete his punishment. Make it
substantial.”

He shook hands with David quite solemnly and then turned aside up the
path leading to his house.

The talk put new cheerfulness into David’s heart. Mr. Dean understood
and sympathized and was still his friend. And fighting was just one of
those unpleasant things that you had to do now and then in life, and
there was no use in letting yourself get disgusted at the thought of it.

He felt so much better in his mind that at the luncheon table he turned
back Henshaw’s scowl with a cheerfully ignoring glance and devoted
himself with unconcern to his friend Monroe until Truesdale, the
sixth-former who sat on his left, said:

“Henshaw wants me to tell you he’ll meet you this afternoon back of the
sawmill at three o’clock.”

“He’ll have to make it half-past three,” David replied. “I have lines
until then.”

Truesdale glanced across the table at Henshaw, who nodded.

“All right; half-past three,” Truesdale said. “Don’t bring a crowd.”

“I shan’t bring anybody but Monroe here,” David answered.

“You fellows will probably collect the whole sixth form,” said Monroe,
whose pugnacity was roused even more than David’s.

“Don’t get excited, little one,” replied Truesdale. “All we care about
is to see fair play.”

After luncheon Monroe walked with David to the study building, where
David for an hour was to perform his task of penmanship.

“Are you pretty good with your fists?” Monroe asked.

“I have no special reason to think so,” David answered. “But I guess I
can hit as hard as he can.”

“If you’re not much on boxing, you’ll have to stand up to him and
take what you get until you can put in enough good cracks to finish
him.” Monroe spoke with a certain satisfaction in the prospect of a
sanguinary encounter. He was a freckled-faced, red-haired, snub-nosed
boy; his blue eyes were sparkling and snapping with expectancy.

“I’m not worrying much,” David answered. “He may lick me or I may
lick him, but either way I guess he will regret having brought it on
himself. And that’s the main thing.”

“Sure,” said Monroe. “But lick him.”

They parted at the door of the study. Monroe assured David that he
would meet him there at a little before half-past three o’clock.

When David finally emerged, he found Monroe waiting outside and Wallace
again passing a ball with the rector’s daughter.

“I’ve got to stop now, Ruth; I have a date,” Wallace said.

She put the ball into the pocket of her leather coat and drew off her
glove. Then she greeted David with a nod and a smile.

“You know Ives, don’t you, Ruth? And Monroe?” Wallace performed the
belated introduction.

“Oh, yes, I know everybody.” She shook hands with each of them. “Your
name’s Clarence, and yours is David. Oh, don’t you want to have a game
of scrub?”

She looked from one to another with hopeful, boyish eyes. Wallace was
the ready-tongued one of the three. “Sorry, Ruth, but we have a date to
go for a walk――going to meet some fellows in the woods.”

“Oh!” Her voice was regretful. “Well, good-bye.”

The boys touched their caps to her as she turned away; David glanced
back at her remorsefully.

“She’s a pretty good kid,” Wallace remarked. “Sort of hard luck on her;
there are no other girls of her age round here for her to play with.
She’s very decent about not butting in; fellows can’t always be having
a girl round.”

“No, you bet not,” agreed Monroe, though like David he had cast
sheepish backward glances.

As for David, the sight of the girl had revived the sense of loathing
for the brutalities of battle that Mr. Dean’s cheerful words of
encouragement had aided him temporarily to suppress. He walked on
silently, thinking how that girl would hate him if she knew what he was
about to do. His mood again became one of sullen revengefulness against
Henshaw, whose behavior had forced the situation upon him.

He and his friends entered the pine woods that bordered the pond behind
the gymnasium. Soon they passed beyond sight of the school buildings;
they walked on until they emerged from the quiet woods upon a hillside
crowned with a decrepit apple orchard; they climbed a hill and followed
a path that led them into a thicket of birch and oak; and at last they
came out into an open space behind a disused sawmill. There seven or
eight fellows, among them Henshaw, were waiting.

One of the sixth-formers, Fred Bartlett, who had played end on the
school football team the preceding year, stepped forward.

“I’ve been asked to referee this scrap,” he said. “Any objection, Ives?”

David shook his head.

“Two-minute rounds. Get ready now, both of you; strip.”

* * * * *

Ruth had stood with a puzzled look in her eyes gazing after David and
Wallace and Monroe as they entered the path into the woods. A few
minutes before, a group of her sixth-form friends had passed that way
and to her friendly inquiry whither they were bound had, like Wallace
and Monroe, returned vague, evasive answers. On an afternoon ideal for
games it seemed to Ruth incomprehensible that so many fellows should
be going for a walk. She had not been brought up in a boarding-school
without acquiring wisdom in the ways of boys, and when another group
of fifth-formers slipped by and entered the path into the woods her
suspicions were aroused.

Harry Carson, captain of the school eleven and the most influential and
popular fellow in St. Timothy’s, came sauntering down from the upper
school with his roommate, John Porter. They took off their caps as
they passed Ruth and then turned into the path that all the others had
followed.

Ruth formed a sudden, courageous resolve.

“O Harry!” she called. “Won’t you wait a moment, please?”

Carson turned and came back toward her, and she advanced to meet him.

“Why is everybody going into the woods this afternoon?”

“Is every one?” said Carson.

“Yes, I think it must be that there’s going to be a fight. Isn’t that
it, Harry?”

“What put such an idea as that into your head?”

“I just feel it, and I know it from the way you ask that question. I
think a fight is perfectly horrid. Won’t you stop it?”

“Sometimes when there’s bad blood between two fellows the best thing is
to let them fight it out.”

“Who are the fellows?”

“It would hardly be fair for me to tell.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t. But fighting seems such a stupid and senseless
way of settling a difference. And it’s just as likely to settle it the
wrong way as the right way. I wish you’d stop this fight, Harry.”

“I haven’t any authority to stop it.”

“They wouldn’t fight if you told them they weren’t to do it. Why, they
wouldn’t fight if even I told them they weren’t to do it!” cried Ruth
with sudden conviction. Her eyes flashed as she added: “If you won’t
give me your word that you’ll stop it, I’ll go into the woods myself
and find those boys and stop them.”

“No, that wouldn’t do at all, Ruth,” said Carson anxiously.

“I will, unless you promise.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Good for you! And do hurry!”

Carson turned away and rejoined his companion, to whom he reported the
conversation.

“The girl’s more or less right,” said Porter. “Henshaw ought to be made
by the crowd to apologize to Ives; it oughtn’t to be necessary for Ives
to fight him. I’m with you in what ever you do.”

Carson and Porter came into the open space behind the sawmill just as
the two combatants, stripped to the waist, stood up to face each other.
Carson broke rudely through the circle of eager onlookers and shoved
his heavy bulk between the two gladiators.

“It’s all off,” he said, addressing Henshaw rather more than David.
“If you fellows have so much energy and fight to get rid of get out
and play football. One of you owes the other an apology, and he knows
mighty well that he does. When he makes it there will be no occasion
for anything further.”

“Oh, let them go to it, Harry!” cried a disappointed spectator. “It’ll
do them good.”

“I’ll fight anybody that tries to make them fight,” replied Carson
belligerently, and the crowd laughed. “I’ll fight them if they try to
fight,” he added. “And I’ll say that one of these two fellows, if he
doesn’t apologize to the other for his insulting remarks, deserves a
licking――whether he gets it or not.”

David spoke up crisply, “I have nothing to apologize for.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Henshaw said in a rather subdued
voice: “I have. I beg your pardon, Ives. I _was_ insulting, and you had
a right to resent it.”

David put out his hand, Henshaw took it, and Carson administered to
each of them a loud and stinging clap on the bare back, which drew an
“Ow!” from Henshaw and a delighted guffaw from the crowd.

The two participants in the bloodless encounter put on their clothes,
the meeting broke up, and in groups of twos and threes the fellows took
their way back to the school.

Ruth came out of the rectory as David and Monroe and Wallace were going
by.

“Why, you weren’t gone very long on your walk, were you?” she said.

“Well, no,” Wallace answered. “We decided we’d do something else, after
all.”

At that moment Carson and a group of sixth-form friends, among them
Henshaw, came up.

“I have the honor to report, Ruth,” said Carson, “that I fulfilled
orders. I am the great pacificator.” He suddenly grabbed Henshaw by the
collar with his right hand and David by the collar with his left. “I
have the honor to restore to you one Huby Henshaw of the sixth form and
one David Ives of the fifth, unscathed, unscratched, unharmed.”

“Good boy!” exclaimed Ruth. Her eyes sparkled with amusement, laughter
rose from the crowd, and David and Henshaw stood blushing and grinning
foolishly.

“You certainly do look like a pair of sillies,” said Ruth. “But you
might be looking even worse――and you’ve got me as well as Harry Carson
to thank that you aren’t. Come in now, and I’ll give you all some tea.”

CHAPTER IV

FRIENDSHIPS

David learned that the handicap track meet held every autumn by the
Pythians and Corinthians would take place in the latter part of
October. He entered his name for the quarter-mile as a representative
of the Pythians.

He found that he had outgrown the running shoes that he had worn in the
spring when he had been the “crack” quarter-miler of the high school.
So he put on his tennis “sneakers” and practiced daily on the track
in those. Most of the candidates for the track meet proved to be very
casual in their training; they were nearly all out trying for a place
on one of the Pythian or Corinthian football elevens, and that meant
that they had to do their track work in the half-hour recess before
luncheon or on occasions when they were excused from football. There
was no regular coaching for them; Bartlett, the Pythian captain, and
Carson, the Corinthian, were alike devoting their chief energies to
football, but occasionally found time to supervise the work of their
candidates, and more often Mr. Dean, though superannuated so far as
active participation in athletics was concerned, gave hints and advice
out of a historic past.

Among those who were playing football on the Corinthian eleven
was Wallace. He told David, however, that he meant to enter the
quarter-mile, too, and that he was coming out a couple of days before
the meet to see if he could get back his speed; he had finished third
in the championship meet of the preceding spring. When he made his
appearance in running clothes two days before the race he asked David
to time him and was much pleased because he ran the distance in only
one second more than at the spring meet. “And if I’d had to, I could
have pushed myself a little. Now I’ll time you, Ives. You haven’t got
on your running shoes――spikes hurt your feet?”

“Yes, the old shoes are too small. But these will do.”

David started off, and while he was circling the track Bartlett came
over from the football practice and watched him.

“Look here!” exclaimed Wallace in excitement when David stopped,
panting, in front of him. “As nearly as I can make it your time is the
same as mine to a fraction!”

“Then I guess I shall have to push myself a little, too,” David said.

“Both Johnson and Adams, who licked me last year, have left the school,
and I thought I had a cinch,” Wallace complained. “And now you turn up,
running like a deer!”

Bartlett put in a word of praise. “You’re going pretty well, Ives.
To-morrow be sure to come out in running shoes.”

“I haven’t any,” David replied.

“You can get them at the store in the basement of the study.” [see Tr.
Notes]

“I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to buy them.”

“You needn’t pay cash. You can have them charged on your term bill.”

“I can’t afford it, anyway.”

Bartlett looked at him perplexed, unable to see why a fellow could not
afford to have a thing charged on his term bill――for his father to pay.

Wallace spoke up. “Maybe you could wear an old pair of mine,” he said.
“What’s your size?”

“Eight, I think.”

“So is mine. I’ll see if I can’t fit you out.”

“Thanks. I guess, though, I can run in these.”

“No, you can’t,” Bartlett said. “It will be mighty decent of you to
lend him your extra pair, Wallace.”

Half an hour later David entered the basement of the study and went to
the locker room to hang up his sweater. Returning, he passed the open
door of the room in which athletic supplies were kept for sale and saw
Wallace trying on a pair of shoes; a second glance showed David that
they were running shoes. He flushed with instant understanding, and
without letting Wallace know of his presence he went upstairs.

Before dinner that evening Wallace came to his room, bearing a pair of
spiked shoes.

“Yes, I found I had an extra pair,” he said carelessly. “Here you are.
I hope they fit.”

David gravely tried them on. “Yes they’re a perfect fit,” he said. “I
hope your new ones fit you as well.”

“My new ones?”

“Yes. You’ve been running in these right along, and you’ve just bought
yourself a new pair in order to give these to me.”

“Oh, you’re dreaming.”

“It was no dream when I saw you trying them on in the store. You
oughtn’t to have done it, Wallace. It was awfully good of you.”

“Oh,” Wallace said, trying to conceal his embarrassment, “I didn’t
want to have you run in sneakers and lick me. That would be too much.
Besides, old top, we’ve got to stand by each other; we come from the
same town.”

If David could not express his appreciation fully to Wallace, he could
at least tell some one who would appreciate Wallace’s act, and it
came into his mind to tell Mr. Dean. Not only would Mr. Dean, who had
followed his practice, be interested, but he might be moved to look
more leniently on Wallace, who was giving very casual attention to his
Latin.

A good opportunity presented itself the next afternoon. Mr. Dean
watched him while he made his trial and after it congratulated him on
his speed and commented on the improvement produced by the aid of the
running shoes.

“I owe them to Wallace,” David said, and then he described the manner
in which Wallace had relieved his need.

“Very thoughtful and tactful as well as very sportsmanlike,” commented
Mr. Dean. “That’s the kind of thing I like to hear of a fellow’s doing.
I’m almost tempted to raise his Latin marks.”

“I hoped you might be.”

“Even if I were, it wouldn’t help his prospects for passing his
college entrance examinations. The trouble with Wallace is he has
never yet learned how to study.” Mr. Dean paused for a moment; then he
said, “Come up to my rooms after you’ve dressed, and we’ll talk over
Wallace’s case.”

So in half an hour they were holding a conference.

“I suppose that you’d like to help Wallace if you could,” Mr. Dean
began, and David assented earnestly.

“It may be possible――just a moment till I change my seat; my eyes are
bothering me; the light troubles them. Now! As I said, Wallace hasn’t
learned how to study. Would you be willing to teach him?”

“Of course, if I could.”

“Now suppose that you and Wallace were excused from the schoolroom
for an hour each day and given a room to yourselves in which to work
out the Latin together, without interference or supervision from
anybody――just put on your honor to study Latin every minute of that
hour――couldn’t you be of some use to Wallace?”

“I might be,” said David thoughtfully. “I should try.”

“The trouble with him is, sitting at his desk in the schoolroom he
doesn’t concentrate his thoughts. He studies, or thinks he studies,
for a few minutes; then he changes to another book, then his eyes
wander and with them his thoughts, then he takes up a pen and begins
to practice writing his signature; it’s really wonderful, the variety
of flourishes and the decorative illegibility that he has managed to
impart to it through such frequent idle practice. Of course when he’s
detected wasting time he’s brought to book for it, but the master in
charge of the schoolroom can’t ever compel him to give more than the
appearance of studiousness. And that, I am afraid, is the most that he
ever does give. But he’s an honorable fellow; and I believe that, put
on his honor to study where there was no watchful eye to challenge his
sporting spirit and with you to guide him, he might achieve results. On
the other hand, for a while, anyway, such an arrangement would probably
slow you up.”

“I should try not to let it. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be a serious
matter.”

“No more serious probably than slipping from first place to second or
third.”

“That wouldn’t be important.”

“If it happened as a consequence, I should write to your father and
explain. I hope, by the way, that you have good news of him?”

David’s face clouded. “Not very. He doesn’t say anything himself, but
mother writes that his vacation seems to have done him no good. She
says he looks bad and seems played out. But he goes on working.”

“That’s a habit of good doctors. Remember me to him when you write.
I will have a talk with the rector and see what arrangements we can
make for you and Wallace. Good luck to you in your race to-morrow. The
handicapping committee are putting you and Wallace together at scratch.”

David expressed his satisfaction at that news.

The event justified the handicapping committee’s arrangement. Besides
David and Wallace there were only two contestants in the quarter-mile,
a fourth-former named Silsbee, who was given twenty yards, and a
sixth-former named Heard, who was given ten. It was a chill and windy
day, a fact that reduced the number of spectators to a small group who
stood near the finish line with their hands in their pockets and their
overcoat collars turned up; on the turf encircled by the track the
football squads continued to practice, more or less oblivious of the
races that were being run; what chiefly marked the day as different
from one of trial tests and dashes was the table placed on the grass
near the athletic house and bearing an assortment of shining pewter
mugs and medals.

It was toward the end of the afternoon that the quarter-mile was
called. David and Wallace started together at the crack of the pistol
and held together, shoulder to shoulder, halfway round the course.
There they passed Heard, and a little farther on they passed Silsbee,
and then Wallace forged a little ahead of David. But David had planned
out his race; he was not going to be drawn into a spurt until he was
a hundred yards from home. So he let Wallace lengthen the distance
between them from one yard to five, and from five to ten; and then he
set about closing up the gap. It closed slowly but surely――one yard,
two yards, three yards gained; then four and then five. For a moment
Wallace, who heard David coming up, held that lead, but for a moment
only; then David put on all his speed and the five yards’ difference
vanished in as many seconds. Twenty yards from the finish the two were
racing neck and neck, but David crossed the line a good three feet
ahead.

In the athletic house Wallace panted out his congratulations, and David
gasped his thanks.

“Handicapped by new shoes, I guess,” David suggested.

“No; you’d have won in stocking feet. Best quarter-miler in school,”
Wallace answered. “You wait, though. Lay for you next spring.”

They finished dressing and got outdoors just in time to see the last
event on the programme――the finals of the hundred-yard dash, which was
won by a sixth-former named Tewksbury. Then the spectators moved over
in a body to the table that bore the prizes. David saw Ruth Davenport
take her stand next to Mr. Dean, who waited beside the table, ready to
speak.

“I am here merely as master of ceremonies,” said Mr. Dean, “and my
chief duty and privilege is to introduce to you Miss Ruth Davenport,
to whom, of course, you need no introduction. She will hand to each
prize-winner the mug or medal to which his efforts have entitled him.
As I call off the names each fellow will please come forward. First in
the mile run, W. F. Burton; time, six minutes and fifty-one seconds.
Second, H. A. Morton.”

Burton and Morton advanced amidst clapping of hands. David saw the
smile that Ruth had for each of them as she presented the trophy, and
when in his turn he faced her and took from her hand the cup he was
aware of a shining eagerness in her eyes; she bent toward him and said,
“Oh, I saw you win! It was splendid!”

He went back to his place in the crowd, feeling incredibly happy.

That evening Mr. Dean said to him as he passed him in the dining-room:
“It’s all right, David――the matter about which we had our talk.
I’m going to have an interview with Wallace to-night, and I hope
that he will recognize at once the benefit he is to derive from the
arrangement. You and he can have room number nine to yourselves between
eleven and twelve each day.”

The thought of the trust placed in him, of the freedom implied, and of
the closer association with Wallace was pleasant to David. He hoped
that Wallace would not be unfavorably disposed toward the plan. On that
point Wallace himself a couple of hours later reassured him. David was
getting ready for bed when there was a knock on his door and Wallace
entered.

“Mr. Dean tells me that you have me on your back, Dave,” he said.
“Pretty hard luck: I don’t see what there is in it for you.”

“Never mind about that,” David answered. “I hope you are going to like
the arrangement, Lester.”

“Oh, it’s fine for me. All I can say is, I’ll try not to be any more
trouble to you than is necessary.”

In spite of that excellent resolution, in the succeeding weeks Wallace
was a good deal of trouble to David. Not only was he naturally dull
at Latin, so that even the simplest matters had to be explained over
and over to him, but he was restless and impatient. David would get
absorbed in his own work and would suddenly remember that he had a duty
to Wallace to perform. And a glance would show him Wallace sprawling on
a bench with his eyes fixed vaguely on the opposite wall, or fiddling
with his pencil or twirling his key ring on his finger, or scribbling
the dates of such coins as he found in his pockets. Then it would be
David’s part to say: “Buck up, Lester. What’s the matter? Need some
help?” Usually Wallace thought that he did, and it would take David
five or ten minutes to get him started and prove to him that he really
did not.

“You wouldn’t quit at football just because tackling was hard to
learn,” David said. “You oughtn’t to be any more willing to quit at
Latin or anything else that you have to try.”

“Why aren’t you out playing football, Dave?” Wallace seemed not at all
interested in taking the moral to heart.

“Oh, I’m no good at it. I’ve never played very much. Here, start in
now.”

“You ought to make a good end or back, with your speed. Why don’t you
come out and try?”

“Why don’t you settle down to your job? We’re not here to talk
football.”

As a matter of fact, it was David rather than Wallace whose thoughts
went straying after that conversation. In view of the episode of the
spiked shoes, how was he to tell Wallace that he could not come out
for football simply because he had no clothes? Wallace would probably
at once play the fairy godmother again and furnish him with an outfit.
David was eager to play; he had gained in weight and strength in this
last year; there was nothing he would like better than to test his
ability and skill, nothing that he hated worse than to be thought soft
and timorous. And that, of course, was what most fellows would think.

But his mother’s letters stiffened his self-denial. She wrote that
his father seemed preoccupied and worried, and that patients were not
paying their bills, and that, though she knew it was selfish, she
could not help wishing every minute that David were at home. So he said
to himself that he did not care what people thought; he was not going
to cost the family a penny more than was absolutely necessary.

Three days after the track meet he was invited to the rectory for
supper.

“You’ll get awfully good food,” said Wallace enviously. “I was there at
a blow-out last week.”

The rectory was a hospitable house, and on this occasion there were
eight other guests besides David, all fifth-formers, who sat down
to supper with the family. The food justified Wallace’s prediction;
David blushed under congratulations from both Dr. and Mrs. Davenport,
and still more under Ruth’s statement from across the table――“It
was a corking race.” After supper the rector walked with him out of
the dining-room and said a pleasant word, complimenting him on the
assistance he was giving to Wallace.

Then they all sat in the library while Dr. Davenport read them a story
from Kipling, after which he excused himself and, departing to his
study, left the further entertainment of the guests to his wife and
daughter. With charades and “Consequences” and “Up Jenkins,” they
beguiled the time hilariously. David, when it was possible, followed
Ruth with his eyes; she was so nimble, so joyous, so radiant, that she
quite fascinated him; in watching her and in waiting for her voice he
sometimes lost the thread of the action and bungled the part that he
had to play. But he did not mind, for her laughter seemed to him even
kinder and sweeter than her applause.

The guests prepared to take their departure; in schoolboy habit they
formed in line to shake hands with their hostesses and say good-night.
David happened to be the last in the line, and Ruth detained him a
moment while she said:

“You know I’m a Pythian, David, so I was glad you won. Aren’t you going
to play football, too?”

“No, I don’t play football much,” David answered.

“You could if you tried――anybody that can run like that!”

David blushed and laughed and departed from the house feeling very much
as if he had been knighted.

And wonderfully enough, three days later he was out playing football
on the Pythian scrub, with Ruth, the most consistent of all partisans,
looking on. A letter had come from his father enclosing ten dollars――a
cheerful letter very different from those that his mother had been
writing and one that caused David’s spirits to soar. Dr. Ives wrote that
“business” had been very slow but that it was picking up a bit; that he
realized that David was probably in need of cash and that he was the
kind of fellow who would never ask for it; and that he was sending him a
little money, which he must spend for whatever he most wanted. As for
himself, Dr. Ives declared that he was feeling like a fighting-cock, now
that cool weather had come.

It did not take David long after receiving that letter to get what
he most wanted. For the rest of the football season he reported for
practice every day. He displayed no striking ability, but he won a
place as half back on the second Pythian eleven; and in the game with
the second Corinthians he made one of the three Pythian touchdowns and
later tackled a runner in the open field and got a wrenched ankle,
which necessitated his being assisted to the side lines.

[Illustration: TACKLED A RUNNER IN THE OPEN FIELD AND GOT A WRENCHED
ANKLE]

While he lay there wearing the stoical expression expected of the
injured, Ruth Davenport came up and said, “Oh, I hope you’re not much
hurt, David!”

“Oh, no; it’s nothing.” He was immensely pleased by her interest.

“You were playing so well, too. What a shame!”

He mumbled inarticulately and squirmed, but not in pain. He knew that
if he had played all through and made touchdown after touchdown he
could never have got quite such a soft look from her eyes.

And then there was a shout and a long Pythian run, and the exultant
Pythian crowd went streaming down the field, with Ruth fluttering and
dancing behind.

CHAPTER V

THE RETURN

The day of the 20th of November was one that David never forgot――a raw,
windy, overcast day, somber and threatening. And yet it began happily
enough. All through the school there ran a livelier current of interest
and excitement, a keener thrill of expectancy, for in the afternoon the
first elevens of the Pythians and the Corinthians were to meet in their
championship encounter.

To David it seemed afterwards a strange and terrible thing that he
could have spent that afternoon as he did, shouting and whooping
gleefully on the side lines. It proved to be the Pythians’ day; they
scored three touchdowns and kicked as many goals while the Corinthians
struggled and fought without avail. After the game David took part in
the jubilant Pythian cheering in front of the athletic house. Walking
up to the study with Wallace afterwards, he felt that he had never been
happier, or better satisfied with life.

The recitation hour before supper was devoted to Latin; the fifth
form met Mr. Dean in one of the large rooms on the top floor of the
building. The master made allowance for the raggedness of some of the
translations; it was to be expected, for example, that Garland, who
had made two of the three touchdowns, and who was decorated with a
large cocoon over the left eye, should stagger and stumble, and it
was no new thing that Wallace should have to be helped through the
passage assigned him. David had been as fluent and accurate as usual;
now, with the half-hour gone, Mr. Dean was calling to their feet,
one after another, the rear guard of the class. Barrison was making
his hesitating way through the lines that he had been requested to
translate when a fourth-former, young Penfield, entered the room and,
walking up to the platform, handed Mr. Dean a note.

Barrison stopped his recitation; Mr. Dean glanced at the note, and
his face became grave. “All right, Penfield,” he said; and the
fourth-former left the room.

Mr. Dean stepped down from the platform and walked along the aisle
between the rows of desks. Barrison and the other fellows looked at him
wonderingly. He put his hand on David’s shoulder; David sat next to the
aisle.

“David,” he said, “the rector has sent for you. You will find him in
his study.”

Then David, startled, not understanding, yet vaguely fearful, rose. Mr.
Dean with his hand on his shoulder walked with him to the door and gave
him a parting, affectionate little caress.

David hurried along the corridor with fast-beating heart. He knew
instinctively from the manner of Mr. Dean’s dismissing him that he
was not being summoned because of any evil-doing. He felt that it was
something worse than that.

The door of the rector’s study was open, and Dr. Davenport was walking
back and forth inside. Coming forward to meet David, he put his hands
on his shoulders.

“My boy,” he said gently, “very bad news has come for you. Your mother
has telegraphed that your father is very ill, and you are to go home.”

Tears welled into David’s eyes, and he asked in a breaking voice, “Is
he dead, Dr. Davenport?”

“The telegram said that he is dying.” The rector drew the sobbing
boy to him and held him close. “Let us hope that you will reach home
in time, David. You can get a train to Boston at seven o’clock, and
you can get a midnight train from there to New York. While you are
packing, I will arrange by telephone about reservations for you.”

But David was not heeding. “O Dr. Davenport!” he cried. “Isn’t there
any hope? Mother wrote that he was better; isn’t there some mistake?”

“I’m afraid not, David.” The rector showed the telegram.

David held it a moment, and the tears flowed down his cheeks. “Poor
mother! Poor little Ralph!”

“Yes, they are needing you, my boy. And we’ll get you to them just
as soon as it’s possible.” The rector was silent a moment, stroking
David’s shoulder, giving him time to recover his composure. “I’ll see
that you are provided with money enough. There will be a carriage to
take you to the station at half-past six. It’s now a quarter past
five.” The rector turned to a safe in the corner of the room, and took
out some money. “Here,” he said, “is fifty dollars. You must not be in
any hurry about returning the amount. Good-bye, David, my boy, and God
bless you.”

David went down the stairs blinded with tears. Outside it was dark
except for the scattered lights along the road and the illuminated
windows of the buildings. David saw the dormitory ahead and thought of
the day when he had stood on the steps and received his father’s last
embrace, and as he stumbled on and the lights were breaking and dancing
through his tears he wished with all the passionate love of his young
heart that he could have that day, just that one day, over again.

The janitor of the building brought the boy’s trunk down from the loft,
and soon David was at work, not merely emptying the drawers of his
wardrobe, but dismantling his room. He would never come back to this
place again; that he knew.

There came presently a knock on the door. He opened it and found
Wallace standing there.

“O Dave!” said Wallace and clasped his friend’s hand. He continued
after a moment, “Mr. Dean sent me to see if I could do anything for
you. He’s coming himself in a few minutes. Is there anything I can get
for you――anything at all?”

“No, thanks, Lester. I’m pretty nearly packed. Just sit with me awhile.”

“The fellows feel awfully badly about it. Lots of them wanted to come,
but they thought maybe you’d rather be alone.”

“Yes, I think I would, except for you.”

Wallace sat and looked on in dumb sympathy while David continued his
packing. At last it was all finished, and David sat down and looked
out of the window into the darkness. While he waited thus he spoke only
once.

“I wish you’d known him, Lester,” he said.

Soon he saw the lights of a motor-car coming down the avenue; the
driver appeared and took the trunk; Wallace picked up the bag. At the
foot of the stairs Mr. Dean was waiting. David caught Wallace’s hand
and pressed it, unable to speak, and Wallace, equally inarticulate,
returned the pressure. The next moment David and Mr. Dean were hidden
within the automobile.

During most of the drive Mr. Dean occupied himself with advising David
about the practical details of his journey. But, after all, his talk
was chiefly to turn the current of David’s thoughts, for he had put
down on a paper all the important items for the boy’s guidance. As
David pocketed the memorandum that Mr. Dean finally gave him, he felt
that he must seem unresponsive and untouched by so much kindness.

“O Mr. Dean, you don’t know how good to me I think you are! I――I wish
my father could know!”

“My dear boy, it’s just that we all want to help when we see our
friends in trouble.”

“Yes, but it’s the way you help. I shall always remember it.”

“I shall always remember your father, David. I have seen a great
many fathers here with their sons, but never one whose interest and
affection made quite such an appeal to me as his. It’s a long, long
way back, but he made me think of my own father; I was about your age,
David, when my father died.”

The automobile sped from the country road to the paved streets of the
town and drew up before the station.

“You’ll come back to us after Christmas, I hope, David,” said the
master.

“I shall probably not be able to. I don’t know just what there will be
for me to do,” David answered.

“I hope you will find it possible to continue in the career that your
father had planned.”

“I should like to, for his sake.”

“Whatever happens, David, our friendship mustn’t end here. You must
look on me as always your friend.”

The train drew into the station for its brief stop. David and Mr. Dean
shook hands at the steps and parted.

That night David had a few hours of broken sleep in his stuffy berth;
the next day he spent gazing out of the window at the brown farming
lands of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and the bare, stark forests and
the little villages that seemed to glance up at the train with a start
of wonder and to relapse into rumination after it fled by. At ten
o’clock the next morning the train drew into the station of the city
that was his home.

There was no one to meet him at the station. He took a Rosewood car and
in half an hour alighted at the familiar old street corner. With his
bag banging against his leg and his heart pounding in his breast, he
ran along the sidewalk. And then suddenly, though he had been trying to
prepare himself for this all through the journey, his legs weakened and
threatened to collapse under him, and tears flooded his eyes. He passed
through the gate with uncertain steps and a sense that the world was
reeling round him. The blinds were down, and a black streamer fluttered
beside the door.

From somewhere within the house they had been watching, for the door
opened as he mounted the steps; the next moment he had his mother in
his arms, and Ralph was standing by, with face upturned to kiss him.

“He died yesterday afternoon at three o’clock,” said Mrs. Ives. “He
didn’t suffer; all that seemed to trouble him was that he couldn’t see
you.”

Trying to comfort his mother, who seemed now wholly to give way, David
controlled his own emotion. Presently she took him upstairs to the room
in which she had been sitting all the morning――the room into which only
slits of light came from behind the drawn shades; and there David stood
and looked upon his father’s face.

A week after the funeral David, returning the money that had been lent
him, wrote to Dr. Davenport that it would be impossible for him to
return to St. Timothy’s School. His mother’s resources were extremely
slender; indeed, David found that the income on which the family must
depend would be barely sufficient to sustain them if they practiced the
most rigid economy. Maggie must go, the house must be sold or let, and
they must move into narrower and less expensive quarters.

Maggie, however, refused to accept dismissal.

“I’ve been with you altogether too long to be deserting you in your
trouble,” she said to Mrs. Ives.

“But, Maggie, we can’t afford――”

“Sure, and I shouldn’t think you could, the way the doctor was that
easy-going! But I’ve been thrifty――”

It was no use to argue with Maggie, and after some further ineffectual
remonstrance Mrs. Ives succumbed.

Maggie stayed, and a sign “To Let or For Sale” was planted in front
of the house beside the flagstone walk; and Mrs. Ives tried to feel
that it was a stroke of good fortune when within a week a tenant was
secured. She tried equally to feel that good fortune was again hers
when she hired, only a quarter of a mile away, a comfortable apartment
for considerably less than the rent she was to receive for the house.
But she shrank none the less from the preparation that soon had to be
made for moving. Often she burst into tears and left Maggie to execute
or direct the undertaking on which she had been engaged. In those
depressed moods her surest consolation was in the re-reading of the
letters of sympathy that had come to her after her husband’s death
and that had shown her how widely he had been loved, how truly he had
been respected. Perhaps the letter that she read most often and with
the greatest satisfaction was that from Dr. Wallace; she had always
felt that by the men of his profession her husband had never been
accorded full recognition; yet here surely was the proof that she had
been mistaken. Dr. Wallace wrote as one who had known and appreciated
and admired. And his son had written to David, a boyish, sympathetic
letter, with this sentence at the end, “My father says that yours was
fine.” Those letters were not the only ones that helped to remove the
old bitterness over what had seemed to her the failure of the community
to accord her husband the place that he had earned; now at the end
of all came letters upon letters testifying to the existence of an
affection that she had thought withheld. She read them over and over,
but Dr. Wallace’s oftenest of all.

David’s plan was to go back to the high school after Christmas, finish
out the year and then try to find work in some business office. He felt
that he must abandon his ambition to be a surgeon and must set about
establishing himself in a position where he could at an early date
contribute to the support of the family and to Ralph’s education. His
mother lamented the necessity and protested against the sacrifice, but
was unable to suggest any alternative.

Christmas was a day that David and his mother looked forward to with
no happy expectancy. But on Christmas Eve they all hung up their
stockings as usual, and after Ralph had gone to bed David assisted his
mother in arranging the presents.

“So many,” Mrs. Ives sighed, “that our friends have given us! And we
have been able to give to so few!”

“Never mind,” David answered. “People aren’t going to think about that.”

He kissed his mother――a paternal sort of kiss. Often in those days he
felt quite paternal toward her.

The next morning, though Mrs. Ives could not bring herself to respond,
“Merry Christmas!” to that greeting, delivered by each of her sons and
by Maggie, she did enjoy the pleasant spectacle of Ralph’s excitement
and of her older boy’s eager interest as they opened bundles; she even
had a mild pleasure in examining the things that had been given to her.
It became more than that; it became a tenderer emotion when she found
the books that were the gifts of her two boys. But it was the arrival
of the postman, about the middle of the morning, that furnished the
great sensation of the day. He left several Christmas cards, two or
three little packages and a letter for David. The envelope bore the
address of St. Timothy’s School.

David opened it and in a moment was crying with excitement, “Mother!
Mother! Just look at this!” His face was so eager, his eyes were so
shining that Ralph came crowding up to look over his mother’s shoulder
as she read:

MY DEAR DAVID: One who is deeply interested in you and who has
an affectionate memory of your father and of his hopes and
ambitions for you has communicated to me his wish that you
return to St. Timothy’s and complete your course. He is not
only well able to bear the expense, but he is eager to do so;
in fact, he has already placed a sum of money to your credit
here, and I am therefore sending you a check to cover your
traveling expenses. He does not wish to make himself known
to you now; he hopes that you will not make any inquiries
concerning him. He has other grounds than those of modesty for
requesting this.

We shall all welcome you back after the Christmas holidays. And
I am very glad indeed that the school is not after all to lose
one of its best pupils.

Sincerely yours,

C. S. DAVENPORT.

“Isn’t that splendid, mother!” David began, and then stopped, for
instead of joy there was an added sadness in his mother’s face.

“Yes, David, yes,” she answered, and quickly tried to assume
cheerfulness. “Only――it will be harder than ever to part with you now.”

“I won’t go if you feel you need me, mother.”

“Of course you must go. You could not decline an offer made by one who
wants to help you to carry out your dear father’s wishes.”

But David was still doubtful. “I wonder if I ought to go. I wonder if I
oughtn’t to stay here and find work――”

“No, David, no. We must look to the future, dear. I couldn’t think of
letting you sacrifice an opportunity so wonderfully offered. Who do you
suppose is giving it to you, David?”

“I can’t imagine.――unless it’s Dr. Wallace.”

“Of course! That’s just who it is!” Mrs. Ives’s thoughts reverted to
the sympathetic letter that he had written her. “Of course it’s Dr.
Wallace. He’s taking this way of showing how much he thought of your
father.”

“I shouldn’t wonder at all if Lester had suggested it to him,” said
David. “Lester’s my best friend. I suppose, though, I mustn’t say
anything to him about it.”

“No, since it’s Dr. Wallace’s wish.”

“Perhaps Lester will come and see me during the vacation; perhaps he’ll
refer to it in some way.”

“Of course, if he should do that. But we must be careful to respect Dr.
Wallace’s wish.”

She could not help rejoicing with her boy over his good fortune, and
she could not help sorrowing for it in her heart. Already she had
come to look upon him as her prop and her companion in the loneliness
with which she must always now be surrounded. Was there no end to the
sacrifices required of women? But even while her spirit made that
outcry, a look into her son’s radiant face comforted her.

The day after Christmas the moving began. By the middle of the
afternoon it was all accomplished; some of the family possessions were
in storage, the rest were already disposed in a quite orderly manner
in the neat little apartment. David, who had gone back to the house
to effect a final clearance of discarded articles, had turned the key
in the lock for the last time. He looked up and saw Lester Wallace
entering at the gate and ran to meet him eagerly.

“Do you know my great news?”

“No. What?”

“I’m going back next term, after all.”

“O Dave, isn’t that great! Somehow I felt it must be all a mistake that
you weren’t coming back. All the fellows will be so glad.”

From Wallace’s manner David could not be sure whether he had any
knowledge or intimation of his father’s generosity or not. He seemed,
at any rate, not at all interested in the question how the means for
David’s return had been provided. So into that question David did not
go. He prevailed on Wallace to come into the new apartment for a few
minutes and meet his mother; she, with the thought of Dr. Wallace
foremost in her mind, could hardly refrain from uttering words of
gratitude that pressed to her lips. Altogether, Wallace’s brief visit
imparted a pleasant glow of cheerfulness and hopefulness to Mrs. Ives
on that trying first day in her new surroundings.

Maggie did not disapprove of David’s return to St. Timothy’s so much as
he had expected. “Well,” she said, “I guess you’d better be there than
strammin’ round a small place like this. I’m sure it will mean less
than half as much work for me. I must say, though, if I was that rich I
had to be giving money away, I wouldn’t be doing it to take a boy from
his mother――whoever I was.”

That, to be sure, was just what David’s benefactor was doing, and
it came home to the boy when on the last day his mother accompanied
him to the station. Ralph, who had been excused from school, was
with them, and in the trolley car and afterwards on the bench in the
waiting-room sat snuggled close to his brother――demonstrative in this
way of his affection. Mrs. Ives was silent most of the time, but often
surreptitiously squeezed David’s hand. While they waited, Wallace,
accompanied by his father and mother, entered; they came up to David
and Mrs. Ives; and Mrs. Wallace said, “It’s hard when we have to send
them back, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Ives, mindful even in that moment of the obligation to which she
must not refer, answered, “Yes, it’s hard, but I am trying not to be
sorry. David is so glad.”

Dr. Wallace grasped David’s arm with one hand and his son’s arm with
the other and held the two boys for a moment while he said genially,
“Help each other along all you can, you two fellows.” And David felt
how splendid it must be to be able to give help, instead of just
receiving it――to be giving such help as his father all his life had
given to others; he felt that it was to enable him to do that very
thing that Dr. Wallace was sending him back to St. Timothy’s, and he
resolved to be worthy of the opportunity.

In the train David had the few last moments alone with his mother and
Ralph, just as Lester had with his mother and father. They were silent
moments, so charged with feeling that David sat with tear-blurred eyes,
aware only of his mother pressing his hand and Ralph crowding against
him softly.

“Write to us often, David,” his mother said. “And――and think of your
father every day.”

David nodded, too choked to speak. He kissed each of them――a long, long
kiss for his mother――hugged them close; and the next moment they were
gone.

CHAPTER VI

PROBATION

It was after dark on the January afternoon when the sleigh in which
David Ives and Lester Wallace drove from the station to the school drew
up in front of the rectory. The boys had made the last stage of their
journey in company with a number of others; from New York it had been a
jolly and exciting trip. David had been surprised as well as pleased by
the greetings of fellows whom he had hardly known, by the way in which
they had said, “Awfully glad you’re coming back to the school, Ives.”
Even Henshaw had been, as David expressed it afterwards to Lester,
“mighty decent to him.”

The welcome from the rector was equally cordial. He kept David for a
few moments after Lester had gone.

“There are just one or two things that I might add to what I wrote in
my letter, David. Your friend who is putting you through wants you to
be under no handicap in your relations with the other fellows; in
other words, he wants you to have the usual amount of spending money,
so that you shall be able to take part freely in the games and sports.”

“That’s pretty fine of him, isn’t it!” David exclaimed. “But honestly,
Dr. Davenport, it doesn’t seem to me right to――to let him be so
generous.”

“I don’t think he will spoil you by over-indulgence,” the rector said
smiling. “If I were you I should accept the situation and make the best
of it. By the way, I wish you’d stop in and see Mr. Dean. He has been
expressing the greatest pleasure at the prospect of having you back
here, and I know he will appreciate your looking him up.”

So at once David betook himself to Mr. Dean’s cottage, and there in the
study he found the master, sitting in front of the fire, with the old
green eye-shade over his eyes.

“Hello, David!” Mr. Dean rose and came forward; he led David into the
room. “Something told me that we should have you with us again; I felt
sure that somehow you’d manage it.”

“_I_ didn’t manage it,” David said. “It came to me as a great
surprise――a Christmas surprise, too.” Mr. Dean looked interested. “I
suppose you know, Mr. Dean, how it happens that I’m back.”

“I understood that some one who sympathized with your father’s wishes
for you was arranging it.”

“Yes. I don’t know who it is; at least I’m supposed not to know, though
I can’t help suspecting.”

Mr. Dean took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief.

“It’s odd that the man should want to make a mystery of it,” he
remarked.

“Yes, I don’t quite understand that. He’s a doctor at home who knew my
father and wrote the finest letter about him! Well, I don’t see why I
shouldn’t tell you who I think it is; it’s Lester Wallace’s father.”

“An old St. Timothy’s boy himself. Good for him! He won’t be sorry.”

“I hope you had a good vacation, Mr. Dean.”

“Not the best. I had to spend most of it in Boston under an oculist’s
care, and I have to look forward to some tedious hours. No more reading
at night. Take care of your eyes, my boy.”

“They’re pretty strong, I guess. I’m sorry you’re having trouble with
yours, Mr. Dean. If you ever want somebody to come and read to you, I
wish you’d send for me.”

“Thank you, David; I’ll do that.”

But Mr. Dean did not care to talk about himself; he questioned David
concerning his mother and Ralph, expressed his sympathy for Mrs. Ives’s
feeling of forlornness at her son’s return to St. Timothy’s and said he
should think she would really hate the man who was responsible for it.
“Oh, no,” David hastened to say; “she’s just as grateful to him as I
am; only she couldn’t help being sorry, too.”

“Well, if it’s Dr. Wallace, it’s a pretty good investment, so far as
his own boy’s concerned,” remarked Mr. Dean. “Lester slid off badly
last term after you left us. Do you think you can take hold of him
again and keep him going?”

David was willing to try; he found Wallace willing to submit. Indeed,
Wallace seemed unwilling to make any independent effort with his
lessons; he needed the stimulus of David’s interest and David’s
prompting. Without them his mind was incorrigibly preoccupied with
athletics; it did not matter what the season might be; his passion for
athletics was universal. Now, in midwinter, snowballing, coasting,
snowshoeing, and hockey were keeping his mind as active as his body;
in study hours he was planning expeditions, arranging snowball fights
and ambuscades, imagining himself the hero of exciting hockey games, in
which he dodged brilliantly through the opposing forces, steering the
puck always before him. Even when the weather was so bad that no form
of outdoor sport was possible, Wallace’s attention was not more easily
fixed on books. Then thoughts of the gymnasium engrossed him, of the
brilliant feats that could be executed there.

Indeed, as the time of the spring exhibition drew near, he became more
and more intent on qualifying himself for some prominent part in it.
He and Monroe practiced together daily and became proficient in feats
of ground and lofty tumbling. David, going into the gymnasium one
afternoon, was much impressed by the quickness, sureness, and rhythm of
their performance――somersaulting over each other, snapping each other
up from the mat, giving each other a hand at just the right moment.
“Pretty slick,” was David’s admiring comment. “You make a great team.”

That was the opinion of the gymnasium instructor, who looked forward
to putting them on as one of the principal features of the exhibition.
Wallace lived in the gymnasium not merely during playtime; his
thoughts were there at all hours, and his studies suffered accordingly.
He rejected David’s offer to help him with his Latin out of hours, and,
as Mr. Dean did not see fit to renew the arrangement that had been
so advantageous to him the preceding term, he no longer received any
assistance from his friend. His Latin recitations grew more and more
uncertain; frequently he attempted to bluff them through――seldom with
any degree of success. A week before the gymnasium exhibition, Mr.
Dean set the class an hour examination; David, glancing up from the
task, which he found simple, observed Wallace lolling indifferently in
his seat and tapping his teeth idly with his pencil. Later, when he
looked again, Wallace was writing busily, and David felt encouraged;
he relinquished hope, however, when he saw Wallace leave his seat half
an hour before the full time allotted for the examination had expired,
hand in his work at the desk, and depart jauntily from the room.

He did not encounter Wallace until after luncheon; then they met in the
hall of the dormitory.

“Cinch, wasn’t it?” Wallace said, and in surprise David asked, “What?”

“Old Dean’s exam. I killed it. Did you see me get through way ahead of
time?”

“Yes, I was afraid that meant you hadn’t been able to do much with it.”

“Oh, there were some things I didn’t know and others that I just made a
stab at. But I’m pretty sure I killed it. And I had an extra half-hour
practicing in the gym while you poor guys were writing away.”

David thought no more of the episode. Two days later, after the Latin
recitation, Mr. Dean returned to the boys their examination books,
with marks showing their rating. A was the highest mark attainable, E
meant failure. David, well pleased at seeing the large A in red ink
on the cover of his book, walked slowly down the corridor, turning
over the pages. Monroe joined him, happy at being awarded a B, and
they descended the stairs together and stood outside the door of their
building comparing their books. Suddenly Wallace burst out upon them;
they looked up, startled by his flaming, angry face.

“What do you think of that?” he cried and thrust his examination book
under their eyes. His hand shook in his rage. “See what that old
fossil’s done to me!”

The letter E adorned the cover, and under it was written: “I have
hesitated over this mark. In ordinary circumstances I might have given
such work as this D; it is poor enough at best, but it is not wholly
bad. Had you chosen to exert your mind to the utmost during the full
examination period, you would unquestionably have passed; because you
did not choose to do this, I mark you E.”

“A dirty trick!” exclaimed Monroe. “He admits you wrote a paper good
enough to pass you, and then he turns round and gives you E!”

“How does he know what I might have done if I’d stayed through the
hour!” Lester turned irately upon David. “Well, what do you think of
your friend now, Dave?”

David looked troubled. “It does seem pretty rough. But I suppose Mr.
Dean thought that was the only way of making you work.”

“Making me work!” Wallace’s eyes flashed more angrily than ever. “I did
enough work to pass; he admits it. That’s all I want. I’m not a grind,
like you; I don’t have to be. I don’t want to get A’s like you; I don’t
have to. Fooling round old Dean so much has turned you into a prig.”

He walked rapidly away and left both David and Monroe to an
uncomfortable silence. David felt hurt; that Lester should take a
fling at his necessity was unkind. He sympathized with Lester, but
he sympathized with Mr. Dean, too. He said to Monroe, “Mr. Dean’s not
trying to be nasty; he’s just trying to keep Lester headed straight.”

“If Lester’s paper was good enough to pass him, he ought to have
passed,” replied Monroe obstinately.

The next morning in the Latin class Wallace sullenly said, “Not
prepared,” when his name was called. Mr. Dean looked at him for a
moment and then said, “I will ask you to wait and speak to me, Wallace,
after the hour.”

What that interview brought forth David was soon to learn. In the noon
intermission he was walking up to the dormitory when Wallace joined him.

“He’s put me on probation,” Wallace announced, “because of my Latin
flunk. If I’d passed my Latin, I’d have been all right.”

“It’s hard luck.” David could think of nothing more to say.

“It’s pretty tough because now I can’t take part in the gymnasium
exhibition. It’s hard on Monroe because it cuts him out of a good half
of his stunts.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Dean about it?”

“Oh, yes, but it did no good. When I tried to argue with him, he said
he didn’t care to hear me. He has it in for me; that’s the size of it.
There’s just one thing that might help.”

“What?”

“Well, if you went to him and told him that you thought he hadn’t been
quite fair in his treatment of me, and if you’d show him how unfair to
Monroe it all is, he might reconsider. He likes you, and he’d listen to
anything you say.”

“I’ll explain to him about you and Monroe,” said David.

“I wrote home about the stunts we were going to do, and father thought
it was great. He’ll be awfully disappointed if I tell him I couldn’t
take part because of being on probation.”

So David went on his mission of intercession. He pleaded Wallace’s
cause as well as he could, but Mr. Dean remained unmoved.

“The boy has been loafing, and now he has to pay the penalty,” declared
Mr. Dean. “And when he urges that it’s hard on Monroe, the only answer
is that in most cases the innocent are involved with the guilty.”

“But if he really wrote an examination good enough to pass him, it
seems hardly fair――”

“Do you think, David, that I am choosing to be unfair to Wallace?”

“No, I shouldn’t have said that; but Lester thinks that you’re being
unfair to him.”

“He’s not willing to abide by consequences. It’s not a case for
leniency, David.”

David delivered the message and received nothing but reproaches.

“I guess you didn’t let him see what a skunk he is,” Wallace grumbled,
and David replied:

“You know I don’t think he’s anything of the kind.”

“Monroe thinks he is,” declared Wallace with satisfaction. “I don’t
see why they keep an old fossil like that on here. You can stand up
for him, of course, because you’re one of his favorites; he’s a great
fellow for having pets.”

David walked away without making any retort. He was depressed and
disappointed. He had not believed Wallace could be so unjust. His sense
of obligation to Wallace’s father made his distress all the more keen.
It was not only Wallace that blamed him; Monroe also was cool to him
and thought that he could have made things right with Mr. Dean if he
had chosen to exert himself.

For a few days they let him alone, and he was quite unhappy. Then came
the night of the gymnasium exhibition; he sat among the spectators
and saw Monroe execute his various acrobatic feats in partnership
with Calvert, a stripling of the fourth form; it was a creditable
performance, but not what it would have been with Wallace to assist.
Nevertheless the applause was generous, and Monroe was awarded a
medal――first prize――for his work. This success apparently took the
soreness out of Monroe; at any rate, he responded heartily to David’s
congratulations afterwards and resumed his old friendly relations with
him, as if they had never been interrupted. But Wallace’s stiffness did
not relax; he did not drop into David’s room, or do any of the little
things that had formerly been the natural signs and consequences of
intimacy.

For David those were the dullest days of the year. The weather was so
bad that there were no outdoor sports; on account of Wallace’s attitude
he could not thoroughly enjoy the companionship of any one, for somehow
the friendship of no one else could compensate him for the loss of
Wallace’s.

And then, too, there was the sense that to Wallace indirectly, to
Wallace’s father certainly, he was under an obligation that he could
never repay. It made him unhappy to dwell on those thoughts, and so he
occupied himself as much as possible with his studies and with reading;
and he went more often to Mr. Dean’s rooms. He and the master took
walks together; in the evening sometimes Mr. Dean summoned David from
the schoolroom and asked him to read aloud; it would be usually from
something that David enjoyed――Thackeray or Dickens or Shakespeare. Mr.
Dean would sit in an armchair before the fire, with his green eye-shade
over his eyes and his fingers interlocked; sometimes he would chuckle
over a phrase, or ask David to read a passage a second time; and David,
thus having his attention particularly drawn to those passages, was not
long in seeing why they were noteworthy. Those evenings with Mr. Dean
were the most pleasant of his diversions, though they did not tend to
increase his popularity. He knew that he was growing more and more to
be regarded as a grind and, worse than that, as a master’s protégé.

Ruth took him to drive one day when the first breath of spring was in
the air.

“Oh,” said Ruth, “won’t you be glad when it’s summer again? Don’t you
get restless at this time of year?”

“There isn’t much to do in the way of sports,” David admitted. “Yes, it
does get tiresome.”

“Father says that there’s always more disorder just before the
spring vacation than at any other time――and less studying. Just
think of Lester Wallace. I wanted to see him win in the gymnasium
exhibition――and the foolish boy got into trouble instead.”

“Yes, it was too bad.”

“I scolded him for it, and he tried to lay the blame on Mr. Dean. But
it was too silly! He seemed to think that you and Mr. Dean were under
some obligation to put him through!”

David’s face clouded over. “I don’t know about Mr. Dean, but I feel
under such an obligation. Only it hasn’t seemed as if Lester wanted my
help.”

“He oughtn’t to want it. I’m disappointed in him. I told him so right
out.”

She sat up straight with her lips firmly together and her cheeks
flushed; David, glancing at her, decided that he should dislike very
much hearing from her that she was disappointed in him.

“I told him,” she went on, “that he was getting dependent on everybody
but himself, and that if he had any proper spirit he wouldn’t accept
help now from any one. And he got sarcastic at that and thanked me for
my helpful advice and said that he could get along very well without
any more of it. Since then we’re very cool to each other.”

“That’s the way it is with Lester and me,” said David. “I dare say I’ve
given him too much helpful advice, too.”

“Anyway, he’ll have a good chance to come to his senses during the
spring vacation. You will probably be going home with him, won’t you?”

“I’m not sure yet that I’m going home. It’s a long trip and pretty
expensive.”

David wondered if Ruth had reported that uncertainty of his to her
father, for that evening the rector summoned him to his study.

“I should have told you before this,” he said, “of a communication that
I’ve had from your friend, David. He wants you to spend your vacation
with your family. And so you may regard that as arranged.”

David’s face lighted up. “Isn’t that splendid! Oh, I wish you’d tell
him, Dr. Davenport, since I can’t, how thoughtful and generous I think
he is!”

Dr. Davenport smiled. “I’ll convey your appreciation, though I think he
is aware of it.”

David’s happiness was further increased when two days before the close
of the term Wallace said to him, “Want to share a section with me on
the train west of New York?”

“Sure, I do,” David answered.

“All right. I’ll match you for the lower berth.”

They matched, and David won. “I’d just as soon take the upper,” he
said, but Wallace would not consider such a change.

David was so glad to renew the old relations with Wallace that he did
not wonder very much why there had been any lapse in them. On the
journey Wallace took a Vergil out of his bag and began to study.

“I’m going to make up my Latin this vacation,” he explained. “I want to
play ball next term.”

“Let me help you,” urged David. “I’ll translate with you if you like.”

“No, I told Ruth Davenport I wouldn’t let anybody help me after this,
and I won’t. She got pretty fresh, taking me to task, and I’ll show
her.”

Wallace wore an injured look as he settled down in his seat and began
to study. After about half an hour, he glanced up. “Confound it, Dave,
I’ve got to have help on this! Here, how does it go?”

And David spent most of the journey tutoring his friend, and had the
satisfaction of feeling that in a way he was paying for his trip home.

CHAPTER VII

BLINDNESS

In the spring vacation David saw little of Wallace. He lunched one
day at his friend’s house and felt that he was under Dr. Wallace’s
particular scrutiny; it made him self-conscious. The surgeon, he
observed, looked at him shrewdly from time to time, as if measuring him
with some mental standard; David had an uncomfortable feeling that he
fell short of what was expected.

However, the doctor’s only comment was favorable enough. “You lead the
form in studies,” he said. “Lester tells me you’ve helped him in his
work. I wish he would work hard enough not to need help.”

“Well, you saw the Latin books I brought home with me,” said Lester in
an aggrieved voice.

“Yes, I saw them, but I haven’t seen you using them.”

“That’s all right; I’m going to. I studied on the train, didn’t I,
Dave?”

And Mrs. Wallace came to his defense. “After all, boys shouldn’t be
expected to study hard in their vacations.”

On the train returning to St. Timothy’s Wallace was again accompanied
by his Latin books, and again invited David’s coöperation. David
observed that he opened to the place at which on the homeward journey
he had left off and concluded that Mrs. Wallace’s sympathy had not
quickened his zeal. Lester was too full of reminiscences to keep long
or steadily at work; he would interrupt his studies to relate to David
anecdotes of parties that he had attended or of automobile trips that
he had made. David listened with eager interest and from time to time
conscientiously directed his friend’s thoughts back to the channels
from which they so readily escaped. With all his help the amount of
ground covered in Vergil during that trip was not appreciable.

The opening of the spring term marked an acceleration of activities.
Outdoor sports at once began to flourish. The boat crews practiced
every afternoon on the ponds; the runners and high jumpers, the shot
putters and the hammer throwers engaged in daily trials at the athletic
field; there was a race after luncheon every day for the tennis courts,
and scrub baseball nines occupied the various diamonds. With all that
outdoor activity to interest and divert him, Lester Wallace did not
display the immediate improvement in scholarship to be expected of one
ambitious to remove the blight of probation. Particularly in Latin did
he continue to give imperfect readings; even when David tried to help
him, he seemed unable to fix his attention on the lesson.

Mr. Dean showed less patience with him than ever in the Latin class.
“No, it doesn’t do any good for you to guess at meanings,” he would
say when Wallace tried to plunge ahead without having prepared the
recitation. “You may sit down.”

Wallace did not seem disturbed by his failures. There was a whole month
before the Pythian-Corinthian baseball game, in which he expected to
play shortstop for the Pythians; in that time, when he set his mind to
it, he could easily emancipate himself from the shackles of probation.
Henshaw, captain of the Pythians, was more uneasy than Wallace. “Don’t
you worry, Huby,” Wallace said in reply to Henshaw’s expression of
uneasiness. “When the time comes, I’ll be all right.” And then he
would utter some sneering and disparaging remark about “old Dean.” He
was especially fond of making contemptuous comments on the master
when David could hear them; he seemed to take a malicious pleasure in
rousing David to defense or in seeing him bite his lip in vexed silence.

It seemed to David especially unkind that Wallace should cherish this
grudge when Mr. Dean was in a depressed condition of spirits. David
had noticed the change in the master during the preceding term; often
he seemed abstracted and subdued: and occasionally when he sat with
his green eye-shade shielding his eyes while David read aloud to him,
something told the boy that he was not listening and that his thoughts
were sad. Now since the spring vacation Mr. Dean’s manner had been even
more that of one who was tired and troubled. David had perhaps the best
opportunity of all the boys to judge his condition; Mr. Dean sent for
him more frequently and, though he talked less than had been his wont,
seemed to enjoy David’s presence in the room or by his side.

“I hope it doesn’t bore you, David,” he said one evening, “to come and
sit with me and read. You mustn’t let me take you away from livelier
companions.”

“Oh, no,” David replied, somewhat embarrassed. “I see enough of the
fellows through the day.”

“You read very well,” Mr. Dean remarked irrelevantly. “I like to hear
you read.”

David colored with pleasure. “We used to take turns reading aloud at
home in the evenings,” he said. “I always liked reading better than
being read to.”

“When you get old you like being read to,” replied Mr. Dean. “As our
pleasures diminish in number, we enjoy more those that are left――which
is very fortunate for some of us.”

David wondered what he meant and why he looked so grave. The boy felt
that some sorrow of which he knew nothing oppressed the master. It
seemed to him that Mr. Dean did not like to be alone; David often
wondered what it could be that had so visibly affected his spirits.

The time was not long in coming when he learned. One day Monroe was
translating in the Latin class; the hour was half over; Mr. Dean closed
his book and laid it on the table. Monroe and the other boys looked up
in wonder.

“I shall have to dismiss the class,” Mr. Dean said. “Will David Ives
stop and speak with me?”

There was a strange note in his voice that struck awe into the boys.
He did not seem to look at any one; his face was pale and rigid, and
he sat grasping the edge of his table as if for support. In mute
wonderment the boys filed out of the room, all except David, who waited
in front of the platform.

“David,” said the master, still without moving his head, “is David Ives
here?”

“Yes, right here, Mr. Dean.” David’s voice was scared; he could not
understand what had happened.

“Give me your hand, David.” The master put out his own gropingly. “I
can’t see, David. I’m blind.”

“Oh!” cried David. He clasped Mr. Dean’s hand. “It――it can’t be
serious. It will pass off――”

[Illustration: “OH!” CRIED DAVID. HE CLASPED MR. DEAN’S HAND. “IT――IT
CAN’T BE SERIOUS”]

“No, I’ve known it would come.” Mr. Dean rose. “If you’ll take me home,
David――”

Leading the helpless man along the corridor and down the stairs, David
was too stunned and too full of pity to speak. He had not known before
how much he cared for Mr. Dean, how affectionate was the feeling in his
heart for him; to have him now clasping his arm dependently brought
tears to his eyes.

They descended the stairs in silence; the boys of other classes were
studying in the schoolroom or attending recitations; not until David
led Mr. Dean outdoors did he see any one. Then in front of the study he
found his classmates waiting in curious groups; they watched him with
silent astonishment as he led Mr. Dean away. Monroe and Wallace and
one or two others made signals expressive of their desire to know what
was wrong, but David shook his head without speaking; Mr. Dean walked
clinging to him, apparently unaware of their presence.

As the two made their way slowly up the path to the master’s cottage
David looked about him, wondering what it must be to be suddenly and
forever deprived of sight. And to be so stricken on such a day in
spring, when the new grass shone like an emerald, and the elms were
living fountains of green spray! The boy looked up at the man’s face
with wonder and compassion――wonder for the expression of calmness that
he saw, compassion for the sightless, spectacled eyes.

“It came upon me suddenly in the midst of the recitation,” Mr. Dean
said. “A blur of the page, and then blackness. But I wasn’t unprepared
for it. I have known that this was before me ever since last Christmas.
For a long time I had been having trouble with my eyes that no glasses
seemed to help. When I went to an oculist in Boston during the
Christmas vacation he told me that some time I must expect to suffer
total blindness.”

“But wouldn’t some operation help?” asked David.

“I’m afraid not――from what he told me then and from what he has told me
at various times since. Of course I shall have an examination made, but
there really isn’t any hope. Well,” Mr. Dean added, with an effort to
speak cheerfully, “at any rate I shall no longer have to live in dread
of the moment when the thing happens.”

When David led him up the path to his door he pulled out his keys and
fumbled with them. “This is it,” he said at last. “No, I won’t give it
to you; I must learn to do things for myself.” And after a moment he
succeeded in slipping the key into the lock and in opening the door.
With but little help he found his way to his sofa; he sat down then
wearily.

“In a moment I shall ask you to do an errand for me, David, but first
let me tell you about this thing. I’ve told nobody――not even the
rector. I didn’t want to feel that while I was doing my work some
one’s sympathetic eyes were always on me. When I went to the oculist
in the Christmas vacation, I thought I merely needed new glasses; for
some time my sight had been blurred. The oculist gave me new glasses,
but said that they would be of only temporary benefit. When I asked
him what the trouble was, he explained that it was a disease of the
ophthalmic nerves. I asked him if it was liable to be serious; he
hesitated and then said that it might be――very. I told him that it was
important I should know the whole story, and then I learned that the
disease was progressive and incurable, and that the final catastrophe
might be sudden. He did not know how soon――he thought probably within
a year. Well, I did not rest content with his opinion; I went to other
oculists; all said the same thing. Ever since the spring vacation I
have known that this was imminent――that it was a matter not of months
but of days. I have been trying to prepare for it; but it’s the sort
of thing a man can’t prepare for very well.” He smiled faintly. “I’ve
practiced doing things with my eyes closed, dressing, undressing,
putting things away, finding my way about my room. I think that within
these four walls I can take care of myself after a fashion. But there’s
no disguising the fact that from now on for the rest of my life I shall
be one of the dependent; that’s the thing that comes hard.”

“I shall be glad to be of help to you in any way I can,” said David.

“Thank you, my boy. I felt that you would; that’s why I asked you to
help me now. I want Dr. Vincent to go down to Boston with me this
afternoon if he will; I want him to hear what the oculist says so that
in case there is any possibility of remedy by operation he can advise
me. If you’ll send him to me, and if you’ll also tell the rector――I
don’t think of anything else at present.”

David went at once upon his errands. The concern with which both Dr.
Vincent and the rector heard him and with which they hastened to the
afflicted man was hardly greater than that of the boys when David told
them what had taken place.

“Poor old duck!” said Monroe sympathetically. “I never thought he had
anything like that the matter with him. It makes me feel kind of mean
that I ever roasted him.”

Harry Clarke wondered whether he had any money――enough to live on.

“If he hasn’t, the school ought to pension him,” said Tom Henderson.
“How long has he been here――nearly forty years?”

“I guess they won’t let him starve; I guess the alumni would see to
that,” remarked Wallace.

“Pretty tough, though――just to sit in the dark and wait for death,”
said Clarke.

“I can’t imagine anything worse,” agreed Henderson.

But after the first pitying comments they did not concern themselves
with Mr. Dean’s plight; their own affairs were too absorbing. That
afternoon the Corinthians and the Pythians held their baseball practice
just as usual; of all the participants David was perhaps alone in being
preoccupied and heavy-hearted. He had come so much nearer to Mr. Dean
than any of the others, had been so bound by gratitude and affection to
him on account of the master’s tenderness when he was overwhelmed with
sorrow, that he could not lightly dismiss that helpless figure from his
thoughts. So his playing was mechanical and listless; he could take no
part in the brisk dialogue, the lively chatter that prevailed. It was
quite otherwise with Lester Wallace, who played brilliantly at first
base and who in the intervals of batting practice bubbled over with
enthusiasm about his own feelings.

“Wish we were playing a real game to-day,” said Lester. “I’ve got my
batting eye right with me, and my wing feels fine. Some days I can
whip ’em over to third better than others; this is my day all right.”

“You bet; keep up this clip and you’re going to play first on the
school nine,” remarked Henderson.

“Dave Ives here is some live wire in that position,” Wallace answered.

“Oh, Dave will do for a substitute,” said Henderson candidly. “If you
get off probation, Lester, you’ll have the position cinched.”

“I’ll get off all right. It won’t be such a job either――now that some
one else will take Mr. Dean’s place.”

That remark, more than Henderson’s frankness, made David wince. That
Wallace could imagine any advantages accruing to himself from Mr.
Dean’s misfortune was most unpleasant.

Upon the impulse David spoke. “You know perfectly well there isn’t a
fairer-minded man than Mr. Dean in this school.”

Wallace flushed. “I wasn’t trying to run him down, even if he always
has had it in for me.”

David made no response; the disclaimer was as unkind as the innuendo.

Two days later Mr. Dean returned to the school. He sent for David at
noon; David, entering his study, found him sitting at the desk with a
pen in his hand.

“I’m trying to learn to write,” Mr. Dean explained as he laid down
the pen and held out his hand. “Take up the page, David, and tell me
whether I overrun it or crowd lines and words together. What is my
tendency?”

“It’s all perfectly clear, only you waste a good deal of paper; you
space your lines far apart and get only a few words to a line,” David
said.

“That’s erring on the safe side, anyway. What’s going to bother me most
will be to know when the ink in my fountain pen runs dry. It would be
exasperating to write page after page and then learn that I hadn’t made
a mark!” Mr. Dean laughed cheerfully. “Well, the trip to Boston didn’t
result in any encouragement; I knew it wouldn’t. I’ve been talking
with the rector this morning, and I’m to go ahead with my work here.
The fact is, I’ve been teaching Cæsar, Vergil, and Horace for so many
years that I know them almost by heart――sufficiently well to be able to
follow the translation if some one reads the Latin passage to me first.
I wanted to ask you if you would pilot me to the classroom and home
again――for a few days at least; I expect in a short time to be able to
get about all alone.”

“Of course,” said David, and then he exclaimed, “It’s fine that you’ll
be able to keep on; it’s wonderful!”

“It’s generous of the rector to permit it,” said Mr. Dean. “I shan’t be
of any use for disciplinary purposes any more; I shall be relieved of
the side of teaching that I have always disliked, so my misfortune is
not without its compensations.”

“I’m awfully glad you’re not going to leave us,” David said. “And
you’ll find that all the fellows will want to help you.”

That afternoon when all the boys were assembled in the schoolroom
for the first hour of study, Dr. Davenport entered and, mounting the
platform, stood beside Mr. Randolph, the master in charge. The boys
turned from their desks and looked up at him expectantly.

“As you have all been grieved to learn,” said Mr. Davenport, “of
the affliction that has come upon the oldest and best loved of our
masters, so, I am sure, you will be glad to hear that he is not to be
lost to us, but will continue to do his work here, even under this
heavy handicap. We have all of us always respected and admired his
scholarship; we must do so even more now when it is equal to the task
of conducting recitations without reference to the printed page. We
have all of us always respected and admired his spirit of devotion;
even more must we admire it now and the fortitude that accompanies
it. I do not believe there is a boy here who would take advantage
of an infirmity so bravely borne, and I hope that those of you who
have classes with him will try to show by increased attention and
considerateness your appreciation of his spirit.”

Dr. Davenport stepped down from the platform and walked out of the
room, leaving it to its studious quiet.

At the end of the hour, in the five-minute intermission, David heard
Monroe say to Wallace, “Pretty good little talk of the rector’s; right
idea.”

“Oh, sure,” Wallace answered.

CHAPTER VIII

WALLACE’S EXAMINATION

Loneliness was at least one misery that the afflicted schoolmaster did
not have to experience. His colleagues were all attentive to him and
tried to relieve the monotony of the hours. Among the older boys were
many who came to see him in his rooms and offered their services for
reading or for guiding him on walks or for writing at his dictation.
He welcomed them all, he gave each one the pleasure of doing something
for him and himself took pleasure in the friendly thought, but it soon
became evident that there were two or three out of the whole number of
volunteers on whom he especially depended. Mr. Randolph, the English
teacher, and Mr. Delange, the French teacher, were his most intimate
and devoted friends among the masters; but on David even more than on
them he seemed to rely for little services. Thus it was David that
every morning after breakfast walked with him to chapel; it was David
that led him back to his house at the end of the daily fifth-form
Latin recitation; it was David that usually conducted him in the
afternoons to the athletic grounds. Always an interested observer of
the sports, Mr. Dean declared now that he would continue to follow
them even if he could not see; and so on almost every pleasant day
during the recreation hour he was to be found seated on the piazza of
the athletic house that overlooked the running track and the playing
field. One boy after another would come and sit beside him and tell
him what was going on; in the intervals of their activity ball-players
and runners would visit him and receive a word of congratulation for
success or of joking reproof for failure; sometimes he would ask his
companion of the moment not to enlighten him as to the progress of the
game, but to let him guess from the sounds and the shouts what was
taking place; his pleasure when he guessed correctly was enthusiastic
and touching.

“Try watching a game sometime with your eyes shut,” he suggested to
David. “You’d find there’s a certain amount of interest in it. You’ll
be surprised to find how successfully ears are capable of substituting
for eyes.”

Just then Lester Wallace, who had made a run in the Pythians’ practice
game, came up saying, “How are you, Mr. Dean? This is Wallace.”

“Good; that was a fine clean hit of yours just now. I said to David the
moment I heard the crack, ‘There goes a base hit.’ Don’t forget that
the Pythians need your batting, Wallace.”

“That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Dean.” Wallace
glanced at David somewhat sheepishly. “When do you think I’ll get off
probation?”

“I wouldn’t undertake to predict about that.” If there was no longer
any twinkle behind the dark glasses that Mr. Dean now wore, there was a
genial puckering of the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “But I can
tell you perhaps when you’ll have an opportunity to get off probation.
The game with the Corinthians is a week from to-day, isn’t it? Well,
you come to me in the noon intermission that day, and I’ll give you an
oral examination.”

“You don’t think I could get off any earlier?”

“I’m very much afraid, Wallace, that you need all the time I can give
you.”

“Haven’t my recitations been better lately, Mr. Dean?”

“Yes, there has been a decided improvement. I’ve noticed it, and I’ve
appreciated it, Wallace. For I thought that it was due not only to a
regard for your own welfare, but also to a kindly consideration for
me.”

He put out his hand gropingly and patted the boy’s leg. David
noticed that Wallace flushed and looked momentarily unhappy; then an
unpleasant, sulky expression appeared on his face.

“If my mark has improved so much and I go on reciting well in class, I
don’t see why I should have to stand an examination.”

“Only because it’s the rule, and we can’t make exceptions. I shall let
your work in the classroom count towards your efforts to regain your
freedom, but the examination must be important, too.”

Wallace’s acceptance of that decision did not seem to David particularly
gracious, nor did the dissatisfied look vanish from his face. He
withdrew after a few moments.

Mr. Dean remarked rather sadly to David; “I don’t seem ever quite to
get hold of Wallace. There’s something there, but I don’t reach him.”

“He’ll be all right when he’s off probation,” David said. “And I think
he really has been working harder; I’ve thought his recitations were
much better lately.”

“Yes, there’s no doubt of that, and perhaps it’s my fault that when we
meet he’s not more responsive. Every one of us is Dr. Fell to somebody,
I suppose, and there’s no use in blaming that somebody for what he
can’t help. There, who hit that crack? That must have been a good one.”

“Henshaw――long fly to center; Morris got under it all right. The
Corinthians are going out for practice now, Mr. Dean.”

“All right; good luck. Put up a star game at first, so that you can
tell me about it when you come in.”

David laughed and departed; looking back, he was glad to see that some
one already had taken his place beside Mr. Dean’s chair.

He played well that afternoon and had the satisfaction of being
commended by the captain, Treadway, as well as by Mr. Dean. When he
came out of the athletic house after dressing, the master was gone;
David walked up to the dormitory with Wallace.

“I wish I were off probation now,” Wallace said. “It seems to me Mr.
Dean likes to keep me in suspense; this idea of not knowing until the
day of the game whether I can play or not!”

“Oh, you’ll be able to play,” David assured him. “You’ve been doing
well in class lately; there’s no doubt about your getting through the
examination. If you want me to help you at all, I’ll be glad to do it.”

“I guess I can get off probation without your help,” said Wallace
ungraciously.

“Excuse me for speaking,” replied David, and he walked on, flushed and
silent.

Wallace spoke after a moment. “Hold on, Dave; don’t be so short with a
fellow. I didn’t mean to speak as I did. It was just that I――well, I
don’t want you to feel that I need to be helped all the time――as if I
couldn’t do anything for myself.”

He looked at the ground and seemed in spite of his words somewhat
shamefaced. But David paid no heed to that; his response to the appeal
was immediate.

“Of course you can do anything you set your mind to,” he said heartily,
linking arms with Wallace. “And I should think you would feel I was
a fresh, conceited lobster to come butting in always as if I thought
you couldn’t get along without me. The recitations you’ve been giving
lately have been as good as any one’s; and of course you ought to have
all the credit yourself when you get off probation. Your father will be
awfully pleased.”

“Oh, I guess he won’t care. Just so long as I get through my
examinations――that’s all that he takes any interest in.”

“He probably takes more interest than you think――of course he does――an
old St. Timothy’s boy himself!”

“Oh, well, I dare say.” For some reason Wallace was out of sorts. He
added, however, with more spirit: “Of course he’d like to see me play
on the nine. He was on it when he was here. I wish I could always be
sure of lining them out the way I did to-day.”

They talked baseball during the rest of the walk, and Wallace’s spirits
seemed to improve.

Indeed, as the days went on David could see no reason for Wallace’s
moodiness. On the ball field Wallace was playing so brilliantly and
received from team mates and spectators so much appreciation that
he had no reason to feel dissatisfied; never had his popularity and
importance in the school been greater. And so far as scholarship
was concerned, the improvement that he was making was notable.
In mathematics, French, and English he had never been under any
disqualifications, but he now was taking rank among the first in
the class. In Latin, the study in which he had always been weak and
indifferent, his translations had become surprisingly fluent and
correct. He sat by himself in a corner of the recitation room, holding
his book down between his knees and bending over it in an attitude of
supreme concentration; his nearest neighbor seldom saw him raise his
eyes and never had a glimpse of the text over which he pored. When
Mr. Dean called on him, he rose and, raising the book in his arms
and with bent head, read the Latin lines, then slowly but accurately
translated, scarcely ever stumbling over a word. Mr. Dean had a variety
of commendatory expressions for his work――“Good,” “Very well rendered
indeed,” “Good idiomatic English――the kind of translation I like; I
wish some of you other fellows would not be so slavishly literal.”
Wallace would sit down with a face unresponsive to such comments and
would again huddle over his book with absorbed attention.

David and some of the other fellows commented among themselves upon
those recitations.

“I didn’t know Lester was so bright,” said Monroe. “I guess there’s
nothing that boy can’t do if he puts his mind to it.”

“I guess there isn’t,” David agreed loyally. “He gets it from his
father; Dr. Wallace is a wonder.”

So impressive was the sudden manifestation of Wallace’s intellectual
prowess and so widely heralded the report of it that he was elected
into the Pen and Ink Society, an organization of boys with scholarly
and literary inclinations. The news of this election, however, he took
with bad grace; he declared himself entirely out of sympathy with the
purposes of the institution and expressed violently a resolve not to
be drafted into the ranks of the “high-brows.” The dejected emissaries
of the Pen and Ink had to report to their society that Wallace had
declined the election without even seeming sensible of the honor
that had been done him, and the popularity that Wallace had achieved
suffered somewhat in consequence. Some of the aggrieved members told
Ruth Davenport of the slight that had been put on their society, and
Ruth, when next she met Wallace, took him to task for it.

“Why,” she asked, “did you want to be so grouchy?”

“I wasn’t grouchy,” Wallace replied, though his manner at the moment
might have been so described. “I just felt I didn’t belong in that
crowd.”

“You might have shown them you appreciated the honor.”

“Oh, I might have if I’d felt I deserved it.”

“If you’d only said something like that to them!”

“Well, I didn’t deserve it, and I knew it better than they did; and I
didn’t want to be bothered.” He looked past Ruth with an expression at
once discontented and defiant.

“You’re an awfully funny person.” Ruth’s eyes twinkled and her lips
curved into a smile. “You’re so modest that you think you’re not good
enough for them, and yet you make them think they’re not good enough
for you!”

He did not respond to her gayety, but said in a rather surly voice: “I
don’t care what they think. I’m interested in baseball, not in silly
scribblings.”

The bell rang, summoning him to the schoolroom, and Ruth walked away,
feeling that she had been rebuffed by one of her friends.

It was impossible for her, however, and for such members of the Pen and
Ink as were daily spectators of the Pythians’ baseball practice, not to
admire Wallace’s playing, not to be enchanted by the speed and accuracy
of his throwing, the cleanness of his fielding, and the strength and
sureness of his batting. “The best infielder in the school,” the
fellows said; “the best infielder there’s ever been in the school,”
asserted the younger enthusiasts, as if from a fullness of knowledge.
Any way, Ruth and even the most incensed members of the scorned society
felt as they watched his enviable performances that they must forgive
much to the possessor of such talent――and sighed in their different
ways over his inaccessibility to advances.

“You’ve certainly got to get off probation,” said Henshaw to Wallace
the day before the game.

“Oh, I’ll get off all right,” Wallace assured him. “I’m to have a
special oral examination to-morrow at noon. You can count on me.”

The fifth-form Latin recitation came at the hour immediately preceding
that set for Wallace’s test. On the way to the classroom he showed
annoyance and irritation to those who crowded round him to express
their eager wishes for his success. “You needn’t hang about and wait
for news,” he said when Hudson, the Pythian short-stop, had hoped that
the suspense would not last long. “I’ll be all right, and I don’t want
a gang looking round when I come out.”

Hudson dropped back and remarked to David that he was afraid Wallace’s
nerves were pretty much on edge.

At the end of the recitation hour, while all the other fellows were
moving toward the door, Wallace kept his seat at the back of the room.
Mr. Dean asked David to stop and speak with him a moment; he told him
that Wallace’s examination would last about fifteen minutes, and that
then he would as usual be glad to have David’s assistance in walking
home. So David returned to the schoolroom and proceeded to work on the
problems in algebra assigned for the afternoon. He had finished one and
was halfway through another when a glance at the clock told him that it
was time to be going to Mr. Dean’s assistance――and also, no doubt, to
Wallace’s relief.

The examination was still proceeding when he entered the classroom and
sat down near the door. Wallace had moved forward and was occupying
a seat immediately under Mr. Dean; he looked up, startled, when
David appeared and then at once huddled himself over his book, which
he entirely embraced with arms and knees. He continued in a rather
mumbling and hesitating voice with his translation, but the halting
utterance did not disguise the accuracy of the rendering; David,
listening, was glad to be assured that Wallace was acquitting himself
so brilliantly. Mr. Dean interrupted the translation after a moment to
say:

“Is that you, David?”

“Yes, right here,” David answered.

“Lester and I will be finished in a few moments. We won’t keep you
waiting long.”

“If it’s just about walking home, Mr. Dean,” Wallace said, “David
needn’t stay; I shall be glad to walk home with you if you’ll let me.”
He spoke with eagerness, and Mr. Dean in his reply showed pleasure.

“Thank you. All right, David; I won’t detain you then any longer.”

As David departed he felt that Wallace had found his presence
unwelcome, and he was glad to remove himself from his position of
involuntary listener and critic. Besides, he could make good use of the
time in finishing his algebra exercises.

He returned to the schoolroom and was hard at work when Wallace
entered, passed him with brisk steps crying, “I’m all right; off
probation!” and, opening his desk, which was just behind David’s,
tossed his book into it. Then, without waiting for any congratulations,
Wallace hurried out to join Mr. Dean.

David, to his annoyance and perplexity, found that he had gone astray
in some of his processes and that his solution was wrong. Inspection
showed him where he had blundered; he opened his desk and looked for
his eraser. It was not there, and he remembered having lent it to
Wallace the night before. He got up and opened Wallace’s desk; the
confusion of books and papers daunted him, but he proceeded to search.
Then the topmost book, the one that Wallace had deposited there a few
moments before, arrested his attention; it was not the edition of
Vergil that the class used. He opened it out of curiosity and stood
there gazing at its pages with a stricken interest.

The book was of that variety known in St. Timothy’s parlance as a
“trot.” Alternating with the lines of Latin text were lines of English
translation. The correctness and fluency of Wallace’s recitations were
explained. So also was his huddling over his book, his shielding it so
carefully from any one’s gaze.

David put the book down and closed the desk without carrying any
further the search for the eraser.

CHAPTER IX

DAVID’S ENLIGHTENMENT

After closing Wallace’s desk upon his secret David walked slowly over
to the dormitory. He felt bewildered and uncertain. Something that had
been precious to him, something to which he had clung, had suddenly
and utterly been shattered. To get the better of a master in any way
that you could was, he knew, the code of many fellows, and in ordinary
circumstances, where the master had what the boys termed “a sporting
chance,” a resort to subterfuges and deceptions did not necessarily
imply depravity. But to take advantage of a blind man――that was base.

David arrived at his room five minutes before the hour for luncheon.
Happy excitement over the contest of the afternoon in which he was
to play a part had faded; in its place there seemed only a dull ache
of disappointment and loss. There came to him memories of Wallace’s
generous friendship――of the day when he had supported him in his fight
with Henshaw, of the time when he had given him his running shoes, of
the little acts of kindness; and he wondered now why it was that he
could not overlook the discovery that he had just made and feel toward
Wallace as he had always done.

The dinner bell rang; descending the stairs, David encountered Wallace
at the bottom. Wallace was radiant, slapped him on the shoulders and
cried: “I’ll get your goat this afternoon, Dave. How are you feeling?
Fine?”

“Not especially,” David answered; indeed, he felt himself shrinking
under his friend’s touch. He knew now that he could not assume the old
exuberant geniality and that until he had given Wallace an opportunity
to explain he could not keep up even the pretense of warm friendship.

Wallace did not notice his coolness; he saw another friend and made
for him. At the luncheon table Henshaw and Monroe and others expressed
their satisfaction that Wallace was saved to the Pythian team and,
more important still, to the school team. David wondered whether they
thought he was jealous or envious or unsportsmanlike because he did not
join in the remarks. He supposed they did think so, but that could add
little to his unhappiness.

As a matter of fact, once out on the field he was able to forget his
depressing preoccupations; the lively work of the preliminary practice
restored his zest for the game. And when it began he was as keen to
do his best, as eager to win, as any one on the Corinthian nine. But
victory did not perch on the Corinthian banner, in spite of the loyal
support of the “rooters” along the third-base line, in spite of the
desperate efforts of catcher and captain and whole infield to steady
a wavering pitcher, in spite of a ninth-inning rally, when a shower
of hits by seemingly inspired batters brought in three runs that were
within one of tying the score. The Pythians triumphed, eight runs to
seven, and unquestionably the chief honors belonged to Wallace. His
home run, a smashing hit to left center in the third inning, brought in
two others; and his double in the seventh sent what proved to be the
winning tally across the plate. Moreover, it was his leaping one-hand
catch of a hot liner from Treadway’s bat that closed the game when the
Corinthians were most threatening.

David, crouched forward on the players’ bench in nervous intentness
when that incident happened, felt a pang of disappointment, then a
throb of admiration for the brilliant catch and of gladness for him
who had made it, and then the chill of despondency; there could be no
real heartiness in any congratulations that he might offer to his old
friend. The Pythian crowd was rallying round Wallace; in another moment
he was hoisted on their shoulders and was being borne exuberantly
toward the athletic house, while spectators and players streamed in his
wake. David, walking slowly, overtook Mr. Dean, who arm in arm with Mr.
Randolph was leaving the field.

“A pretty good rally that you fellows made, David,” said Mr. Randolph.
“If it hadn’t been for that catch of Wallace’s you might have beaten
them.”

“Yes, yes!” Mr. Dean chuckled. “Wallace was too much for your team,
David. It seemed to me that I kept hearing the crack of his bat and the
thud of his glove all through the game. Well, he earned his right to
play, and I’m glad he distinguished himself.”

“He certainly played a wonderful game,” was all that David could say in
reply.

In the athletic house Wallace was still surrounded by his admirers.
David dressed hastily and went to his room. He shut himself in there
and thought. If he told Wallace what he had discovered and what he
suspected and how the suspected act of dishonesty had made him feel,
what would be the result? Wallace would probably always shun him
henceforth, and he would always be uncomfortable when Wallace was
present. Intimacy between them would die. And then――David knitted his
brows over this question――could he afford to return to St. Timothy’s
for another year at Dr. Wallace’s expense? Would he not feel ashamed to
do it? Would not Lester Wallace be justified in that case in looking at
him with a sneer? It did not take David long to determine what must be
the answer. No; in such circumstances to continue to be the beneficiary
of Dr. Wallace’s bounty would be intolerable. David realized that his
career at St. Timothy’s must come to an untimely end.

With that thought in mind, gazing out of the window at the pleasant,
sun-swept lawns and the ivy-covered buildings, he felt sad and
sorrowful. He did not want to leave prematurely this place that he
had learned to love and that was to have been――had already been――so
helpful in his development. But schooling purchased at the sacrifice of
self-respect would cost too dear. To preserve his self-respect he must
not play any false part toward Wallace; he must let him know exactly
what he had discovered and what a change in his feelings the discovery
had made.

Fifteen minutes later, on his way to the study, he met Ruth Davenport
and Lester Wallace. David touched his cap and was passing on when Ruth
stopped him.

“Wasn’t he the wonder, David!” she exclaimed with a sidelong laugh
at Wallace. “Do you suppose that after all he did to-day he’ll have
anything left to show against St. John’s?”

“Oh, just as much,” David answered lightly.

Wallace laughed; he was in high spirits. “Well, if I don’t, they’ll
have a mighty good substitute to use in my place.” He clapped David on
the shoulder.

“Yes,” Ruth agreed. “It’s a shame, David, that you both can’t play. But
anyway it will be much nicer for Mr. Dean; he told me that you help him
to see a game better than any one else. There he comes now with father.
Good-bye.” She darted across the road and went skipping to meet the
rector and Mr. Dean.

Wallace linked arms with David and started toward the study. “You put
up a cracking good game, too, Dave. Next year you must try playing
second base. Adams won’t be coming back, and you ought to be able to
get the place on the school nine. We’d make a good team, you and I, at
first and second.”

“I probably shan’t be coming back next year,” David answered.

Wallace dropped his arm and looked at him with amazement and
consternation.

“Why? What’s the trouble?”

“Oh, it just looks as if it wouldn’t be possible. But I want to talk
to you about something else, Lester. You remember I was sitting in the
schoolroom when you came in after your examination at noon?”

“Yes.” Wallace shot at him a glance of sharp suspicion.

“After you’d gone,” David continued with a tremor of nervousness in
his voice, “I wanted an eraser; I couldn’t find mine, and I looked in
your desk for it. I saw the book that was lying on top of the others. I
suppose it was the one you had just been using in your examination.”

Wallace’s face had turned a dull red. He hesitated a moment, then he
said quietly, “Yes, it was.”

“I didn’t suppose you’d do that kind of thing, Lester,” said David. “If
you’d done it to anybody else――but to a man that’s blind!”

Wallace was silent. David, glancing at him as they walked, saw that his
head was downcast and his face still red. The sight made David, who had
been steeling himself to be hard, soften and want to say, “O Lester,
we’ll forget it, we’ll never think of it again!” But he knew that could
not be true, and he walked on, silent.

“I was ashamed of it, Dave,” Wallace said at last in a low voice. “I
used the book in class――that’s how my recitations happened to be so
good. That’s how I got a reputation for being so bright――my election
to the Pen and Ink. You know I wouldn’t take it, Dave.” He spoke with
appeal in his voice. “I was ashamed to do that.”

They were approaching the study; they crossed the road to avoid groups
of boys who were standing in front of the building. “What you fellows
having a heart-to-heart about?” called Adams, who had played second
base on the Corinthian nine. Wallace made no answer; David waved a hand
in reply. They walked slowly on――for a time in silence. Then Wallace
spoke again:

“I found the book just by chance in a second-hand bookstore in town. It
wasn’t as if I’d done anything to injure Mr. Dean. It couldn’t hurt him
in any way.” His tone was pleading rather than defiant.

“No,” David said. “But it wasn’t straight. Don’t you see?”

“I didn’t always read the translation,” Wallace pleaded. “I only looked
at it when I had to.”

“If it had been anybody but a blind man.”

“Lots of fellows crib any way they can.”

“Not with Mr. Dean.”

“You’re dippy about him; you take it worse than he would himself!”
Wallace’s manner had become resentful instead of appealing.

“I can’t help it, Lester. Here’s a thing that I’ve found out about you,
and I’ve got to be honest and tell you how it’s made me feel.”

“All right; it’s just the opinion of a prig. I guess you’re right in
leaving; you’re too good to live in this school.”

Wallace’s voice had grown suddenly bitter with anger, and his eyes,
raised at last to meet David’s fairly, were hard and bright.

“Well,” said David flushing, “perhaps I am a prig. Anyway, you can’t be
more disappointed in me than I am in you.”

The study bell rang out; David wheeled and walked briskly to the
schoolroom while Wallace followed at a slower pace. In the hour of
study David’s thoughts kept straying from his books. He knew now that
he had hoped Wallace might have some explanation, some defense. His
little world was in ruins, and he had done his best. He was not sure
that he had not been the prig that Wallace styled him. Anyway, it was
the end of friendship between him and Wallace――and that meant the end
of his term at St. Timothy’s School.

That evening after supper Clarence Monroe brought David word that Mr.
Dean would like to see him at his house for a few minutes. He found the
master lying on his lounge, with his hands under his head.

“I was fortunate enough to learn a lot of poetry in my youth,” said Mr.
Dean when David entered. “It helps me now to while away the time, and
passages that I thought I had long since forgotten keep coming back to
me. Of course there are gaps, and it’s very trying not to be able to
fill them at once――to have to wait until I can find some one to look
the missing lines up for me. Just now I’ve been dredging my memory in
vain; do you remember the lines:

“Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains?”

“No,” David acknowledged. “I don’t know where they’re found.”

“They’re from Wordsworth’s poem on Tintern Abbey. But I can’t remember
just what comes after; you’ll find Wordsworth on that second shelf.”

David soon turned to the passage and began to read it, but Mr. Dean
took the words out of his mouth and recited them to the close.

“Now, I shouldn’t lose them again,” he said. “But you see how it
is――living alone here. Sometimes I can call my housekeeper to my
assistance, but she hasn’t much feeling for poetry, excellent
housekeeper though she is; and a sympathetic soul in such a matter is
important――an ear to hear and a mind to comprehend! Well, David, I sent
for you because I wanted to talk to you a little about my plans.”

David waited, silent in mystification.

“I told Dr. Davenport that I should of course resign my position at the
end of the year,” continued Mr. Dean. “I felt that I was too seriously
handicapped to be of much service. To my surprise Dr. Davenport said
that if I presented my resignation he wouldn’t accept it. He seemed to
think that I could still be of use to the school. Of course it pleased
and touched me very much that he should think so. But I realize that I
shall need a regular helper in my work; this term I’ve been depending
on the good nature of this person or that person. I’ve hesitated to ask
you; yet I’ve wondered if you would make the sacrifice of coming and
living here with me instead of with the fellows of your age and class?”

“It wouldn’t be any sacrifice, Mr. Dean. But”――David hesitated a
moment――“I’m afraid I shan’t be coming back next year.”

“Not coming back!” Mr. Dean’s voice rang with astonishment, and he
turned his head toward David as if he still could see. “Is it some
family difficulty, David? Your mother needs you at home, you think?”

“No, it isn’t that,” David answered reluctantly. “She doesn’t know yet
that I can’t come back.”

“It’s a matter, then, of very recent decision?”

“Yes. Just within a day or two I――I found it out.”

“Couldn’t you take me a little into your confidence, David?”

“It’s――it’s just that Lester Wallace and I aren’t on good terms any
more,” David said. “And I can’t let his father go on helping me, even
if he should be willing to.”

“Is that a necessary conclusion? Just because you and Wallace have had
a falling-out that, I hope, will be only temporary――”

“No, Mr. Dean, it isn’t that. It’s more serious. After what has
happened I simply couldn’t accept anything more from Dr. Wallace――I
couldn’t, that’s all.”

Mr. Dean deliberated for a few minutes. “I’m very sorry that your
friendship has been broken. But as to the other matter――has it ever
occurred to you to doubt that it is Dr. Wallace that is sending you to
St. Timothy’s?”

“Why, no; who else could it be?”

Mr. Dean smiled. “Oh, that you may try to guess. But it is not Dr.
Wallace; that I happen to know.”

“It isn’t!” The master could not see David’s wide, astonished eyes, but
he could recognize the sound of amazement in his voice. “Then who can
it be? Oh, I know! Mr. Dean! Mr. Dean!”

David dropped on one knee beside the couch and grasped his friend’s
hand.

“I didn’t intend to take you into my secret until the end of your
school career,” said Mr. Dean, squeezing the boy’s hand affectionately.
“I thought it would be better for you, less embarrassing, if you
didn’t feel under obligation to one in the immediate neighborhood.
But since you’ve guessed it――well, you must try to go on regarding me
exactly as before.”

“All right; I’ll try.” The very sound of David’s laugh was grateful and
affectionate. “But I don’t see why you ever did all this for me, Mr.
Dean.”

“I did it because I liked you and because I liked your father. I
haven’t any near relatives, David, and I have more money than I
need for my own use. You see, the reasons were very simple. And now
that you’ve wormed all this out of me――which you never should have
done――will you come and live here with me next year?”

“Of course I will! What is there that I should like better?”

At that moment there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” said Mr. Dean.

It was Lester Wallace that entered.

CHAPTER X

MR. DEAN PROVIDES FOR THE FUTURE

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dean when Wallace announced himself. “Sit down,
Wallace. You’re going, David? Then we may consider the matter settled?”

“If you’re sure you really want it so.”

“I’m sure. Good-bye.”

As David passed out, Wallace was still standing by the door,
embarrassed, with downcast eyes. He had given David no greeting and
seemed to desire none. Such evidence of his bitterness shadowed David’s
happiness――shadowed it, but not for long. How could he help being
happy? The sacrifice that he had been prepared to make was unnecessary;
the friend who was helping him was a friend whom he knew and loved
and understood, not one who in all essentials was a remote stranger.
The only disappointment involved in the discovery was his loss of the
vague belief that Dr. Wallace had chosen generously to testify his
professional admiration for an unappreciated _confrère_. And that
disappointment was balanced by satisfaction in Mr. Dean’s declaration
that he had been actuated by his liking for David’s father as well as
for David himself.

How splendid it was of Mr. Dean! And then David thought how thrilled
and excited his mother would be at learning the unexpected solution of
the mystery. He began a letter to her as soon as he reached his room;
he had not finished it when Wallace stood in his doorway.

“Hello, Lester!” David could not quite keep the note of surprise out of
his voice. “Come in and sit down.”

Wallace closed the door quietly behind him and dropped into a chair.

“I’ve just told Mr. Dean of my cribbing in the examination. I decided
it was the only thing to do.”

“That took sand all right!”――The old admiration shone from David’s eyes.

“No, it didn’t. After the way you talked to me I felt I didn’t want to
go on always knowing I’d done such a crooked thing without ever trying
to make it right. I told Mr. Dean that I should never have confessed if
you hadn’t found me out. So he knows I didn’t deserve much credit.”

“Just the same, I think you do, and I guess he thinks so,” David said
warmly.

“He was mighty good to me,” Wallace acknowledged. “He asked me what I
thought should be my status now, and I had to say that, as I hadn’t
honestly passed the examination, I supposed I ought to be put on
probation again. He said he supposed so, too, but he said he didn’t
want the school to know the reason for it all; he thought that, as I
had come to him, the story needn’t be made public. I said I was willing
to take my medicine, but of course I should be grateful if I wasn’t
shown up before everybody. So he’s just going to let it be known that
I’m on probation again, after all, and that there was some mistake made
in letting me off it; people can draw whatever conclusions they please.”

David went over and seated himself on the arm of Wallace’s chair; he
slipped his own arm round Wallace’s shoulders.

“Lester,” he said, “I feel somehow as if I’d done a mighty mean thing
to you. I guess I did talk like a prig.”

“You were right about it, anyway. And I’m glad I’ve got the thing off
my chest. I don’t want you to think of me as crooked, Dave.”

“I won’t! I never will! I was afraid you didn’t care any more what I
thought of you!”

“Well, I do!” Wallace reached up and gripped David’s hand. “Look here,
Dave――what was all that about your not coming back next year?”

“Oh, that was a mistake. I was feeling blue; I am coming back all
right.”

“Good enough! Don’t you think we might make a go of it if we roomed
together, Dave?”

“I’d rather room with you than any other fellow here, Lester. I’ve
often hoped you’d suggest it. But Mr. Dean has asked me to live with
him next year. He needs some one. That was what we were talking about
this evening.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” Wallace hesitated a moment and then said, “You know,
I like Mr. Dean. He’s making an awfully plucky fight. I never stopped
to think about that. The way he talked to me this evening――he was white
clear through. I’ll tell you one thing, Dave.” Wallace got slowly out
of his chair. “Nobody’s going to have any chance to put me on probation
next year.”

That resolve, however, as David knew, did not make it any easier for
Wallace to face the surprise, the disappointment, and the inquiries
of the school. The next day all St. Timothy’s buzzed with rumor and
excitement; the strangeness of Wallace’s case, off probation one day,
on again the next, and his own reticence as to the cause, led to gossip
and speculation. All he would say in reply to the questions of his best
friends was that Mr. Dean was not to be blamed in any way for thus
disqualifying him for the school nine; it was all his own fault, and he
did not care to talk about it.

Henshaw, captain of the nine, came to David.

“I’ve got to try you now at first,” he said. “I guess you’ll hold your
end up all right. But Lester makes me tired! He was the best batter on
the team.”

Wallace himself tried to make amends to the team for failing them. He
gave the members batting practice; he played on the scrub; he heartened
and encouraged the players with his praise. And his spirit of willing
service went far toward reëstablishing him in the affections of the
school.

The game that year was played at St. John’s, and thither on the day
appointed all St. Timothy’s journeyed――even Mr. Dean. And during the
game Mr. Dean and Wallace sat side by side on the players’ bench, and
Wallace reported to him the progress of events. He clapped his hands
with the rest when in the second inning David made a hit that brought
in a run――the only hit, to be sure, that he made during the game. It
was a hard-fought game, in which Carter, the St. Timothy’s pitcher, had
a little the better of it up to the ninth inning. Then, with the score
four to three against them, St. John’s came to the bat. The first man
struck out, but the next singled and the third was given his base on
balls. Carter seemed nervous and unsteady. Henshaw came in from third
base to encourage him; the St. John’s supporters had taken heart and
were keeping up a distracting tumult along the third-base line. Wallace
leaned forward, gripping cold hands together; Mr. Dean sat with an
expression of patient expectancy. Henshaw returned to his position,
and Carter faced the captain of St. John’s. The captain had determined
to “wait them out,” but Carter recovered control, and after having two
balls called sent two strikes over the plate. Then the batter hit a
hard grounder toward Adams, the second baseman; Adams made a brilliant
stop and tossed the ball to the short-stop, who was covering second,
and the short-stop shot it to David at first just ahead of the runner.
The game had been won in an instant; the St. Timothy’s crowd burst into
a tremendous roar.

Mr. Dean cried, in the midst of the bellowing, into Wallace’s ear,
“What happened?” and Wallace shouted back:

“Double play――Adams to Starr to Dave.”

And then Mr. Dean stood up and waved his hat and shouted with the rest.

David sat with Mr. Dean in the train going home. Near by sat Wallace
and Ruth Davenport, and David noticed that they talked together
seriously and did not seem affected by the jubilation and jollity that
prevailed throughout the car.

It was growing dusk when they reached St. Timothy’s, and lights were
glowing in the windows of the buildings. The hungry swarm poured
into the dining-room and rattled into their places at the tables;
the clatter of knife and fork did not, however, subdue the clamor of
tongues. Inexhaustibly they dwelt upon the afternoon’s triumph. David,
receiving congratulations and compliments from every side, was fairly
simmering with happiness. Then he caught sight of Wallace, sitting at a
distant table, quiet and forgotten, and compassion for Wallace, who was
missing all the pleasure and the satisfaction that might have been his,
checked the laughter on David’s lips. After supper Wallace was not to
be found. David walked down to the study; Ruth Davenport, waiting at
the rectory gate, called him across the road to her.

“Lester told me the whole story in the train to-day, David,” she said.
“You know, he’s awfully glad that you put him right. So am I.”

“Lester’s all right,” said David. “He was always all right.”

“He’ll be all right next year, anyway,” Ruth answered. “I always liked
Lester, but he’s had the idea that nothing mattered much so long as he
had his own way. You know, I like him better because he told me!” she
added irrelevantly.

“Nobody could help liking him,” David answered.

“Or you, either, David.”

And for David that little speech from Ruth put the crown upon a
glorious day. The study bell rang and summoned him, but for some
minutes after he was seated at his desk his mind was elsewhere than on
his books; his eyes saw, not the printed page, but the girl in white
standing by the gate and looking up at him with her honest, friendly
eyes.

* * * * *

It was a pleasant and happy summer vacation that David passed. He
was gratified to find that Ralph had grown in strength and athletic
promise, and he complimented him with fraternal frankness on the fact
that he had acquired more sense. His mother seemed to grow younger; at
any rate, she was more cheerful than when he had last seen her; only
occasionally did the look of sadness and of longing for the past come
into her eyes.

They spent a month camping in the woods on the shore of a lake; Maggie
went with them, though she protested that she did not see why they
wanted to leave a nice, tidy little apartment and run wild like the
Indians. She made that protest to Mrs. Ives and to Ralph, not to
David. Somehow she could not feel quite so free and easy with David
as formerly; he was not any longer just a boy. He had grown older and
bigger, and involuntarily Maggie found herself treating him with a
deference almost like that which she had been accustomed to observe
toward his father. To be sure, before the summer was over a good part
of that constraint wore off; but she never again could open her heart
to him in full and whole-souled criticism as in the old days.

For Mrs. Ives the ideal that Dr. Wallace had embodied was shattered.
David laughed to see how much she begrudged the grateful thoughts that
she had entertained toward the distinguished surgeon through all those
months.

“You know, he didn’t commit a wrong, mother, in not sending me back to
St. Timothy’s,” David reminded her. “You seem almost to feel that he’s
done us an injury.”

“No, of course not, David, but it does make me cross to think of all
the feelings I’ve had about him, and he never caring in the least! And
all the time I never once thought of that good, kind, poor Mr. Dean!”

From Mr. Dean came letters; he was passing the summer in Boston,
getting instruction in a school for the blind. “Interesting, but not
very encouraging,” he wrote. “If I were younger, perhaps I shouldn’t be
so stupid. But I’ve made some progress, and perhaps next year I shall
find that the lack of sight is not so troublesome.”

As David’s vacation drew to a close, his mother became again subdued
and wistful. She talked hopefully, she was glad that Mr. Dean had
intimated his intention to prepare David for the career that the boy’s
father had intended, but she could not readily resign herself to the
wrench of another parting.

“We live so far away,” she lamented on the last morning. “It takes so
long for letters to go and come. I can’t help feeling that you’ll be
less and less my boy, David, dear.”

He scoffed at her, but nevertheless her words struck home to a tender
spot. Of course he would never grow away from her in his heart, but he
realized that he would be away from her more and more continuously as
the years went on, and with a pang of shame he suddenly knew that the
separation would mean more to her than to him. He determined then and
there that he would try his best to make up to her through his letters
for the loss that she must always feel, to convince her that she always
had his confidence as well as his love. And during the next year he
fulfilled faithfully that resolve. It was a busy year, for besides
doing his own work he had to give a good deal of help to Mr. Dean;
moreover, as a sixth-former he had responsibilities and offices that
demanded a considerable amount of attention; his athletic avocations,
in which he had a gratifying success, were numerous. But the more he
had to do the more he found to write home about and the gayer and
cheerier was the spirit of what he wrote. It pleased him when in the
short vacations at Christmas and Easter his mother said: “I can hear
you in your letters, David. You write me such good letters!”

Between Mr. Dean, dependent on David in so many little matters, and
David, dependent on Mr. Dean in one large affair, the friendship grew
stronger and closer. The boy admired the man for his learning, his
kindness, his courtesy, and most of all for his courage; David wondered
how any one stricken with such an affliction could make so little
of it. And the man liked the boy for his responsiveness and for a
certain stanch and honest quality that could not fail to impress even
one who was blind. So the association was a happy one――so happy that
the masters commented upon it among themselves and wondered how Mr.
Dean would manage the next year; he seemed to have nobody in training
to take David’s place. David himself often wondered about it, but
refrained from asking any questions; and Mr. Dean kept his own counsel,
kept it, indeed, until one evening two weeks before the end of the
school year, the evening of the day on which St. Timothy’s had again
met St. John’s upon the ball field and been victorious. The members of
the nine had been cheered at the bonfire built in their honor, Lester
Wallace, the captain, had made a little speech, and then David had
slipped away to go to his room. But as he passed the open door of Mr.
Dean’s study the master called him.

“A great celebration, David?”

“Yes, pretty fine.” David came in and described the scene round the
bonfire.

Mr. Dean smiled. “Yes, I could hear the cheering. It was a great game!
I wish I could have really seen it! And you played well at second base?”

“I managed to pull through without any errors. But Lester was a wonder
at first――just like lightning!”

“You and he seemed to develop some fine team play together. And not
just on the ball field, either. You have shown good team play in
everything this year. At Harvard next year I hope it will continue;
there will be just as many opportunities for it.” Mr. Dean hesitated
a moment and then said, with a shade of diffidence and embarrassment,
“And I think our team play has been pretty good, David, don’t you?”

“Yours has been splendid, Mr. Dean.”

“You’ve done your share, David. So well that I don’t know how I shall
get on without you. In fact, I don’t want to get on without you.”

David was silent for a moment in embarrassment, not knowing what to
say. “Anybody else would be of just as much help, Mr. Dean,” he said
finally.

“Nobody else could be, because I couldn’t feel about anybody else
as I do about you, David. Well, I can’t ask you to stay on and be
a schoolboy indefinitely, can I?” Again Mr. Dean paused; he was
apparently finding it hard to say something that he had in mind. “I’ve
talked with the rector and told him that I shouldn’t come back next
year. He was very kind and urged me to reconsider――but I told him no.
I’m not so useful as I once was, and I can’t help being aware that in
some ways I hamper the administration. So it’s best for St. Timothy’s
and for me that I should withdraw.”

“The school will be awfully sorry to lose you, fellows and masters
both,” said David.

“I hope they’ll feel a friendly regret, the same that I feel at parting
from them. But the step is one that I’ve decided to take. And now the
question is, What am I to do with myself? I have enough money to live
comfortably. I was wondering, David, if your mother wouldn’t like to
take a house in Cambridge or Boston, since you’re to be at Harvard,
and take me in as a boarder? I know it’s asking a tremendous lot――to
suggest that she undertake the care of a blind man; she mustn’t feel
under any obligation to say she’ll do it. But I thought perhaps she
might like to be near you; and then there’s your brother Ralph――we
might arrange about his education, too. How do you feel about it,
David? And how do you think your mother would feel about it?”

“I think she’d feel it was too good to be true!” said David
enthusiastically. “Oh, Mr. Dean, I’m sure she’d feel it was the finest
thing in the world!”

Mr. Dean could recognize the eager ring in David’s voice even if he
could not see the eager sparkle in the boy’s eyes.

“Of course she mightn’t feel so at all,” he said, smiling. “She might
not want to move away from the place that had been her home. But if you
will sound her on the matter, David, when next you write, I shall be
very much obliged.”

“When next I write! I’m going to write to her this minute, Mr. Dean!”

Perhaps the master waited as eagerly as David for her reply. And one
morning the boy came to him with a letter.

“It’s just as I knew it would be, Mr. Dean,” he said; his eyes were
shining, his face was happy. “She’s so excited she couldn’t even write
straight; her hand was all shaky. She thinks more than ever that you’re
the finest person in the world.”

Mr. Dean laughed joyously. “She’ll have plenty of opportunity to
discover that I’m not. Well, David, old man, I guess you’ve got me on
your hands for life.”

Indeed, Mrs. Ives had written to her boy a letter that was throbbing
with joy and happiness. Yet toward the end she had admitted misgivings.
She felt that she should be overawed by Mr. Dean. Her looks would not
matter, of course, but she was afraid he might not like her voice or
the way she read aloud, and of course he would want to have some one
who could read pleasantly to him. David laughed and did not pass on
those doubtful questionings to Mr. Dean. He knew that his mother’s
voice was all right. He laughed, too, over the end of the letter.
“I’ve just told Maggie, and she said, ‘The dear sake! Of all the crazy
notions! You mean to tell me you’re going to pull up stakes, root and
branch!’ I said I thought I really should, and then Maggie said, ‘Very
well. But you and a blind man――you’ll need me to look after the both
of you!’ Isn’t it nice of her? As for Ralph, he’s simply wild with
delight――” and so on.

Before the end of the school year the arrangements were partly made.
Mr. Dean was to spend the summer in Boston at the school for the blind.
About the first of September David was to bring his family on from the
West, and then they would all go house-hunting together. David went
round those last few days walking on air; examinations did not bother
him; everything was fine; every one was happy.

And then there came upon him a sense of melancholy, even of sadness. He
did not want so soon to leave this place that had been so dear to him.
The days slipped by inexorably. And on the last night, in the middle of
the school hymns, he was very near to weeping, and when he shook hands
with the rector and said good-bye he could not say more than just that
word.

Outside he saw a figure in white standing behind the rectory gate. He
crossed the road and spoke to her.

“I hate to go, Ruth. You’ve been awfully nice to me here.”

“I’m sorry to think that you and Lester and all the rest are leaving,
David. That’s the trouble with being a girl in a boys’ school. Your
friends are always leaving you――over and over and over.”

“You make so many new ones that perhaps you don’t miss the old.”

“Yes, I do, David. You’ll come up and see us sometimes, won’t you?”

They bade each other good-bye, and he went away. Yes, he would
go back to St. Timothy’s and see them, he said to himself quite
distinctly――often and often.

CHAPTER XI

THE FAMILY MIGRATION

The departure from the city that had been their home cost David and
Ralph few pangs. To them it meant faring forth gayly into a world of
novelty and excitement. They assumed light-heartedly that the friends
and places that they were leaving would always be friends and places
that they would love and revisit; and on the last morning when they
stood with their mother beside their father’s grave they felt that in
future years they would often return to this shrine. Mrs. Ives laid
a spray of roses against the headstone; her hand rested for a moment
gently on the mound of earth. When she stood up the tears were flowing
down her cheeks; she caught and pressed the hands of her boys and
cried, “Oh, I can’t go! I can’t go!” Then they stood, renewing each
of them poignantly the sweetness and the bitterness of their common
sorrow, loath to turn from that little, hallowed spot of ground. In
the row of cedars that partly screened the graveled driveway below
them birds were singing; the fragrance of pine and hemlock, of clipped
hedges and mown lawns, of white phlox and candytuft and sweet alyssum
were in the air. A squirrel suddenly sprang from a tree and ran away
over mounds and headstones.

“Look, mother, look at the squirrel!” cried Ralph.

“Yes, dear, yes.” Mrs. Ives dried her tears. Children could not be
expected to be sad for very long. The scamper of that inconsequent bit
of furry life, with plumy tail streaming behind, and the eager instant
cry of the small boy closed the chapter of wistful meditation; Mrs.
Ives turned away from her husband’s grave.

In comparison with that no other parting could be sad. And when at last
they were on the train, and the train was pulling out of the city, the
mother’s spirits rose like Ralph’s; for at heart she was almost as much
a child as he.

“Look, Ralph!” she said. “There’s the academy and the library――and the
church. It’s so queer to think we shan’t be seeing them again in a few
days. But just think of all that we shall see――the Longfellow house and
Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock! The last time I took a long journey like
this was on my honeymoon!”

“I was awfully excited the first time I made this trip East,” observed
David. “I’ve been over the road so often now that I know it all pretty
well. How do you like it, Maggie?” He could not help feeling his
dignity as the experienced traveler, but the degree of patronage that
he bestowed upon the members of his party was not offensive, even to
Ralph.

Maggie, replying to his question, reached what was for her the acme of
enthusiasm. “Oh, well enough so far,” she said. “I don’t know how it’ll
be when it comes night.”

Indeed, to all of them the journey was one that held the spirit of
romance. It was an adventure that was altering the course and current
of their lives, and because they were all embarked in it together and
it was beginning so pleasantly they felt happy and hopeful concerning
the outcome. Each river that they crossed, each town that they left
behind, marked a stage in their progress toward romance――mysterious
romance in the person of a poor blind man who waited for them eagerly,
who had been their friend and helper and who now needed their
friendship and help.

For two days they traveled; then in the middle of the afternoon――a
warm, golden afternoon――their train drew into Boston. Nervousness
overcame Mrs. Ives at this approach to the first crisis in her new life.

“Do you think Mr. Dean will be at the station with some one to meet
us?” she asked David.

“I think very likely. He knows we’re arriving by this train.”

“Do you think I look all right, David?”

“You surely do. But it couldn’t make any difference if you didn’t.”

“That’s true. I keep forgetting. But anyway I always feel that, if I
look all right, I shall be more likely to behave in a way that will
make a good impression. And I do want to do that. Even though Mr. Dean
can’t see me, he is sure to form some impression of me.”

“A nice shy little person that he’ll like the better the more he knows
her――that’s the impression he’ll have of you. Yes, your face is clean,
and your hat is straight, and your veil too.”

Nevertheless, it was an agitated little woman that, clinging to her
elder son’s arm, was swept along the platform in the midst of the
streaming crowd. She clutched him still more tightly when he cried, “I
see him, mother! I see him!”

The next moment he had Mr. Dean by the hand, and Mr. Dean’s face had
lightened; even the black glasses that he wore seemed no longer to
cloud it as he cried, “David, my boy! So you’re here! And your mother?
And Ralph?”

“Right here,” said David. “This is mother, Mr. Dean.” He placed her
hand in the blind man’s.

Mr. Dean, holding her hand, took off his hat and bowed; to Mrs. Ives
the careful courtesy of his greeting to one whom he could not see was
touching. “Oh, Mr. Dean,” she exclaimed, “how good of you to meet us!”

Then the blind man, enclosing her hand in both of his, said, “You’re
David’s mother; I knew that I should like the sound of your voice.”

Next there was Ralph to be greeted. “And this is Maggie, Mr. Dean,”
said David, and Mr. Dean said at once:

“You’ll find me a great care, Maggie, a great care, but no worse, I’m
sure, than you’re expecting.”

At that Maggie giggled, quite at a loss for an answer and greatly
delighted with a blind gentleman who had such power to read her
thoughts.

“Now, Edith,” said Mr. Dean, turning his head. “Where are you, Edith?”

The attractive lady in gray whom David had noticed and who had stood
back a little during the greetings came forward with a smile.

Mr. Dean introduced her. “Mrs. Ives,” he said, “this is my friend
Mrs. Bradley, and she can tell you all the outs about me――though she
probably won’t.”

“I feel as if I already knew David and his mother,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Now we’re going to take you to a hotel――we’ve engaged rooms for
you――and if you’re not too tired you must come and dine with us this
evening.”

She led the way with Mrs. Ives and Ralph; David and Mr. Dean walked arm
in arm behind.

“We’ll go sight-seeing――house-hunting, I mean――to-morrow, David; we’ll
do it leisurely. And”――Mr. Dean dropped his voice――“you mustn’t let
your mother worry about hotel bills or anything of that kind; that’s
all arranged for, you understand.”

“But, Mr. Dean――” began David.

“No, it’s all settled. I’ve prevailed on your family to come East for
my benefit, and I don’t intend to have them do it at their expense.
After all, David, you know I’m to be one of the family now.”

Mrs. Bradley marshaled them all into her big motor car; a few minutes
later she and Mr. Dean were leaving them at the entrance to the hotel.

“We’ll see you then at seven this evening,” she said. “Good-bye.”

“I know I haven’t clothes fit to wear to such a house,” began Mrs. Ives
as soon as she was in her room. “And I can’t help feeling shy and quiet
with such people; they know so much more than I do.”

“People aren’t liked for their knowledge,” said David. “Just for what
they are.”

“I don’t know whether there’s anything encouraging for me in that idea
or not,” said his mother.

Nevertheless, in the excited spirit of gayety rather than with
reluctant diffidence, she prepared to go out for dinner. She even
tried to draw from Maggie, who was assisting her in her preparations,
some more pronounced expression of satisfaction than had yet been
forthcoming. She invited Maggie to subscribe to her eulogy of Mr. Dean.
But Maggie only answered, “I’m glad he seems to realize he’ll be an
awful care.”

As Mrs. Bradley had explained that her house was only a short distance
from the hotel, the Ives family set forth on foot. Their directions
took them across the Common; in the twilight it seemed to them a
romantic place, but it was in vain that Mrs. Ives, for the benefit of
her sons and for the heightening of her own excitement and pleasure,
strove to recall to her memory the events that gave it historic
significance. “I know there were great doings here of some sort,” she
said, “but I can’t remember just what they were. It’s so discouraging
to have my kind of a mind.”

Anyway, it was all mysterious, romantic, and adventurous to be
strolling in this manner among presumably historic scenes that were
brooded over by lofty, venerable elms――trees novel and enchanting to
Western eyes. The illumination of the city streets shining across the
open spaces was enlivening; the soft air was hospitable; the melting
colors in the west communicated a glow to timid hearts. Entering the
sphere of tranquil dignity that circumscribes Beacon Hill, the visitors
ascended to the top of Mount Vernon Street; there, while searching for
the designated portal, Mrs. Ives bethought herself to convey in an
undertone to Ralph a last injunction: “Remember, Ralph, to sit quiet
and wait for things to be passed to you; don’t ask and reach as you do
at home.” Ralph’s inarticulate reply betokened a subdued spirit.

A white colonial door with a brass knocker presented the number of
which they were in search; they were conducted up the stairs and into
the spacious drawing-room, where four smiling Bradleys welcomed them.
Mr. Bradley, a tall, bald-headed gentleman with a white mustache and
wrinkled brow, looked twenty years older than his animated and handsome
wife; more reasonably than she he seemed the friend and contemporary of
Mr. Dean. To David he was at once the least interesting and important
member of the family. Richard, a tall, slim youth of about David’s
age, with a nose too short for his height and a mouth the corners of
which seemed habitually pointed upward as if in search of amusement,
engaged David’s most favorable attention. Marion Bradley was tall and
slim also, but in no other respect resembled her coltish and informal
brother. There was no hint of disproportion in any of her features;
their very exquisiteness was severe, and David felt at once both
chilled and perturbed by the young creature’s beauty. The steadfastness
and depth of luminosity in her dark eyes were disconcerting to an
inexperienced youth. With a sense of his own cowardice he turned to the
brother as to a refuge and left Marion to consider and to ruminate upon
the defenseless Ralph. It was the easier to do that because in the
first few moments he learned that he and Richard were to be classmates
at Harvard, and each had eager questions to ask.

Mr. Dean’s voice was heard calling from above. Marion answered in a
voice the cultivated quality of which chimed distractingly on David’s
ear; then with mature serenity she left the room to go upstairs to the
blind man’s aid. Presently she returned, arm in arm with him.

“My family have arrived?” asked Mr. Dean, and upon Mrs. Bradley’s
replying that they had, he said, “Then I must begin to get acquainted
with them; Mrs. Ives, won’t you lead me over to the sofa and sit down
with me?”

“If Mrs. Ives will go down to dinner with you instead,” said Mrs.
Bradley. “It’s all ready.”

It was a cheerful gathering, and Mrs. Ives soon felt quite at her ease
with Mr. Dean and with all the Bradley family except Marion. She found
afterwards that she and David had formed similar impressions of Marion.

“I suppose she hasn’t really a better mind than her father or her
mother, but she makes me more afraid of it,” said Mrs. Ives.

“She’s too self-possessed and doesn’t feel any responsibility for
entertaining her guests――just sits and sizes them up,” David observed.
“Not the kind I like――not a bit like Ruth Davenport up at St. Timothy’s.
Richard’s a brick, though, and so is the old man.”

Mrs. Ives concurred in that opinion. After dinner Mr. Bradley had
invited her to leave the others and accompany him into his library
where they might have a talk.

“Mr. Dean has asked me to inform you more or less as to his affairs,”
he said as he closed the door. “He feels it would be embarrassing
for him to discuss them at the very start, and yet they must be
discussed. As I’m his man of business, I can put them before you. He
is quite comfortably off. He wants you to rent a good large house in
an attractive neighborhood in Cambridge, a house in which he will have
a comfortable study, bedroom, and bath. He would like to have you take
charge of all expenses and disbursements for the house. And he wishes
me to pay to you monthly one thousand dollars for house and family
expenses――including David’s expenses at college and Ralph’s at school.”

“But it’s too much!” cried Mrs. Ives, quite aghast at the idea of
having to dispose of an allowance of such magnitude. “Why, I thought
he meant just to be a boarder! And to pay twelve thousand a year for
board and lodging! I never heard of such a thing!”

“His mind is made up, and you must let him have his way. He has the
money to spend, and he is convinced that he can’t use it to any better
purpose.”

“But I can’t feel that it’s right! I don’t feel that I can accept such
an arrangement.”

Mr. Bradley set about overcoming the expected resistance. He dwelt upon
the disappointment and distress that would fall upon Mr. Dean if the
plan, which it had given him great pleasure to devise, were rejected;
he assured Mrs. Ives that Mr. Dean’s heart was wrapped up in David,
and that he was already anticipating the development of a similar
affection for Ralph; he pointed out that Mr. Dean had no relatives
to feel aggrieved at such a bestowal of his affections. Furthermore,
after the necessary expenses for the education of the two boys were
deducted, the allowance that was contemplated would not be more than
sufficient to surround Mr. Dean with the comforts that he desired. Mr.
Bradley urged Mrs. Ives to think how little there was in life for the
blind man and how cruel it would be to deny him his happiness; he drew
such an affecting picture of Mr. Dean’s forlornness in the event of
her rejecting his proposal that the soft woman could not in the end be
anything but submissive.

“If you think it’s right that I should accept it, Mr. Bradley――if you
feel that it would really disappoint Mr. Dean――” She spoke with a
quiver of the voice.

“Of course I think it’s right; I shouldn’t be trying so hard to
persuade you if I didn’t,” said Mr. Bradley. “Now let’s go in and
relieve the poor man’s suspense. I’m afraid the length of our interview
is making him uneasy.”

Mr. Dean would not listen to Mrs. Ives when she tried to make a
little speech of appreciation. “All settled, is it?” he said. “That’s
good――no, no, my dear lady, you don’t know what you’re in for; I
assure you, you don’t; so there’s no use in your trying to say
anything――absolutely not anything. And to-morrow perhaps you’ll go with
Mrs. Bradley and try to find a house. Mrs. Bradley knows pretty well
the kind of house I have in mind, and if you and she can agree on one,
I shall be satisfied.”

Walking back across the Common to the hotel, Mrs. Ives breathed aloud
her blessings. Pious longing followed them. “If only your father could
know! Perhaps he does. What was to become of us――that troubled him so
in those last days! Oh, boys, you won’t forget him――you won’t lose
sight of what he was and what he hoped for you! In this new place,
where there will be nothing to remind you of him, you must keep him in
your thoughts. You will, David; you will too, Ralph!”

“Yes, mother,” each boy answered; and Mrs. Ives looked up at the quiet
stars and told herself that here in this strange place even as at home
a loved and loving spirit watched over her and her two sons.

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW NEIGHBOR

Within a week Mrs. Ives and her family were established in a house
in one of the little, shaded, unexpected streets that in those days
contributed to the charm of Cambridge. It was a large square house set
well back in half an acre of ground; to one side of it lay a garden
with rustic seats and rose trellises and flower beds bright at that
season with asters and marigolds. There were elms and larches in front
of the house, and enormous robins hopped about on the smooth lawn on
sunny mornings and sunny afternoons.

With the interior of the house Mrs. Ives was as pleased as with its
surroundings――with its spacious rooms and the tiled fireplaces and the
latticed casement windows that looked out upon the garden; the house
had been the property of an aged professor of Greek who had died a few
months before, and it seemed to her that the austere dignity of the
late owner continued to invest its walls. She felt that it was by its
associations an appropriate abode for Mr. Dean, and that its classical
atmosphere must in some subtle way communicate itself to his senses.
At any rate she saw to it that he had the largest and most comfortable
room in the house, the room into which the morning sun poured its
liveliest beams. David led him through all the rooms, showed him where
his books were arranged, helped him to explore the garden and described
to him in detail the wall-papers, the pictures and the articles of
furniture. Mr. Dean gratified Mrs. Ives by telling her that his only
fear was lest she had sacrificed her own comfort to insure his; he
gratified Maggie by his appreciation of her cooking; he gratified Mary,
the waitress, by his pleasant recognition of her small attentions and
kindnesses; he soon endeared himself to the entire household.

Mrs. Ives was not long in finding out that Mr. Herbert Vance, a
professor of Latin at Harvard, was the owner of the adjoining estate; a
gate in the garden hedge testified to the friendly intercourse that had
existed between him and his deceased colleague. One afternoon, while
the family were seated on the piazza overlooking the garden and David
was reading aloud to his mother and Mr. Dean, the gate in the hedge
opened and a young girl advanced, shy and smiling. She was bareheaded;
the sun struck red-gold lights in her hair, and when she smiled her
eyes and face seemed as sparkling and sunny as her hair.

“I’m Katharine Vance, Mrs. Ives,” she said. “Are you settled enough to
be willing to receive callers?”

Mrs. Ives assured her that they were beginning to feel lonely for the
lack of them.

Mr. Dean at once entered into the conversation. “When I was teaching
Latin I had rather have seen your father’s library than that of any
other man in America,” he said.

“I hope you’ll still be interested in it,” the girl answered. “You must
come over and let father talk to you about it. He’s prouder of his
collection than of his child.”

“I’m sure he can’t be,” said Mrs. Ives, with the polite obviousness
that was her social habit.

“Oh, yes――and he knows ever so much more about it. One of my school
friends is Marion Bradley. Don’t you love her? She’s the brightest girl
in school. She asked me to come and see you as soon as you got settled.
Of course I should have done that anyway.”

Her friendly, observant eyes roved from one to another of her audience.

“Yes, you’re quite right about Marion; _I_ love her,” said Mr. Dean.
“These other people don’t know her well enough probably to have reached
that stage as yet. Are you a Latin scholar like your father?”

“Oh, no; Marion always beats me. Marion always leads the class.”

She turned her attention to David and said she had heard that he came
from St. Timothy’s, and asked him whether he knew Lawrence Bruce and
John Murray; and David regretted now that he had not cultivated the
acquaintance of those young fifth-formers. But she was not discouraged
by his inability to claim intimacy with them――there were other subjects
just as interesting――and she chatted about the incoming freshman class,
of which she knew quite as much as David himself, and asked him what
sports he meant to take part in and where he was to room and what
courses he was to elect.

“Oh, tea!” she exclaimed in rapture when the waitress appeared with the
tray. “We never have it at home.”

She displayed a hearty appetite, and that completed her conquest of
Mrs. Ives. After she had returned through the garden gate, Mrs. Ives
remarked that they had a very attractive neighbor, and Mr. Dean tried
without much success to draw from David a description of the young
girl’s looks.

As the days went by the gate in the hedge was often opened; the members
of the two families came to be on easy-going, neighborly terms. Mr.
Vance, a shock-headed, stoop-shouldered elderly widower with a scant
regard for his personal appearance that caused his daughter both
distress and amusement, was enchanted with Mr. Dean, his scholarship
and his appreciation. Over the telephone he would frequently invite him
to his study for an hour of conversation and would then present himself
at Mrs. Ives’s door to act as guide. Mrs. Ives revered her new neighbor
not only for the vast knowledge that had qualified him for the post of
professor at Harvard University, but even more for the associations
of his youth, which he sometimes recalled while she listened in rapt
wonder. He had studied under Lowell and Longfellow, he had seen Emerson
and Hawthorne, he had been in the audience that heard Lowell read the
“Commemoration Ode,” and he had even dined at the Autocrat’s table.
Mrs. Ives, who on her second day in Cambridge had audaciously plucked a
tiny sprig of lilac from the hedge in front of Longfellow’s house and
was preserving the treasure between the leaves of a dictionary, and who
had stood that same day a worshipful pilgrim in the gateway in front of
Lowell’s mansion, listened to her neighbor’s reminiscences and comments
with mingled exultation and amazement, although she lost some of them
owing to her habit of incredulously congratulating herself in the midst
of his talk upon her extraordinary privilege.

Within a few days the college had opened and David had taken up his
quarters in one of the dormitories. But he came home daily and either
walked with Mr. Dean or read to him; after Christmas this daily visit
acquired greater importance for his mother and perhaps also for the
blind man. For Ralph had now gone to St. Timothy’s, his entrance there
having been delayed, and much of the time the house seemed subdued
and perhaps a little sad. David’s visits were cheerful episodes, and
Katharine Vance contributed to her neighbors’ happiness. She made Mr.
Dean her especial care and came in to see him two or three times a
week; moreover, she got some of her friends to call and succeeded in
imbuing them with the feeling that it might be a rather nice, pleasant
charity occasionally to sacrifice themselves to the entertainment
of the blind man. So, even with David in college and Ralph at St.
Timothy’s, Mr. Dean was seldom lonely; and Mrs. Ives gradually found
her place in the community and was happy in her tranquil, comfortable
life. Only at times her mind took her back to the house that had been
the scene of her greatest happiness and her deepest sorrow, and the
tears would suddenly fill her eyes. She wondered whether the little
cemetery lot was being well cared for; at those times she longed
desperately to visit it and lay flowers on the grave.

In college David acquired the reputation of being a good all-round man
of no special brilliancy. He always held a high rank in scholarship; he
took part in athletics, though he never made a varsity team; he sang in
the glee club; he was elected an editor of one of the college papers;
and by reason of all his activities and the earnestness and enthusiasm
with which he entered into them he became one of the most widely known
and popular members of his class. He took no such conspicuous place,
however, as that which his friend from St. Timothy’s, Lester Wallace,
seized almost immediately and held throughout the college course.
Lester captained the victorious freshman football team and was elected
president of the freshman class; he played on the freshman baseball
nine, and in subsequent years he won a place on both the varsity eleven
and the varsity nine. Even if he had not been endowed with a brilliant
talent for athletics, he could have danced and sung his way into
popularity; there was no livelier hand at the piano than his, no more
engaging voice when upraised in song, no foot more clever at the clog,
the double shuffle, the breakdown, or the more intricate steps of the
accomplished buck-and-wing performer.

David shared the general admiration for his gifted friend, even though
he did not share Lester’s point of view on many subjects. Throughout
his college course Lester so arranged matters that never on any day was
he troubled with a lecture or a recitation after half-past two o’clock.

“Get the dirty work of the day over with as soon as you can and then
enjoy yourself; that’s my motto,” he declared; and he expostulated with
David for choosing courses that occasionally required laboratory work
through long afternoons.

“But if you’re going to study medicine, you ought to have a certain
amount of laboratory knowledge to begin with,” David replied.

“Oh, you can get it when the time comes,” Lester responded easily.
“These four years are the best years of your life, my boy; it’s a crime
to waste any part of them――particularly the afternoons and evenings.”

With that philosophy, with his attractive personality, and with the
prestige of spectacular achievement on the athletic field, Lester was
sure to have a gay and ardent following. Among those who attached
themselves to him with an almost passionate devotion was Richard
Bradley. Himself a youth of lively and humorous disposition, not of a
studious turn of mind, an admirer of athletes rather than athletic, he
found in Lester his beau ideal; and when in their sophomore year Lester
consented to room with him, Richard felt a jubilant happiness similar
to that, perhaps, which the young swain who has received a favorable
reply from his sweetheart experiences. Richard’s family, with the
possible exception of Marion, who was non-committal, were less happy
about the arrangement.

“I am afraid you regard your college course merely as a social
experience,” said Mr. Bradley when Richard told him that he was to
room the next year with the most popular man in the class, already
president of it and likely to be first marshal also. “It would do you
more good to room with the best scholar than with the best athlete.”

“Just wait till you know him,” pleaded Richard.

One Sunday he brought Lester in to lunch with the family and was
satisfied with the result. Even his father had fallen a victim to
Lester’s charm. As for the young ladies of Boston and Cambridge whom
Lester met at the numerous parties that he graced with his presence,
half of them sang his praises and half of them denounced him as
spoiled, conceited, or insincere.

Katharine Vance told David that she did not like Lester Wallace because
he was too much a man of the world.

David had come to be on terms of intimacy with all the Bradley family
except Marion, and possibly he was piqued by her consistent formality.
He spent his summer vacations, as it were, at the Bradleys’ door; on
their estate at Buzzard’s Bay there was a small house that they called
the cottage and that they had always rented to Mr. Dean. Now they
enlarged it and rented it to the “Dean-Iveses,” as they conveniently
termed the family. David and Richard played tennis and golf and sailed,
and went for a dip in the sea two or three times a day; and Ralph
grew old enough to be of some use and companionship. Usually the
Bradleys’ big house was filled with Richard’s friends; the Bradleys
were hospitable people. Only Marion was cool to David; and it wounded
him, because he could not help admiring her. She spoke French and read
Italian and commanded at least a jargon about pictures and sculptures
and had a solid grounding in music.

“No wonder,” thought David ruefully on many an occasion when ignorance
kept him dumb, “no wonder that she despises me!”

He acknowledged to himself that it did seem as if school and college
had done little for him, so far as qualifying him to make a brilliant
appearance in society was concerned. Biology was not a parlor subject;
chemistry made the hands unattractive; physics was a thing in which no
girl was ever interested. Now Lester Wallace――there was a fellow who
could prattle like a man of parts! He knew how to talk to such a girl
as Marion.

Nevertheless Lester was frank in commenting upon her to David. “She’s a
nice girl, but awfully high-brow and intense. It’s a great strain for
one who has just what you might call a quick intelligence.”

David laughed. “Think what it would be if you had a slow one――like
mine,” he said.

After all, David’s chief interests were not social or athletic even
in vacation time; every day for six weeks each summer he went to the
school of marine biology at Woods Hole, and the talks that he and Mr.
Dean had over algæ and jellyfish and sponges and crustaceans were more
interesting to him than the porch conversations of his friends, in
which he was mainly a listener. Mr. Dean had been a collector of shells
and an amateur student of biology and stimulated him in his research.

“You’ll find that these studies that you’re following now will help you
when you get into the medical school,” said Mr. Dean. “It isn’t only
the scientific knowledge you’re acquiring that will be valuable to you,
it’s the accustoming yourself to scientific methods.”

Lester Wallace and Richard Bradley, however, professed inability to
comprehend David’s actions. “In some ways, Dave, you’re almost human,”
Lester said to him. “But this choosing to spend your vacation in
study――and such a study! Sculpins and jellyfish and other slimy things!”

“You’ll get queer like some of those fishes you’re interested in,” said
Richard. “They say that people who make a study of birds always come
to look like birds, and it’s much more dangerous to make a study of
fishes.”

“He’s getting goggle-eyed already,” asserted Lester.

“Yes, and his chin has begun to fall away, and his mouth sags at the
corners,” remarked Richard. “A fish is an awfully sad-looking animal,
Dave.”

“I think they’re more interesting than porch lizards and parlor
snakes,” said David.

The significance of the remark was such that it provoked a scuffle, at
the end of which David was lying prone upon the sand of the beach and
Lester and Richard were sitting triumphantly on his back.

CHAPTER XIII

HERO WORSHIP

During his college course David made a number of visits to his old
school. He was interested in observing Ralph’s progress and hearing
his experiences and in reviving his own memories, but he enjoyed the
visits most for the opportunity they gave him to be again with Ruth
Davenport. He learned from Ralph that several of the unmarried masters
were attentive to her, and the information roused his jealousy and
resentment. Her dealings with two or three of those creatures in his
presence as she gave them tea filled him with gloom; he feared she had
learned to flirt. But afterwards, when she treated him with a special
consideration and interest, he knew that she really was not a flirt at
all, but just what she had always been, a kind, sweet-tempered, honest
girl. It did not excite his jealousy to have her ask him about Lester,
not even when she said that she thought Lester was the most attractive
person who had ever passed through the school. David knew that she had
always thought that, and, as it was true and Lester was his friend, it
was right that she should think it.

“Why doesn’t he come up to see us oftener, David?” she asked. “He’s too
busy with his new friends, I suppose.”

No, it wasn’t that, David was sure; but of course Lester was very busy,
with athletics and college organizations and――and――

“Studies, too,” said Ruth. “Poor Lester! But you must tell him, David,
that if he will only come up and see us I will promise not to lecture
him the way I used to do. How angry I once made him! Do you still help
him with his lessons?”

David assured her that he did not and that Lester was getting on very
well. When he returned to Cambridge from that visit, he told Lester of
Ruth’s interest and of the way some of the masters like young Blatch
and the middle-aged Manners seemed to be pursuing her. Lester scowled
and said that she was too good for any masters at St. Timothy’s.

“She’s grown prettier,” said David.

“It’s too bad a girl like that should be stuck up there in the country
by herself――no society but that of kids and school-teachers. I guess
I’ll have to go and see her some Sunday.”

The popular youth performed this missionary act more than once.
He returned with impressions of the old school that were vaguely
displeasing to David. The rector and the masters were “narrow” and
“provincial,” and the boys were an uncouth lot of young ruffians. As
for Ruth, however, she met the requirements even of Lester’s exacting
taste. There wasn’t a better-looking or better-dressed girl in Boston,
and he supposed she didn’t spend a tenth of what most of the Boston
girls spent on clothes. Really it would be a shame if young Blatch or
that pompous fool, Manners, should be successful in his grossly obvious
maneuvers and imprison her for life in that dull little community. A
girl with her looks and social gifts was qualified to take a prominent
place anywhere. Some old St. Timothy’s boy ought to rescue her from the
dismal fate that threatened.

“Of course she’s not very old yet,” David suggested.

Lester could not see anything reassuring in that fact. Just because
she was so young and inexperienced, had seen so little of the world
outside, she was all the more in danger of becoming the prey of a
greenhorn like Blatch or a fossil like Manners.

Convincing as was Lester’s eloquence upon the subject, the emotion that
inspired it seemed transitory; his visits to St. Timothy’s continued to
be infrequent, and as time passed without Ruth’s making the sacrifice
that he dreaded, his agitation on that score subsided. Moreover, he
had, as he often said, other things to think about than girls. The
senior year found him with popularity undiminished, yet disappointed
because an honor on which for two years he had counted had been denied
him. Although he was regarded as the most brilliant player on the
varsity football team, he had not been elected captain. He talked about
it freely with David, who felt that the prize should have been awarded
to him.

“They think I’m not steady enough to be captain,” said Lester. “I’m not
saying Farrar isn’t a better man for the job, but I don’t see why they
think I’m unsteady. I’ve never yet in any big game lost my head or my
nerve.”

“It isn’t that they think you’re unsteady,” David explained, “but
that they have an idea you’re too temperamental; it’s a part of being
brilliant. They think that, if you had the responsibility of being
captain, your own playing would suffer. In my opinion they’re wrong,
but it isn’t anything against you that there is that feeling.”

“Oh, it’s all right; I don’t want you to think I’m kicking. And it may
very well be that I wouldn’t show at my best under responsibility,
though I hate to think so.”

David himself was captain of his class eleven; he was not regarded as
too temperamental. Nearly every day after he had put his team through
their drill he would watch the last few minutes of the varsity eleven’s
practice; he would follow Lester’s work with special interest. Lester
was a picturesque player; he scorned the protection of a head guard,
and his fair hair shone even in the feeble November light and made him
recognizable for spectators who could not identify helmeted players. He
was the fleetest of all the backs; there was no one who was his peer
for running in a broken field; again and again during the practice
games the bleachers resounded with applause for the bareheaded figure,
the personification of indomitable energy and ingenious skill, who wove
and forced his way for twenty or thirty yards through furious attacking
foes. To the uncritical observer his achievements always seemed more
single-handed than they were; possibly in choosing to do without the
conventional headgear, and thus render himself more conspicuous, he
was aware that he must produce that effect. He often talked rather
patronizingly about people who had no sense of dramatic values.

David, in his brief daily glimpses of his friend’s showy performances,
felt occasional stings of envy through his thrills of admiration. What
a splendid thing to achieve, what an exploit forever after to look back
upon――making the varsity team! Since his first day as a freshman he
had hoped that some time he might accomplish it, and now here he was a
senior and not even a substitute――not even a substitute on the second
eleven!

It hurt him to find that Lester was reckoning his success in athletics
as a business asset on which to realize later.

“You’ve given up all idea of studying medicine?” David asked.

“Yes. I’m tired of study and examinations. I want to get to work and
make a pile of money. I feel I can do it, too, and I don’t feel I could
ever do it being a doctor. Besides, as I said, a varsity football
record that’s really good will give a man a great start in business,
and I might as well take advantage of it. A fellow with such a record
can begin in Boston or New York, and everybody on State Street or Wall
Street knows about him and is glad to see him. It would be foolish not
to make the most of an opportunity.”

David recognized the force of the argument and at the same time felt
that there was something distasteful in Lester’s readiness to lay hold
of it. He wondered why it was distasteful, and could not answer, except
that perhaps it represented a too egotistical and self-centered point
of view, one that was concerned with Lester’s future fortunes rather
than with the success of the team.

David’s own football performance was after all successful enough to
satisfy his modest soul. His team won the class championship, defeating
first the juniors and then the freshmen; David’s part in the victories
was conspicuous. He played at left end and was the strongest player
both in attack and in defense; when the deciding game had been won his
team mates bore him from the field in triumph, and the senior class,
assembling in front of the locker building, made his name the climax of
their cheers. That was gratifying enough to David; perhaps it brought
as much pleasure to the blind man and the girl who lingered beyond
the edge of the crowd. David had caught a glimpse of them among the
spectators when he had chased a ball that was kicked out of bounds;
he had felt at the moment a fresh flow of affection for Mr. Dean, a
sudden warm sense of Katharine Vance’s charm. He carried the ball out
and threw himself with new enthusiasm into the next play. The interest
that had caused those two to come and see this game――it must be well
repaid!

After he had dressed he hurried home――not to his college room, but to
his mother’s house. He found Katharine and Mr. Dean recounting his
achievements to a proud woman whose hands trembled so that she could
hardly make tea.

“David,” she said, “I couldn’t come and see you play; I’m always so
frightened for fear you’ll get hurt. They tell me you did splendidly.”

“The team did,” said David. “Weren’t you people nice to come down!”

“Katharine is an excellent interpreter,” remarked Mr. Dean. “I never
had a better pair of eyes. As for my ears, they were quite gratified by
what they heard at the end. It was a pity, Mrs. Ives, that you missed
that feature of the occasion.”

“Yes,” said David, pleased and embarrassed. “Wasn’t it silly of the
crowd?”

“If it was, then Mr. Dean and I were silly, too,” said Katharine. “We
hoped you heard us, we came out so strong on ‘I-i-i-ives!’ at the end.
I think that Mrs. Ives ought to know just how it sounded, don’t you,
Mr. Dean?”

“Quit it!” cried David; but Mr. Dean chuckled and said:

“Quite right, Katharine; you lead the cheering, and I’ll come in.”

“One, two, three,” said Katharine; and she and Mr. Dean, standing in
the middle of the room, shouted:

“Rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; I-i-ives!”

While the echoes died, remote sounds betrayed Maggie’s efforts to
suppress her mirth.

“Dear me, I do wish I’d been there!” said Mrs. Ives. “It makes me more
proud of you than ever, David.”

“Katharine’s a tease,” replied David. “But I shouldn’t have thought it
of Mr. Dean.”

After Katharine had gone, Mr. Dean asked David to describe the whole
game to him. “Of course,” said the blind man, “Katharine helped me
to follow it, but she didn’t know the players, and so we missed some
things. That first touchdown, just how was it made?”

So David described the game in detail and afterwards asked Mr. Dean
whether it had been on his initiative or on Katharine’s that he had
gone.

“Oh, Katharine suggested it. I shouldn’t have imposed myself on her.
But she came over here for me and fairly dragged me out of the house;
said she knew I wanted to go to David’s game. She’s a nice girl, David.”

“She’s about as good as they come.”

“Was she looking especially pretty to-day, David?”

“Why, I don’t know. Perhaps. What do you say, mother?”

“Yes, I think she was. She had on her new winter hat, and it was very
becoming.”

“What made you ask that question, Mr. Dean?”

“I wondered if it wasn’t the fact. Sometimes I seem to feel people’s
looks. Perhaps it’s the happiness in their voices――if it’s greater than
usual; perhaps it’s something too subtle to express. I did have the
feeling that Katharine was looking her prettiest to-day. You’d call her
a pretty girl, wouldn’t you?”

“In some ways; nice-looking; attractive,” qualified the scrupulous
David.

“She’s very pretty, she’s lovely,” declared Mrs. Ives, impatient
with her son for his reservations. “I don’t know where you’ll see a
prettier girl!”

“Well, there’s Ruth Davenport and Marion Bradley,” David suggested.
“Katharine may be just as attractive, but I don’t know that you would
call her as pretty. By the way, Lester has invited Ruth to come down to
the Yale game, and he’s asked me to look after her for him. I thought
it might be a good idea, mother, if you invited her to stay here that
night and had a little tea for her after the game.”

“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Ives; and Mr. Dean expressed his pleasure.

Ruth wrote that she was “thrilled” to accept the invitation. And on the
morning of the game, when David met her at the station, he thought that
he had never seen any one so happy. Indeed, for a long time afterwards
in musing moments the memory of her as she had appeared that day when
he first caught sight of her would arise before him――a slender figure
in a black pony coat with a white fur round her neck and a black velvet
hat on her head; she waved her white muff at him while a greeting
fairly glowed from her pink cheeks and bright eyes and laughing lips.

“Lester was sorry that he couldn’t meet you himself,” David said. “But
the morning of the game they have to keep quiet and avoid excitement.”

“Gracious! Would I be excitement?”

David reddened under Ruth’s merry glance. If Lester knew, wouldn’t he
want to kick him!

“I’m very well satisfied with the arrangement,” Ruth said. “I can see
Lester play, and I can sit and talk with you. It will all be such fun.
I’ve never seen a Harvard-Yale game. How nice of your mother to ask me
down for it! And what luck to have such a heavenly day! Oh, David, I
know I’m going to have the best time of my whole life!”

“If we lick Yale,” said David.

“I suppose that will be necessary. But I feel we shall; I feel that
nothing will happen to spoil the good time that I’m going to have.”

On the way to Cambridge David tried to tell her about Lester――his
brilliancy, his popularity, his magnificent success. But she turned
him from that theme and began putting questions about his own
accomplishments. She drew from him the admission that he had captained
his class eleven and that it had won the championship, that he had been
taken into a certain club, that he stood a chance of getting a degree
_magna cum laude_; afterwards David’s cheeks burned when he thought it
all over; he must have appeared a veritable monster of egotism. She
conducted her researches so skillfully that the quivering subject was
hardly aware of them even while reluctantly yielding up its riches.
David wondered how, when he had been making this egregious display of
himself, he could possibly have imagined that he was having a good time!

One thing he was sure of: if she enjoyed the day as much as she
appeared to do, her enjoyment was not wholly at his expense.

“It’s all such an adventure for me!” she confided to him. “I love to
get away from the school now and then and meet new people and see old
friends. Am I going to see Mr. Dean, David?”

“Of course you are. He’s looking forward to it. He told me to bring you
out to the house just as quick as I could. We’re to have an early lunch
and then start for the game. Afterwards mother has asked a few people
in for tea, and Lester’s coming.”

“Oh, what fun!” caroled Ruth. “And what a heavenly day! I hope every
one will have a good time to-day!”

“Every one except Yale,” said David, and she laughed.

“Can’t you sometimes enjoy a game even though you’re beaten, David?”

“I can,” he replied. “But Yale can’t.”

“My, but you’re prejudiced!”

He admitted that perhaps he was. “Of course Yale’s a great place, and
we should hate to have to get on without her. I dare say the Yale
men feel the same way about Harvard. And if it weren’t for Yale, we
shouldn’t be having this day, one of the finest days in the whole year.”

“Isn’t it!” cried Ruth. “Three cheers for Yale!”

In David’s eyes she radiated charm and happiness and good will, and her
least utterance sounded musical to his ears. He was sure that she must
inevitably win the heart of every man and woman that she met. There
was no question but that she won his mother’s. At luncheon Mrs. Ives
beamed over the good report that Ruth brought about Ralph. He was such
a nice boy; every one at St. Timothy’s liked him. Mr. Dean questioned
her eagerly about the masters and the life at the school. She gave him
lively answers filled with gay anecdotes.

After luncheon, when she and David were starting for the game, she said
to Mr. Dean, “I wish you were coming too.”

“I go only to David’s games now,” Mr. Dean answered with a smile. Then,
as she put her hand into his, he said: “It’s good to hear your voice
again, my dear. I should like to see how the little girl has grown.”

David saw Ruth’s eyes suddenly grow moist and bright. “I’m just the
same, Mr. Dean,” she replied, “though I hope my hair is generally
tidier than it used to be.”

She was silent for a while after leaving the house; David liked her
silence and the emotion that it signified. Wasn’t it her quick and soft
compassion that had always made big boys as well as little open-hearted
with Ruth?

Soon they were in the full tide of the stream that bubbled and rustled
and flashed and rippled on its flow to Soldiers’ Field. The sun was
shining; blue flags and crimson were waving; a brass band somewhere
ahead was braying; gray-headed graduates, fuzzy-chinned freshmen,
mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and sweethearts, all were bustling and
trudging, gay and eager; and the ceaseless cries of ticket speculators
and venders of souvenirs, banners, and toy balloons made the very air
alive with excitement. In all the throng no one’s face was brighter,
happier, more expectant than Ruth’s. And no one’s face was prettier,
thought David.

She was too much excited to talk, except in exclamations, too much
excited after they took their seats in the Stadium and looked down upon
the empty field and across at the bank of spectators who were cheering
for Yale and waving blue flags. All the preliminary cheering and
singing, the figures of the bareheaded cheer leaders leaping about in
front of the sections, brandishing megaphones and making every movement
of arm and leg and body in a kind of fanatical, frenzied unison, one
with another――all before a single athlete had put in an appearance――did
not strike either Ruth or David as ridiculous. David responded loyally
to every behest of the cheer leader immediately confronting him and in
the intervals pointed out the celebrities to Ruth. “That fellow who
leads our section is Henderson, captain of the crew; that’s Colby,
captain of the nine, next to him; there’s Burke, leader of the glee
club――” and so on. Ruth looked at each one with just a moment of
interest in the great man and then renewed her bright, wandering,
excited gaze over the whole lively, sparkling scene.

There was a more exuberant outbreak on the Yale side, and the Yale
eleven, attended by innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field
in a grim and violent manner. Immediately there followed an exuberant
outbreak on the Harvard side, and the Harvard eleven, attended by
innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field in a grim and
violent manner. They crouched and charged, then crouched and charged
again, while rampant individuals of apparently uncontrollable strength
and energy booted footballs to enormous heights and for unbelievable
distances.

“There’s Lester!” cried Ruth. “How nice that he’s not wearing a head
guard, for now I can always pick him out. But I do hope his head won’t
get hurt.”

“Lester never gets hurt,” David assured her.

Not only in the eyes of Ruth and David did Lester shine preëminent
that afternoon. He flashed out of scrimmages, carrying the ball; he
made long end runs, carrying the ball; he ran the ball back on kicks,
dodging and squirming through a broken field; he made the first
touchdown of the game, and a few minutes later the second. David
shouted himself hoarse over Lester’s exploits, and Ruth, though she did
not join in the cheering, had a proud and happy look in her eyes. He
was her hero; and perhaps even while he performed these wonderful feats
he thought of her.

Toward the end of the second half he was taken out of the game; as he
left the field all the spectators whose sympathies were with Harvard
stood up and cheered him.

“Why did he leave?” asked Ruth. “He’s not hurt, is he?”

“No, but the game’s won, and the coaches are sending Wilcox in to get
his ‘H.’ Wilcox has been a substitute for three years, and this is his
last chance.”

Ruth understood perfectly. She thought it probable that Lester had
intimated to the coaches that it would be a nice thing to do. Certainly
it was just the sort of thoughtful, generous act that she should expect
of Lester.

Now that Lester was no longer playing, Ruth felt that the game
had lost in interest. But it was soon over, and then Harvard
undergraduates and graduates swarmed out on the field and proceeded
to engage in the peculiar collegiate folk-dancing that symbolizes and
celebrates victory. Behind the blaring brass band, which marched and
countermarched, ranks of young men zigzagged tumultuously, passing
at last, one after another in swift succession, under the crossbar of
the goal while over it passed the equally swift procession of their
hats――to be recovered or not, as the case might be, by the rightful
owners. In this flinging away of cherished headgear there seemed to the
observer an almost religious note of mad and joyous sacrifice, a note
accented by the mystical dusk of the November afternoon that caused a
lighted match to flare like an altar fire, and the end of a cigar to
glow like a censer.

Ruth found the spectacle first ludicrous and then ridiculously
emotional; she turned to David and saw what she interpreted as pious
yearning in his eyes.

“David,” she said, giving him a little nudge, “you go down and throw
your hat over the goal for me. I’ll wait here for you.”

“Would you mind? I’ll be right back.”

David was off instantly. Ruth watched him go springing down the tiers
of seats, saw him sprint out on the field and get sucked into the mazes
of the serpentining throng. She lost sight of him then and, raising her
eyes, looked across the field to the sections that the Yale men and
their friends occupied. A good many of them were stoically waiting to
see the end of the demonstrations; they no longer waved their flags
or raised their voices in fruitless cheers, but preserved a certain
passive constancy in defeat that touched Ruth’s heart. “You poor
things!” she thought. “It is hard, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not feeling
as you are.”

She was still contemplating them with this pharisaic yet not
uncharitable thought when David rejoined her.

“Goodness!” she said. “Is that _your_ hat, David?”

“Yes,” he admitted, fingering the battered ruin gingerly. “It got
stepped on.”

“A perfectly good hat a moment ago,” said Ruth. “Aren’t men silly!”

“It’s all in a good cause,” returned David with conviction.

In Mrs. Ives’s drawing-room an eager party assembled to greet the
conquering hero. Katharine Vance sat behind the tea-table; Marion
Bradley and half a dozen other young ladies, all decked out befittingly
either with crimson chrysanthemums or American-beauty roses, chatted
and watched the door through which Lester must enter. They were
interested, too, in Ruth; from one to another had passed the word that
she was the girl whom Lester had himself invited! Possibly it made
their scrutiny of her a little critical, but she was so full of joyous
expectancy that she was not aware of it. Besides, there were other old
friends from St. Timothy’s coming up to speak to her, and Mr. Dean sat
where he could hear her voice and so received much of her attention.

At last there was the entrance for which they all were waiting. It was
not at all in the manner of the conquering hero that Lester Wallace
presented himself, but rather as a laughing youth disposed to forestall
embarrassing compliments. He shook hands with every one, blushed
becomingly, and said little. Only Marion Bradley seemed to watch him
with a smile that might be interpreted as perhaps mildly disparaging,
gently mocking. David observed it and thought with indignation, “Pity
Marion can’t show a little enthusiasm for once!”

Perhaps Lester was not aware of any coolness; surely the interest shown
by the other young ladies was gratifying enough. But after he had
exchanged a few words with each of them, it was to Ruth that he turned
and with Ruth that he talked, even though he intentionally allowed the
magic of his smile and the glamour of his glance to shine for other
admiring eyes. He could not stop long; that evening the team were to
dine together and celebrate their victory. But he would be round the
next day with a motor car――if Ruth would go to drive with him?

Katharine Vance had been watching David perhaps no less than she had
been observing Lester. She had noticed that his eyes were turned most
of the time toward Ruth.

Later, when the guests had departed, David walked with Katharine to the
gate.

“Lester doesn’t seem a bit swelled up over it all does he?” he said.
“How fine it must be to be in his shoes!”

“I don’t care for so much hero worship,” Katharine replied. “It makes
me sort of mad. After all, David, it takes just as fine qualities to be
the hero of a scrub team as of the varsity.”

CHAPTER XIV

ANTI-CLIMAX

A week after the game David stopped one afternoon at Lester’s room and
found him in a discontented mood.

“I can’t stand anti-climax,” Lester said. “And now that the game is
over, everything is by way of being anti-climax for me. And a fellow
can’t just take things comfortably; he has to do a lot of petty, sordid
studying. While I was playing football I fell behind in most of my
courses; now I have all that work to make up. If my father would give
his consent, I’d leave college and go into business.”

“That would be a foolish thing to do before you’ve got your degree.”

“I’ve got out of college all there is in it for me. It seems a waste
of time to stay on for just a piece of parchment. I’m beginning to
feel cramped. I need space to expand in.” Standing in front of the
fireplace, Lester stretched and swelled his big frame, doubled his
fists and flung his arms out from the shoulders. “I want to get into
the game――the big game――quick. Schoolboy life――I’ve had enough. I’m no
student.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. Still the degree counts for something.”

“Mighty little in the business world. Six good months wasted, hanging
on here!”

“What should you do if you cut loose now?”

“I should get a job in a bond house. I might go to New York. I mean
to get into the promotion of big things――big corporation business. A
fellow that finances street railways and industrial plants, controls
banks and makes towns grow――a builder; that’s what I mean to be.”

“That’s all right; and now you’re laying your foundation. Building is
slow work. You mustn’t be impatient.”

“I’m not impatient of anything but time wasted!” cried Lester.

“Well, it won’t do for you to pull up stakes and clear out, even if
your father does consent to anything so foolish,” said David crisply.
“We’re going to run you for first marshal, and you’ve got to stay and
get elected.”

Whether David realized it or not, he could not have brought forward
an argument that would have been more effective with Lester. To be
elected first marshal was to win the highest non-scholastic honor
attainable in the university. Lester showed his interest at once.

“Oh, there’s no chance. Farrar will get that. Captain of the football
team. It’s a sure thing for him.”

“There’s quite a feeling that on your record you deserved the captaincy
and that the best thing the class can do is to make it up to you by
electing you first marshal. That’s a thing that it’s worth staying in
college for, even if the degree isn’t.”

“Oh, if there were a chance of my getting it, sure. But I guess this is
just a case where you’re blinded by friendship, old man.”

“Farrar’s got his supporters, of course, and so has Jim Colby got his.
But most of the fellows I see think that you’re the man; your work on
the football and baseball teams and the fact that you’re generally
popular make you the most likely candidate.”

“There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to be first marshal,” said
Lester. All the discontent had been smoothed out of his face; his eyes
were shining. He seated himself on the corner of his desk and threw his
arm round David. “You’re certainly a mighty good friend, Dave, to want
to put me across. And I know that your backing will count for a lot;
everybody thinks a lot of you.”

“There are plenty of others who are with me in this. So don’t get the
idea that there’s nothing more left in life for you, Lester.”

“I guess I was talking like a fool, a few minutes ago, Dave. There’s
something in this idea that the fellows have about me――that I’m too
temperamental. I’m glad you dropped in to cheer me up, even though it
should turn out that there’s no chance for me.”

“There is,” said David. “Just wait and see.”

Lester, whose hope and ambition were stirred, could not wait and see.
He was bound to be active in furthering his own interests, and he
conceived that he could best do it by being more pleasant and genial
than ever with every one. He began to call by their first names
fellows with whom he had only a slight acquaintance; and he struck
up an acquaintance with members of the class who had hitherto been
too obscure or too remote from his orbit to win his attention. The
spontaneity of his manner and the fact that he was so prominent a
personage caused many of those whom he thus approached to be flattered
by his advances; others resented them as obviously insincere and
inspired by a selfish motive. The supporters of the rival candidates,
Farrar and Colby, criticized his tactics freely; some ill feeling grew
up among the various partisans. But Lester himself, however indiscreet
he may have sometimes been in showing that he was eager for every vote,
never uttered any words of detraction or disparagement about the other
candidates and did nothing to incur their enmity.

In the excitement of his canvass he did not turn with any zest to his
college work. As a result of his neglect the college office notified
him that, if by a certain period he failed to show improvement, he
would be placed on probation. Not only would this mean that he would be
debarred from participation in all athletic sports, but it would also
no doubt seriously affect his chances of being made marshal. The class
would be unlikely to confer its highest honor upon one who had failed
to maintain a creditable standing in his studies, especially when such
failure would mean that he would be ineligible for the varsity baseball
nine, on which he had played the preceding year.

“I wish I could call on you to help me the way you used to in the old
days at St. Timothy’s,” Lester said to David, after telling him of his
troubles. “You used to get me over some pretty hard places.”

“I’d do anything I could to help you,” replied David, “but the trouble
is you’re not taking courses that I know anything about. English
composition is the only thing we have together, and there’s no way that
I can see of helping you with that――beyond criticizing anything that
you write. Of course that I’ll be glad to do.”

“I wouldn’t have any trouble with English composition if I could find
time to write the themes,” said Lester. “But I’ve missed some of
them, and now I’ve got to put in all the time getting ready for the
examination in the other courses.”

“You’d better buckle right down to work,” advised David. “Fire your
friends out of your room when they come to see you. Tell Richard he
mustn’t speak to you, and don’t let yourself talk to him. Keep your
nose in a book all day and half the night. Do that, and I guess you’ll
come through. You’ve got to come through; it won’t do for you to be put
on probation.”

“I know it,” groaned Lester. He reached for a book. “All right, I’ll
begin right now. Get out of here, you Dave, and let a fellow study.”

There were tests in every course that Lester took except in English
composition, and to prepare for the tests he had to do in less than
two weeks the work that he had neglected for two months. Also for the
course in composition he had in the same period to write a long theme.
He decided to leave the theme until the night before it was due, and to
give the remaining time to the other studies.

By secluding himself for such a purpose he did not impair his
popularity as a candidate: his classmates were probably impressed by
his studious earnestness. Through the reports of it that his roommate,
Richard Bradley, spread abroad, it seemed almost heroic. If Richard
was to be believed, Lester hardly put down his books in order to eat
or sleep. To be sure Richard had already achieved for himself the
reputation of being Lester’s publicity agent; making all reasonable
allowances, however, his classmates found his tales impressive.

Lester had never found any training for football more exhausting than
those days and nights of concentrated mental labor. When the time came
for each examination he went to it, nervous and apprehensive. He came
out from each one unexpectedly happy and cheerful. He knew that he had
passed; his hard study had not been without results; he felt proud of
himself, of the character and application that he had shown.

Emerging from the last examination, that in fine arts, he encountered
Tom Bemis, who asked him eagerly how he had fared.

“Fine,” said Lester. “I simply killed it.”

“That’s the stuff!” cried Tom. “Now I tell you what you do. You need a
little rest and dissipation after all your labors. Come with Jim Kelly
and me for an automobile ride. Do you good; cool the fevered brow.
We’ll have supper at some country inn and get home before it’s too
late.”

“But I have a long theme due at noon to-morrow,” said Lester. “It’s
just as important as an examination, and I haven’t written a word, or
even got an idea yet.”

“That’s all right. You’ll get ideas coming with us. You’ve got to have
some relaxation, you know. Something will snap inside your bean if you
continue to treat it so cruelly.”

“What time will you get back?”

“Any time you say.”

“If you promise to get back not later than eight o’clock,” said Lester,
“I’ll go with you. I’ve got to be home then to write that theme.”

“All right; we’ll do it. We want a fourth; there’s Chuck Morley. O
Chuck!”

Summoned with energetic beckoning as well as with vociferous shouting,
the stout youth who had just descended the steps of the dormitory near
which they stood approached. He consented to join the expedition, and
early in the afternoon the four started off in Bemis’s new high-powered
car.

It was a sunny day, the air was mild, and the car ran smoothly. They
sped from one town to another, cheerfully regardless of time and place,
until Lester suggested that they had better look for an inn and have
supper. It was half-past six before they came upon a hostelry that
seemed to them sufficiently attractive to deserve their patronage; it
was eight o’clock by the time they had finished what they all regarded
as an unsatisfactory and expensive meal; and it was after ten o’clock
when they finally drew up in front of the dormitory in which Lester and
Kelly had their rooms.

Lester hastened up the stairs, intending to set to work at once upon
his theme. Richard was not in; Lester had the room to himself; now if
he could only think of something to write about. But the automobile
ride, which Bemis had assured him would furnish him with inspiration,
seemed only to have made him numb and drowsy. For almost two weeks
he had been getting less than his usual amount of sleep. His head
nodded over the blank page before him on his desk; he was roused by the
slipping of the pen from his fingers.

He rose, plunged his face into cold water and then walked about the
room for a few minutes. Still finding himself unable to think of a
subject on which he could write, he decided to go to David and ask for
suggestions.

It meant merely going down one flight of stairs in the dormitory. When
he knocked on David’s door, however, there was no answer. He tried the
door, found it unlocked, and entered. Then he turned on the light; if
he sat down for a moment, David might perhaps come in, and anyway he
should be just as likely to think of a subject in David’s room as in
his own.

On the desk lay David’s neatly folded, freshly typewritten theme;
beside it lay the rough draft from which he had made the copy. Out
of curiosity Lester picked up the theme and began to read it. He
became interested, for it dealt with athletics and their place in
college life, and he recognized in it many ideas that he and David had
frequently thrashed out in discussion. In fact, it was just such a
theme as he himself might have written had he happened to hit upon that
topic.

It would certainly be all right for him to take it to his room and see
whether he could not prepare an essay on the subject without in any
way duplicating David’s work. Perhaps in the rough draft there were
passages that had not been used in the final copy and that would prove
helpful.

So Lester took the theme and the rough draft, turned out the light,
and went back to his room. On looking over the rough draft he was
disappointed to find that it contained nothing that did not appear
in the typewritten copy. He set to work then to try to write a theme
of his own, using the material that David had treated; but after an
hour of effort, having written several pages and then having read over
what he had written, he was in despair. He realized that any one who
examined the two themes would say that one was merely a paraphrase of
the other, and that the two could not have been written independently
of each other.

Lester was tired, sleepy, and disheartened. There was no use in his
making further effort that evening; that was certain. If he got up
early the next morning and could only think of something to write
about, perhaps he could get the theme done. He had a class from ten
o’clock to eleven that he must not cut, but if he could write from
eight until ten, and then from eleven to twelve, he might fulfill the
requirement. But it would have to be a good theme; a poor or even a
mediocre piece of work would not save him.

As he undressed he meditated gloomily on his situation. For two
weeks he had toiled nobly, had accomplished scholastic miracles,
had displayed the best he had in him of mind and character; and yet
it might all be of no avail――nullified by his inability to get done
a single piece of writing that, given a little more time, he could
satisfactorily do. Indeed, he could have done it that evening if David
had not balked him by anticipating him, using the thoughts and ideas
that they had exchanged, and so making it impossible for him to use
them. If he missed this theme, he should be put on probation in spite
of all his good work in the other courses; he should be declared
ineligible to play on the nine; and probably he should lose the
marshalship, which he felt was otherwise within his grasp.

And the theme lay there on his desk. It was typewritten; all he had
to do was to remove the covering page bearing David’s name and to
substitute a covering page bearing his own. David would never know.
And David would really not suffer by the loss; his standing in the
course was assured anyway; he was not trying for honors in English, and
even if he were trying for them his missing one theme would not, in
view of his excellent record, be likely to count against him. No one
would suffer, and it would be a means of escape for a fellow who really
deserved to escape. Besides, thought Lester, the theme was almost half
his anyway. David could hardly have written it if they had not talked
the thing over together so much.

It would not do for Richard to see the theme when he came in. Lester
put it and the rough draft into a drawer of his desk and locked the
drawer.

He would not decide the question now, anyway. He was played out; a good
night’s sleep would rest him mentally, and probably he would get up in
the morning and find himself able to write a theme without any trouble.
In fact, of course he would. It was foolish to think of anything else.
So he tumbled into bed and instantly fell sound asleep.

CHAPTER XV

THE TORN PAGE

When Lester awoke and looked at his watch, he was horrified to find
that it was nine o’clock. He leaped out of bed and dressed frantically.
Why hadn’t Richard wakened him! Richard had gone――feeling, no doubt,
that he could best display his consideration for his overworked
roommate by letting him sleep as long as he could.

“Two hours――less than two hours――to write that theme!” muttered Lester,
as he slipped into his clothes. “I’ll have to go without breakfast, at
that.”

He seated himself at his desk, but his mind was too panicky to respond
to his need. He filled a page and a half with commonplace narrative,
read it over, and realized in despair that, even though he went on in
that manner for the prescribed number of words, it would do him no
good. He must turn in a piece of work that had some merit if he was to
escape failure.

Taking a fresh sheet of paper, he began an essay on athletics. But it
seemed impossible for him to write anything on that subject without
substantially duplicating David’s work; moreover, it became all too
apparent that, even though his thoughts should flow smoothly, he would
not have time to complete the task. The clock struck ten; he cast his
papers aside, caught up his notebook, and hurried away to a lecture on
fine arts.

Although he took a few notes during the lecture, he gave little
attention to what the professor was saying. His mind was busy trying
to find justification for an act that he contemplated with aversion.
“It isn’t as if it were going to hurt anybody,” he kept saying to
himself. “It won’t affect David’s standing in the least.” The thought
of it became more tolerable when he decided that at some time in the
future he would tell David the whole story. “He’ll understand, when I
make a clean breast of it all,” Lester assured himself. Somehow the
determination to confess the truth eventually to David, who would be
the only sufferer――except that he wouldn’t really suffer!――seemed to
Lester to minimize very much the seriousness of the offense, to make it
almost pardonable. He rehearsed, of course, the various other excuses
that had insinuated themselves into his mind――the exhaustion, mental
and physical, following his sustained and successful efforts in his
other courses, the fact that he and David had so often talked over the
ideas embodied in the theme and that he could not therefore be really
charged with taking something that was not altogether his own. They
were flimsy excuses, yet he was not ashamed to get some comfort and
encouragement from them.

After the lecture on fine arts Lester returned to his room, took the
typewritten theme out of his desk, and copied off in longhand the
last half-page of it, which bore David’s name on the back. Then he
substituted his copy for the typewritten page and wrote his name on
it. He tore up the page that he had removed and threw it into his
waste-basket. David had not given the theme a title; Lester wrote
in the heading, “The Place of Athletics in College Life.” And above
this title he wrote, “Please do not read in class.” The instructor,
Professor Worthington, frequently read some of the best themes to the
class, but had announced that he would respect the wishes of any one
who did not care to have his theme so read.

Having thus safeguarded himself against detection, Lester decided to
dispose of David’s first draft. He took the pages, crumpled them up,
and put them into the fireplace and then touched a lighted match to
them. In a few minutes they were ashes.

Lester was reading a magazine when his roommate entered. “Hello,
Lester,” said Richard. “You seem to be taking things easily for a
change. Have you got that theme done that’s been worrying you?”

“Yes,” said Lester, “it’s all done.”

“That’s fine. It would have been a shame to be stumped by that after
all that you’ve put through in the last two weeks.”

There was a knock on the door, and David entered. Lester instinctively
put his hand to the inside pocket of his coat to make sure that the
theme was hidden.

“How are you coming along, Lester?” David asked. “Get your theme done
all right?”

“It’s done,” said Lester.

“Good work. The queerest thing has happened about mine. It’s disappeared
absolutely. I’ve turned my room upside down, hunting for it.”

“You must have left it somewhere――in the library, perhaps,” suggested
Richard.

“No, I haven’t taken it outside my room. Besides, the rough draft as
well as the typewritten copy has vanished. I could have sworn that I
left them on my desk last night when I went out. I spent the evening at
home, reading to Mr. Dean. It was late when I got back to my room, and
I really didn’t notice whether the theme was on my desk then or not.
This morning when I looked for it I couldn’t find it. Somebody must
have taken it to play a trick on me, but he’d better get it back to me
soon.”

“Who would do a thing like that?” asked Richard.

“Oh, it may be some one’s idea of a joke,” replied David.

“Even if it’s lost it won’t make any special difference to you, will
it?” asked Lester. “You’re all right in the course?”

“Oh, yes, I’m all right in the course, though I suppose it would
probably lower my mark. But the thing is so mysterious――the
disappearance of both the rough draft and the typewritten copy!”

“What do you make of it, my dear Wallace?” said Richard, turning to
Lester.

“Nothing. It’s queer enough certainly. What was the theme about, Dave?”

Even as he spoke he wondered if his voice could sound natural when he
was feeling so utterly contemptible.

“Oh, about athletics in college and just how seriously a fellow should
take them, and all that kind of thing. Some of the old arguments you
and I have had, Lester, worked up into an essay. It was rather good,
too, if I do say it. That’s why it makes me so tired to lose it.”

“I guess it’s not lost,” said Richard. “Somebody must have taken it as
a joke and will return it to you before the hour.”

Lester made no comment. He was wishing that he had courage enough to
pull the theme out of his pocket, and return it on the spot. He felt
that he might have done so if he had not torn up the page bearing
David’s name and substituted that incriminating page bearing his own.
There was no possibility now of his passing his action off as a joke,
and he could not bear the ignominy of confessing to Richard as well as
to David.

The twelve-o’clock bell rang. Lester rose. “Going over to class?” he
said to David.

“Yes,” David answered, “I’ll stop in my room on the way downstairs on
the chance that the merry joker has returned my theme.”

Lester waited on the landing while David made a hurried search.

“Nothing doing,” David said as he emerged and closed the door. “I hate
to lose that theme. It was about the best I’ve written in the course.”

They reached the classroom just as the exercises for the hour were
about to begin. Lester and David both went to the professor’s desk,
which was piled with the themes that the members of the class had
deposited there. Lester drew the theme from his pocket and quickly
thrust it into the pile. He lingered to hear what David would say.

“Mr. Worthington,” said David, “I had my theme all written and copied
yesterday. To-day I’ve looked everywhere for it, and it’s simply
disappeared. I don’t understand it――whether it got thrown away by
mistake or what happened to it.”

“You say that you had it all written and ready to hand in?” said
Professor Worthington.

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps it will turn up in a day or two. Anyway, I’ll give you an
extension of a week. I don’t feel that I can excuse you from handing in
the theme, but you may have a week in which to make it up.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lester, having overheard the conversation, went to his seat with a new
anxiety to worry him. It troubled him all through the hour.

After the class he joined David. “It’s a shame,” he said, “that
Worthington wouldn’t excuse that theme when you told him how it was.
What are you going to do about it?”

“Oh, I’ll make it up. He’s given me a week to do it in.”

“I don’t suppose you can rewrite the theme, can you?”

“I ought to be able to. I have it pretty well in mind.”

“But it would be such a stupid job, doing it all over again. You
probably wouldn’t do it nearly so well as you did it the first time.
I should think you’d better write on something else; you’d have more
interest then.”

“I won’t go at it at once, anyway. I’ll wait a couple of days and then
see how I feel about it.”

“I think you’d make a great mistake not to take a fresh subject,”
said Lester earnestly. “Working over the old one――you’d make it sort
of perfunctory and lifeless. You’d better take my advice and tackle
something new.”

“Well, I’ll see if any new idea comes to me. But it probably won’t, and
I guess the old theme wouldn’t lose much from rewriting. I remember it
pretty well.”

“I know, but when you come to writing it all out again, you’ll find it
so tedious that you won’t do yourself justice.”

“I’ve got a week, anyway, and I shan’t go at it at once.”

Lester saw no valid ground on which he might pursue the argument. When
he entered his room, Richard Bradley turned from the desk at which he
was sitting. “Here’s a queer thing, Lester,” he said. “A little while
ago I wanted to look up a notice in to-day’s _Crimson_, and I couldn’t
find the sheet anywhere. So I pulled out your waste-basket to see if
you’d thrown it in there, and this piece of that theme of Dave’s caught
my eye.” He held up the torn piece with David’s name and the name of
the course and the date written on the back.

“Isn’t that the limit!” said Lester. He felt that his face was set and
that his voice was querulous rather than expressive of astonishment,
but he could not dissemble more successfully; the shock of this new
discovery was too unkind. “How do you suppose it got there?” He made no
effort to take the paper and examine it.

“I can’t imagine.”

“Have you told Dave about it?”

“No; I went down to his room when I discovered it, but he was out.”

“Well, he was probably in here with his theme some time in the last two
or three days when neither of us was in and decided he didn’t like the
last page of it. So he probably just chucked it into my waste-basket
and went home and wrote another last page.”

“I suppose that might have been it,” said Richard doubtfully.

“There’s no other way of accounting for it that I can see,” said
Lester. “And I tell you, Dick, if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dave
about this thing. Professor Worthington’s given him a week’s extension
to make up the theme, and the less he thinks about the old one the
better job he’ll do on the new. He’s bothered himself almost distracted
over what happened to that theme, and we want to get his mind off it
completely. Let’s see the thing, anyway.”

Richard gave Lester the paper, and Lester scrutinized it thoughtfully.
“Of course,” he said, “that’s just what happened. It’s the last page;
he wanted for some reason to rewrite it and so he just chucked it away
wherever he happened to be. Let’s chuck it back into the waste-basket
and not bother him about it. Since when have you taken to scavenging
in waste-baskets, Dick?”

“Well,” said Richard slowly, “I didn’t find what I wanted. So I guess I
won’t do it again.”

CHAPTER XVI

LESTER AND DAVID

The object for the attainment of which Lester had made so lamentable
a sacrifice had ceased to be of interest to him. He no longer thought
or cared anything about the marshalship. If by giving up his chance of
winning it he could have regained the place that he had held in his
own eyes before he took the theme and could have made himself secure
against exposure, he would have made the surrender joyfully.

“If I ever do a crooked thing again as long as I live, I hope I may go
to jail for it!” he exclaimed to himself.

He was alone in his room; he stood gazing out of the window at the
quiet yard. Fellows were passing along the walks, happier, every one of
them, than he. His roommate had gone out a few minutes after making the
remark that had seemed to Lester ominous. Richard suspected him of some
queer work about David’s theme; that was evident. And probably Richard
would go to David and tell him of the discovery that he had made. Then
there would have to be more lying, and in spite of it the suspicion
would probably remain. And if David chose to reproduce the theme and
hand it in, no further lying would avail. Lester would be convicted in
spite of all his denials.

“If I had ever dreamed of what I was letting myself in for, I never
would have done it,” he thought. “Nothing but one lie after another,
getting in deeper all the time! It seems as if there were no end to it.”

He wondered whether Richard had really gone to consult with David about
the fragment of the theme that he had found in the waste-basket. It was
the natural thing for him to do. And when David said that he had never
taken the theme into Lester’s room, or torn up a page of it, or thrown
it into the waste-basket, what would they both think? What was he to
say if they came to question him?

That evening, while Lester was trying to fix his mind on the French
lesson for the next day, Richard came in and greeted him genially. “You
seem to have got the study habit,” said Richard. “There aren’t any more
exams for a couple of months, you know.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m going to try not to slide back again.”

Evidently Richard had not talked with David about the theme. Perhaps
he had dismissed the whole thing from his thoughts, or perhaps he had
even been impressed with the appeal, weak though it was, not to bother
David about it. Anyway, Lester began to feel a little more hopeful
of escaping detection. If only David would decide to write on a new
subject!

Richard had not forgotten about the theme; nor had he been impressed
with Lester’s appeal, except unfavorably. But he had decided that if
Lester had done a mean thing he did not want to know it. He never
had known Lester to do anything mean; he admired him more than he
admired any other fellow in college, and he wanted to go on admiring
him. It couldn’t help David at all to tell him of the discovery; and
what was the use in acting as a detective against a friend? Richard
disliked mischief-making; he had decided not to carry on any further
investigations about David’s theme.

When another twenty-four hours had passed and Richard’s attitude
remained as friendly and cheerful as ever, Lester felt encouraged. He
had been apprehensive when he came out from one of his classes and
encountered Richard and David walking together, but they had greeted
him cordially in a manner that caused him to think that they were not
making him the subject of discussion. And later in the day Richard’s
cheerfulness confirmed Lester’s hopes. There remained only the danger
of David’s rewriting the theme. Lester felt that he must know soon what
David was going to do.

In the hope of finding out he went that evening to David’s room and,
as it happened, immediately received the information that he desired.
David was sitting at his desk, writing; a sheet of paper in front of
him was half filled.

“Beat it!” said David. “Don’t you dare to disturb me. I’ve just caught
an inspiration for that theme.”

Lester’s heart gave a leap. “All right, Dave; I’ll clear out. Might I
ask what the subject is to be this time?”

“You. You and all your works.” Lester stood momentarily aghast until
David explained. “Campaigning for office, electioneering, managing a
candidate; I’m getting in all the cracks I can at you, your rivals,
their managers, your managers, and at college politics in general.”

“That’s a good subject. Don’t be too hard on me.”

Outside David’s door, Lester could hardly restrain his joyful emotions.
Never in the world had there been any one so lucky, so undeservedly
lucky, as he. The last peril of discovery was past; no one would ever
know the base thing that he had done; his reputation was safe. But
he should never forget the shamefulness of his act and of the lying
that had followed it; he could never think of it without a sickness of
the heart. Surely he could never do anything mean and crooked again.
Surely he would do what he could to prove to himself that he had some
decency and honor. If the fellows chose to elect him marshal, he would
accept the election because to decline without giving adequate reasons
would be virtually impossible. But he would not lift a finger to win
the election. He would stick quietly to his books and try by his
studiousness and indifference to popularity and honors to win back some
measure of self-respect and of faith in his own character.

That evening for the first time since he had taken the theme he was
able to concentrate upon his work. He sat up studying until long after
Richard had gone to bed and stopped only when his eyes closed with
drowsiness.

The next day Lester and David walked together to the meeting of the
class in English composition. They took their seats; Lester’s seat was
immediately behind David’s.

Professor Worthington opened a theme. “Usually,” he said, “I acquiesce
in the wishes of those who ask that their themes be not read to the
class. But I shall venture to disregard one such request for the reason
that the writer of the theme has taken a subject that is not in any way
personal and that is of general undergraduate interest. I hope that he
will not object. The title of the theme is ‘The Place of Athletics in
College Life’.”

Lester’s brain swam; he felt faint and sick. Instinctively he tried
to appear impassive, and when the reading began and David in the seat
in front sat up with excitement and then turned and let his eyes rove
questioningly over the faces of those behind him, Lester’s countenance
was unmoved. But David’s eyes did not rest on Lester; with their
puzzled and indignant expression they swept back and forth, but they
did not so much as glance at any of his friends. Finally David turned
and settled down into his seat while the reading proceeded.

Slowly Lester rallied from his mental collapse. What was he to do now?
David would go to the desk at the end of the hour and tell Professor
Worthington that he was the author of the theme. Expulsion from
college was the penalty for cheating in examinations; expulsion from
college was probably the penalty for stealing another fellow’s theme.
To be expelled for any misdeed was bad enough, but to be expelled for
cheating and theft――what could be more terrible! Lester felt that his
mother and his father could not bear it; he could not go home to them
branded in such a way by the college. He must somehow keep David from
telling Professor Worthington about that theme.

The reading of it went on. At the end Professor Worthington said: “That
is the kind of theme I should like to get more often than I do. It
deals with a subject that is of undergraduate interest and one on which
you must all have done some thinking and talking. The reader feels that
it is written with a certain authority, that the writer, either from
his close observation of athletics or participation in them, knows what
he’s talking about. The first requisite to writing well about a thing
is to know the subject thoroughly. There is no doubt that the writer of
this theme knows athletics thoroughly.”

Professor Worthington let his glance fall on Lester with an approving
and encouraging smile. He then took up another theme and resumed his
reading.

Lester felt for an instant that Professor Worthington’s glance and
smile had identified him for the class. Then he knew that this could
not be, especially when the man on his left murmured to him, “Mighty
good theme; wonder who wrote it.”

As the hour dragged on, Lester, inattentive to the reading and to
the instructor’s comments, tried to formulate in his mind the appeal
that he should make to David, turned from it in disgust, thought with
bitterness of the cruel mischance of which, after having safely passed
all the perils that had threatened him, he was now the victim, and
turned again to the framing of his excuses and his plea.

When the bell rang at the end of the hour, in the instant confusion
and clatter that arose as the members of the class got to their feet,
Lester grasped David’s arm.

“Dave,” he whispered, “please don’t speak to Professor Worthington
about that theme of yours till after I have a talk with you.”

At first David did not understand. “Which theme?” he said. “That about
electioneering?”

“No. The one that he read to the class.”

David looked at him, amazed. “Did you do that, Lester?”

“Yes. Wait till I can tell you about it, Dave.” Lester’s face was pale,
his eyes were pleading.

“All right; I’ll wait for you outside.”

They separated; Lester went to Professor Worthington’s desk, and David
passed out of the door. There were three other students waiting at
the desk to speak to Professor Worthington, but he noticed Lester
approaching and reached out the theme to him.

“That’s a fine piece of work, Mr. Wallace,” he said. “Do another as
good. You’ll excuse me, I know, for reading it to the class. I was sure
they’d be interested.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lester quietly and turned away with the theme. The
other fellows waiting at the desk looked at him with interest.

In the corridor of the building David was awaiting him. Lester put the
theme into his hands. “There’s your theme, Dave. You can see what I did
to it.”

David glanced at the outside sheet, which bore Lester’s name. He said
nothing until after they had descended the steps of the building.
Then his voice was not unsympathetic as he asked, “How did it happen,
Lester?”

“I wasn’t able to write the theme because I was studying for the
examinations in the other courses. Then when they were all over,
the last night before the theme was due, I was pretty much all in.
I couldn’t write; I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Then
I decided to go down to your room and see whether you could help me
with a subject. You were out, but I saw your theme on your desk, and I
sat down and read it. Then the thought just came to me that with your
record it wouldn’t matter much if you missed that theme, and that if I
could hand it in as mine, it would save me from probation and all that
sort of thing. I thought I’d try again in the morning to do the work
myself, but if I couldn’t I might use your work. So I took the theme
and the rough draft to my room and put them into my desk. Then I went
to bed, and I slept until after nine the next morning. That gave me too
little time to do the writing in, though I did try; I even went without
breakfast, trying. And it wasn’t till just a little while before you
came and told Richard and me about losing the theme that I’d copied off
the last page and written my name on the back and destroyed the first
draft.”

“It’s too bad,” murmured David. He had been walking with his eyes
fixed on the ground in front of him; he did not want to embarrass his
friend with his gaze. “I wish I’d never found it out. Come up to my
room, Lester, where we can talk.”

They ascended the stairs of the dormitory in silence. David threw open
the door of his room, and Lester entered. Then David closed and locked
the door. “Sit down, old man.” He looked at Lester for the first time
and saw how ashen white he was, and pity overflowed in David’s heart.
“Why, you poor old boy,” he said and put his arm affectionately inside
Lester’s arm, “sit down and don’t look like that.”

Then Lester tried to smile, but failed utterly. Tears sprang into his
eyes and began to run down his cheeks. “David,” he cried, “I’m ashamed,
so ashamed! I hate myself!” His voice broke; he sank into the chair at
David’s desk and, throwing out his arms, hid his face in them.

David patted him on the back and talked soothingly. “Don’t think of
it any more, Lester. We’ll never think of it again. It will be just
between us two; and you mustn’t let it break you all up like this.
I know how sorry you are. And you really weren’t yourself when you
did it; you were all worn out.” He stroked the back of Lester’s head
gently.

“Dave,” Lester said in a trembling voice when at last he raised his
head, “you’re the whitest man I know. When I think how I stole from you
and lied to you――and then you treat me like this!” Again the sob came
into his throat, and he could not go on.

David squeezed and kneaded the muscles of Lester’s arm. “You’re all
right, Lester,” he said. “All you need is a little more muscle in
another place than this. And you’re getting it.”

“I know I’m weak, weak as water,” said Lester. “But I never thought I
was dishonest. Not even back in school, when I did that rotten thing
to Mr. Dean――cribbing the lessons in class when he was blind. This is
the first crooked thing I’ve done since then, and it’s worse, because
I’m older; and I went from one mean and crooked thing to another――there
seemed no end to it. Dave, do you think it will be that way with me
always? Do you think that every once in so often I’ll give way and do
some perfectly rotten, dishonorable thing?”

“Of course you won’t. You’ll never do anything of the sort again as
long as you live. And now, old fellow, you’ve got it out of your
system, and let’s not ever speak of it again. And everything will be as
it was before, just as if it had never happened.”

“I don’t believe there’s another fellow in the world who could say that
or think it,” said Lester. “But nothing can be quite as it was before,
Dave. For instance, what ought I to do about running for marshal?
Ever since I did this thing I’ve known that I’m the most unfit man in
the class to be marshal. And I suppose there’s a chance of my being
elected. What ought I to do?”

“I can’t see that you ought to do anything. I think you just ought to
attend to your own affairs and let the election take its course.”

“But if I should happen to be elected I couldn’t enjoy the honor a bit.”

“That would be part of your punishment. But you can’t reject the honor
before it comes to you, or even afterwards.”

“Don’t you think you ought to let it be known quietly that you’ve found
I’m not the man for it, and that I think so, too, and would prefer not
to have the fellows vote for me?”

“No, I don’t think so. It would start a lot of talk and gossip and
inquiry, and what would be the use? Why not let the class go ahead and
elect whomever they will? If it happens to be you, why, just put the
best face you can on it.”

Lester thought for a moment. “You’re probably right. But I hope they
won’t elect me; and you can be sure that I’ll not act any more in a
way to catch votes. I’m afraid I was doing that before I did this
worse thing.” He rose and took David’s hand. “You certainly are a good
friend, Dave. And I’ve been a pretty useless one to you.”

“You’ve always been a source of pride to me,” said David. Lester
winced. “And you will be again,” David added hastily. “And if the class
elects you marshal, I shan’t feel that they’ve made such a fearful
mistake. I’ll enjoy the honor for you.”

He unlocked the door, laughing, and gave Lester an affectionate slap on
the back as he passed out.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST MARSHAL

From his talk with David, Lester went away chastened yet light of
heart――more cheerful, indeed, than he had ever hoped to be again. He
had confessed, had been forgiven, and was secure in the knowledge that
now the episode was closed and that no one else would ever hear of
it. But he had gone through too much in the past few days to forgive
himself as readily as David had forgiven him; he was sincere in his
determination to court obscurity now rather than prominence and for the
rest of his college course to live the unassuming life of the student.

With that resolve in mind he immediately ascended from David’s room to
his own, and there he was engaged in study when Richard Bradley entered
half an hour later. Richard at once began to talk about the campaign
for the marshalship.

“The general opinion now seems to be that you’ve got a sure thing for
first place,” he said. “Farrar will get second and Colby third. I’ve
heard lots of fellows who don’t know you at all well say they were
going to vote for you because they think you ought to have been captain
of either the eleven or the nine and that the least the class can do is
to make it up to you.”

“It’s good of you to take such an interest, Dick,” said Lester. “But
I’ve got over my craving for honors and popularity――at least I think
I have. I honestly think that either Farrar or Colby deserves the job
more than I do.”

There was a knock at the door; then Harry Dawson, who was the editor
of the college literary periodical, entered. He was a pleasant-looking
fellow, lively in speech and manner, and with an engaging brightness in
his brown eyes. He began briskly:

“I came round, Wallace, to ask you if you wouldn’t let us print that
theme of yours that was read in class. It’s one of the best things I’ve
heard this year. I asked Professor Worthington afterwards who wrote it,
and he referred me to you.”

Lester, sitting at his desk, was drawing lines with his pencil on his
blotting-pad. “No, I guess not, Dawson,” he replied. “Thanks just the
same, but I don’t care to have it printed.”

“But why not?” Dawson urged. “As Mr. Worthington said, it’s a subject
that the whole college is interested in. And to have it treated by you,
with your record in athletics――”

“I don’t care to have it printed. I’m sorry.”

Dawson was disposed to argue. “Don’t you think you ought to subordinate
your own preference? A college publication has the right to expect the
support of the fellows. You oughtn’t to have any false modesty about
such a thing as this.”

“It isn’t false modesty. I simply――”

“Sure, it is,” interrupted Richard. “Give him the theme, Lester, don’t
be such a pig.”

“Keep out of this, will you, Dick?” Lester raised his head to glare
angrily at his roommate. He turned then to Dawson. “That theme isn’t
going to be printed; that’s all there is about it.”

“Oh, all right. Sorry to have bothered you.” Dawson, red and indignant,
rose and with a flashing glance at Lester, who had again relapsed over
his blotter, left the room.

“Now what did you want to talk to the fellow like that for?” said
Richard resentfully. “A perfectly good fellow who comes and pays you
the compliment of asking you for your theme, and you throw him down in
the most uncivil way! Besides trying to snap my head off! You’d better
get back to your old life if hard study makes you behave like this.”

“All through?” asked Lester grimly, looking up at his roommate.

“Yes.” Richard seized a book and dashed it open wrathfully.

For some minutes there was quiet in the room. Then Richard, who, in
spite of a certain rigidity that characterized him when any matters
of principle were involved, was of too accommodating and friendly a
disposition to remain at odds with any one for insufficient reasons,
began to make overtures.

“Lester,” he said, “why didn’t you tell a fellow you’d had your theme
read in class? You’re so secretive. When I have a little success I run
home and blab it all to you; but when you do anything I can’t dig it
out of you with a pickaxe.”

“It wasn’t anything,” said Lester, with his eyes on his book.

“Yes, it was, too, or Dawson would never have been so enthusiastic.
What was your theme about?”

“Oh, never mind! Can’t you see I want to study?”

“Well, it’s easy enough to answer a simple question, isn’t it? I
should think when a fellow shows some interest in what you’ve done you
might do something else than bark at him.”

“Oh, that’s all right. But I’ve got to study, and I don’t care to be
interrupted all the time.”

“Well, just tell me what your theme was about, and I’ll let you alone.”

Lester, enraged by this badgering, brought his fist down on the desk.
“No, I won’t tell you what it was about!” he cried. “I won’t tell you
anything about it! Mind your own affairs!”

“Oh, very well, then,” retorted Richard. “Since you’re so stuffy about
it, I’ll find out all about it. All I have to do is to ask Dawson.”

He felt even in his indignation that he was being childish, and he was
unprepared for the sharp, immediate change that his words produced in
Lester’s attitude and expression. Lester leaned back in his chair, and
the look of sullenness on his face gave way to one of resignation and
weariness.

“I’ll tell you all about it, Dick,” he said. “I was hoping I could keep
it from you; but it begins to look as if there were no use in trying to
keep it from any one. The theme that was read in class was Dave Ives’s,
not mine. I took it out of Dave’s room and handed it in as mine. I
changed the last page of it. That was how you happened to find that
page of Dave’s theme in my waste-basket.”

He realized already that Richard’s reaction to the confession was not
at all the same as David’s had been. There was no sign of compassion in
Richard’s face, only distress and even repugnance.

“David knows the whole story,” said Lester. “If you want to, you can
talk it over with him.”

“I don’t see how you came to do it.”

“Pressure of work that had to be made up――no time to write the theme
and it had to be a good one, or else I stayed on probation. I suppose
you’d call it just weak and dishonest――as it was.”

“Well,” said Richard slowly, after a pause, “I can understand why you
shouldn’t care to be elected marshal now.”

Lester made no response, and Richard did not inquire further into the
circumstances of the misdeed or comment on it. After a little time
Richard rose to leave the room.

Lester looked up at him imploringly. “There’s one thing, Dick, that I
wish you’d understand,” he said. “I’m not feeling callous about this.”

“No,” said Richard gravely, “I suppose not.”

He opened the door and went out. Lester sat gazing into space with
unhappy eyes. He had lost the respect of one whom he liked, of a
friend who had been even a hero worshiper. He deserved to lose it, he
knew, yet he could not help feeling that Richard might have been less
cruel. He wondered how they could go on living together now.

Then he reflected again that he was receiving no more punishment than
he deserved, and that, if he was to win back his own self-respect, it
could be only through hard and honest work. So he settled down to his
studying and put Richard resolutely out of his mind.

Meanwhile Richard had accepted Lester’s suggestion and had gone to hear
David’s version of the story. Yet, although David made all the excuses
for Lester’s action that were possible and enlarged upon his penitence,
Richard’s condemnation remained unqualified. There was in him an
inherited strain of inflexibility in judging deviations from standards
of integrity and truth.

“He simply did a thing that an honorable fellow wouldn’t have done,”
insisted Richard. “And then he lied about it. He didn’t own up to it
until he was cornered and couldn’t lie any longer. I don’t doubt that
he’s sorry and all that; but when you can’t respect a fellow any more,
what are you to do?”

“I don’t go so far as that,” said David. “He’s making a fight now to
win back his own self-respect and my respect and yours. Give the boy a
chance.”

“What chance has he? I don’t see any.”

“Well, if he keeps up the pace in studies that he’s been setting
for himself, cuts out for good the idleness and loafing that were
responsible for his getting into trouble, shows he isn’t seeking
popularity any more and doesn’t care anything about it――I should think
then you could begin to respect him again.”

“It would help,” admitted Richard. “Though hard work can’t exactly
cancel a dishonorable act.”

“Friendship might help it to,” said David.

Richard pondered, frowning. “I’m not sure that it isn’t my duty to do
everything I can to keep him from being elected marshal.”

“If you feel a real call to duty, go to it,” said David with mild
irony. “You’re a true son of the Puritans, Dick.”

“You can scoff if you want to. But here you and I have been doing all
that we could to get Lester elected first marshal, and now we find that
he’s unfit to have the honor. You’ll agree to that, I suppose?”

David hesitated. “I don’t know that I’d say he was unfit.”

“You don’t mean that you’ll still vote for him?”

“I’m not sure that I shan’t.”

“You mean to say you may vote to give the highest honor in the class to
the one man in the class who you know has done a dishonorable thing?”

“I haven’t fully decided. He’s the most brilliant athlete we’ve got,
he’s the most popular fellow generally, and he’s my oldest friend.”

“If he’s elected, an injustice is done to Farrar or Colby, either of
whom would be chosen in preference if the truth were known.”

“It won’t be a very serious injustice. Farrar’s had the captaincy of
the football team, Colby’s had the captaincy of the crew; Lester’s
never had anything, though he has contributed more to our athletic
success than any other fellow in college.”

“I don’t know whether you’re too lax in your ideas, or whether I’m too
stiff in mine,” said Richard after a moment, “but certainly one of us
must be wrong.”

“My idea simply is: he’s a friend, he feels badly, he’s filled with
remorse――treat him with consideration.”

“Mine is that friendship shouldn’t blind us to his acts or cause us to
inflict injustice upon another.”

“What would you do to prevent what you call injustice?” asked David.
“Would you go about telling everybody to vote for Farrar because you
had discovered something that, if it were generally known, would make
Lester ineligible?”

“That’s the trouble; I don’t know just what I ought to do. If anybody
asks me, I’ll say that I’m not supporting Lester, and that I can’t
advise any one else to. Then of course I’ll be asked why, and I shall
simply have to say that I can’t tell, but that I have good reasons.
Perhaps that isn’t going far enough. Perhaps I ought to go round and
see all the fellows that I’ve called on in Lester’s interest and tell
them that in my judgment it’s all off.”

“If you do either of those things,” declared David, “you’ll start a
lot of gossip. If you can’t conscientiously vote for Lester, don’t;
that’s all right. But don’t go round trying to influence people to vote
against him. You’ll only blow up a scandal that won’t do any one any
good.”

“I don’t see exactly how.”

“Why, some of Lester’s friends will be indignant and will demand
that you tell what you know or else keep quiet. You’ll be driven to
hinting and finally to telling. And I must say I think that it would
be a great misfortune, not only to Lester, but to the class, to have
publicity given to this matter.”

“Yes, but on the other hand is it fair to keep quiet and perhaps let
Lester have the honor that some one else deserves?”

“That seems to me of small importance. If it isn’t Lester, it will
be Farrar or Colby. They’ve had pretty much all the recognition they
need――captain of the eleven and captain of the crew; they’ll be second
and third marshals, anyway. I shouldn’t worry about them.”

“Lester can’t enjoy it very much if he’s elected.”

“He certainly can’t. He doesn’t want to be elected. But I don’t feel
called upon to protect him from it.”

“I still can’t see how or why he ever came to do it,” said Richard.

“No, but I feel sure he’ll never do anything crooked again. Don’t make
him feel he’s a leper, Dick. Give him another chance.”

“You mean treat him just as if nothing had happened? I can’t. Something
inside me won’t let me.”

“How are you going to treat him, then?”

“I don’t know, except that I can’t be on such easy terms with him any
more. This thing has spoiled him for me.”

“I don’t believe one act changes a fellow all over. You’ve known Lester
pretty intimately and have always liked him and even admired him. This
thing that he’s done isn’t characteristic of him, I feel sure.”

“Don’t you suppose there are lots of men in prison for doing things
that aren’t really characteristic of them? It’s the act itself――the
kind of act that it was――that a fellow can’t overlook.”

“I’m sorry you feel as you do.”

“So am I. But I can’t help it.”

When Richard returned to his room, Lester was writing and did not look
up. Richard settled himself in a chair and began to read. The silence
to which the two thus committed themselves became characteristic now of
their relations. They did not actually cease to be on speaking terms
with each other, but they addressed each other as seldom as possible.
Lester no longer availed himself of what had been a standing invitation
to dine on Sunday at Richard’s house in Boston. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley
and Marion asked Richard why Lester had dropped them, and Richard
replied that he guessed that wasn’t it, but that Lester had given up
going out anywhere to dine with people. The family looked mystified,
but for the time being did not pursue the inquiry.

On the day of the senior-class elections Lester was greeted with
friendly smiles from numerous classmates as he walked from his room to
the voting place.

“It’s a sure thing for you,” said one who came out of the building as
Lester entered.

“It shouldn’t be,” Lester answered. His friend laughed, not taking the
remark seriously.

The ballots were counted that evening. Lester and Richard were as usual
silently engaged with their books when there was a tumultuous rush up
the stairs and a banging on the door. Lester opened the door; instantly
half a dozen joyous youths seized upon him, grasped his hands, beat him
on the back and poured out the good news.

“You got it all right.”

“You beat Farrar by a hundred votes.”

“You beat Colby by a hundred and fifty.”

“Well, old top, how does it feel to be marshal?”

Lester showed his embarrassment. “It’s mighty good of you fellows to
come and tell me,” he said. “But I don’t deserve to be marshal at all.”

“Oh, that’s the way they always talk,” replied Joe Bingham. “We know
better than you do whether you deserve it or not.”

“No, you don’t. You ask my roommate here; he knows me better than any
one else.”

Lester spoke on a sudden wild inspiration. If he were given a chance,
he would tell the crowd, resign, let Farrar have the place to which he
was entitled――

“No, he doesn’t deserve it,” said Richard quietly. “I didn’t vote for
him.”

The fellows laughed; they took Richard’s remark as a joke. They stayed
a few moments longer, holding a jubilation over their friend’s success,
and then clattered noisily down the stairs.

A few moments later another caller appeared to offer his
congratulations. It was Farrar, who had just been elected second
marshal. He was a square-set, stocky fellow, with a good deal of force
showing in his face; he was not handsome; he was blunt and downright of
manner. Although through their prominence in athletics he and Lester
had been brought into close association with each other throughout
their college course, they had never been particularly friendly or
sympathetic.

When Lester saw who his visitor was he stood up; he felt his face
growing hot. Richard swung round in his chair and looked on; the
realization that he was interested heightened Lester’s embarrassment.

“I want to congratulate you,” said Farrar, taking Lester’s hand. “I
want to be among the first.”

“Thank you,” said Lester. “It ought really to have been you, Jim.”

“No, it oughtn’t. I won’t say that I’m not disappointed; of course any
fellow who felt that he stood some show of winning such an honor can’t
help being disappointed a little. But the best man won.”

“No,” said Lester slowly, “that’s just what he didn’t do.”

“Oh, yes, he did. I mightn’t have admitted it a month or two ago; I’d
have been likely to say to myself then that you won by making up to
fellows for their votes. But you didn’t win that way; you won on your
record fair and square. And I don’t feel half so disappointed as I
would have felt if you’d got it by electioneering instead of by just
plugging away at your job and letting your record speak for you. That’s
why I say the best man won and the class is to be congratulated.”

He gave Lester’s hand another firm squeeze. After he had gone, Lester
sat down again at his desk.

“I suppose you find it very entertaining,” he said to his roommate.

“I find it painful,” Richard replied frankly. “The next person that
comes in――I’m going to get out.”

It was but a few moments before another congratulatory friend arrived,
and Richard, true to his word, took his departure. He stayed away from
the room all the rest of the evening; and meanwhile Lester received
a succession of visitors, among them Colby, the third marshal――all
generously come to express their satisfaction at his success.

At ten o’clock, in order to protect himself against a prolongation of
the ordeal, he turned out the light, undressed in the dark, and went to
bed. He lay awake for a long time; he heard Richard come in and go to
bed, and he wished that he had never seen Richard. At last an idea that
gave him some comfort came to him, and while he was turning it over in
his mind he fell asleep.

David had not been among those who had rushed to give Lester their
congratulations. He had felt that if Richard were in the room it would
be awkward for both Lester and himself. But the next morning he left
his door open while he dressed and so caught sight of Lester descending
the stairs. He hailed and halted him, and then he said: “Even though I
didn’t come to see you last night, Lester, I want you to know that I’m
glad you got it. I voted for you.”

Lester’s smile, even though forlorn, showed his gratitude. “I don’t
see how you can reconcile it with your conscience,” he said. “But I
shan’t worry about yours; I’m having trouble enough with my own. Do you
suppose if I went round to your house some time to-day I could see Mr.
Dean?”

David looked astonished. “Yes, I’m sure you could. Almost any time.
He’s always at home.”

“Then I’ll call on him some time this afternoon.”

“He’ll be glad to see you,” said David.

That afternoon, when Lester called and asked for Mr. Dean, he was shown
into the library.

Presently Mr. Dean appeared at the doorway, unpiloted. “Hello, Lester,”
he said, advancing slowly. “I know where everything is in this room
except you.”

“Right here,” said Lester, taking Mr. Dean’s hand.

“It’s very good of you to think of coming to see me. Have a chair.” Mr.
Dean seated himself on the sofa. “I understand that you have achieved
high honor. That’s fine――fine.”

“I don’t think it’s so fine,” said Lester. “It’s about that I wanted to
talk with you――if you’ll be good enough to let me.”

“Of course. What’s the trouble?”

“I feel especially ashamed to come to you about it, and yet in another
way it seems as if for that reason I should――you have more knowledge
of what I’m like, and I think you’ll understand better,” Lester said
awkwardly; he found it hard to make a beginning. The dark glasses gave
to Mr. Dean’s face an inscrutable expression that was not helpful.
“That mean and dishonest thing I did to you at St. Timothy’s――cribbing
my Latin every day in class when you weren’t able to see.”

Mr. Dean made a gesture, impatient, deprecating. “That’s all forgotten,
Lester,” he said gravely.

“But something’s happened that makes it necessary to recall it.” Lester
leaned forward and twined his fingers together and looked at the floor;
he was as uncomfortable as if the eyes that seemed to be gazing at him
could really see. “I’ve done the same kind of thing again――only worse,
much worse.”

Then awkwardly, haltingly, he told the story.

“Of course I see now what I should have done,” he said in conclusion.
“I ought to have insisted that my name shouldn’t be voted on――I ought
to have withdrawn it――even if it meant telling people why. David’s
almost too good a friend; he’s so kind and sympathetic; he didn’t want
me to do that. And I was too willing to see things as he saw them.”

“Perhaps,” assented Mr. Dean, “and perhaps David gave you wrong advice.
But somehow I should have been sorry if David had talked or acted in
any other way. If I had been in David’s place, I hope that I should
have done as he did.”

“But I can’t bear it now,” cried Lester. “Farrar’s coming to
congratulate me because the best man won――and his admitting he was
disappointed because he didn’t win! I tried to cheat you in that Latin
class, I cheated David out of his theme, and I cheated the professor
I handed the theme to, I’ve cheated Farrar out of the honor he
deserved――but I’m not going to――I’m not going to! I want you to stiffen
my backbone for me, Mr. Dean!”

“Why, my boy,” said Mr. Dean, much affected by the emotion in Lester’s
voice, “I don’t believe it needs any stiffening from me.”

“Oh, it does. I’m weak, but I am going to try never to be so weak
again. And I want to make things right with Farrar. Don’t you think I
ought to? Don’t you think I ought to resign and make the class have a
new election in which my name shouldn’t be considered?”

“I think,” said Mr. Dean, “that you ought to do the thing that
will best satisfy your own conscience. Yes, I think that in the
circumstances you ought to resign.”

“That, I know, is the way my roommate feels about it. Do you think that
in resigning I ought to tell why?”

“I should think that might not be necessary; it may be enough if you
merely say that for certain definite reasons you are not entitled to
the honor and that you wish to resign in favor of a man who is entitled
to it. Of course you may be pressed to give the reasons. If you are,
you will have to decide, I think, whether to tell the whole story or
not.”

“I know I’m a coward; I hope it won’t be necessary.”

“I hope it won’t be,” replied Mr. Dean gravely. Then after a moment
he said: “Do you feel under any obligation to say anything about the
matter to Professor Worthington?”

“Oh!” said Lester. “To tell the truth, I hadn’t once thought about
that.”

“Of course, as things stand, you’re receiving credit for work that you
didn’t do, and David is not receiving credit for work that he did. Not
that David cares, I imagine. To make a clean breast of the affair to a
member of the faculty might result in your being severely disciplined;
it might have serious consequences for you.”

“Yes,” Lester said; “I suppose that at the least I should be put on
probation.”

“To avoid which you did the thing that caused all the trouble.”

Lester hesitated a moment; then he said: “I guess I’d better take my
medicine. I’ll go and see Professor Worthington.” He rose. “You’ve been
a great help to me, Mr. Dean. You’ve helped me to see things straight.
I think it must be fine for David――having you at hand to turn to. Not
that he needs such help as I do.”

“We can all of us help somebody else at some time or other,” replied
Mr. Dean. “Do you ever go up to St. Timothy’s, Lester?”

“I haven’t been there for some time.”

“Take a Sunday off and run up there. It does every one good to revisit
old scenes and see old friends.”

“I should like to go after I’ve squared accounts with myself. Nothing
will do me good until then.”

Mr. Dean stood up; his groping hands found Lester’s shoulders. “Not
until we find out how weak we are do we know what we must do to become
strong,” he said. “You’ve found out; you’ve begun to build yourself up.
I’d trust you anywhere now, Lester, at any time.”

CHAPTER XVIII

RELINQUISHMENT

Lester walked with rapid steps to the house of Professor Worthington.
Now that he had decided what to do he was in haste to get it done. He
found Professor Worthington at home and within a few moments had made a
complete confession.

“I shouldn’t have expected such a thing as that from a man of your
caliber,” said Professor Worthington. “You’ve just been elected first
marshal of your class, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I’m going to resign.”

“On account of this thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do many members of the class know what you did?”

“Two. David Ives and my roommate.”

“Are they likely to tell any one else?”

“No, sir. They wouldn’t tell.”

“Do they think you ought to resign?”

“One does, and the other doesn’t.”

“Did they advise you to come to me?”

“No, sir. But Mr. Dean, who used to be a master at St. Timothy’s, where
I went to school, advised me.”

“How did he happen to know the facts?”

“I told him. I felt I needed advice as to what to do.”

“I am satisfied,” said Professor Worthington. “I shan’t do anything
about the matter; or rather the only thing I shall do will be to raise
Ives’s marks. You’ve done excellent work in the course since the thing
happened, and I am simply going to forget what you’ve told me.”

He showed his friendliness by walking arm in arm with Lester to the
door when Lester, after murmuring his gratitude, rose to go.

Lester felt that now he could face the final ordeal with cheerfulness.
He went directly to the room of Tom McKee, the president of the senior
class, and found him tipped back in his chair, with his feet on his
desk and a volume on economics open against his knees.

“Tom,” he said, “I want you to call a meeting of the class for
to-morrow night. Get the notice of it in to-morrow morning’s _Crimson_.
It’s on a matter of importance.”

“Sure,” said Tom. “The first marshal’s word is law. What’s up?”

“I can’t tell you now. But you’ll see that the notice goes in, won’t
you? And make it urgent; we want everybody to come.”

McKee reached for a pad and a pencil and wrote out the following:

Seniors! Important meeting at Harvard Union at eight o’clock
this evening. Very urgent. Everybody come.

T. MCKEE,
_President_.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Fine. And tell the fellows that you see, so that they’ll talk it up.”

“Anything that you want me to do at the meeting?”

“Just call it to order and let me have the floor, if you will.”

“All right; that’s easy. I’ll make sure that we can have the assembly
room at the Union, and then I’ll turn this notice in at the _Crimson_
office. I’m glad you don’t want me to make a speech.”

“I wish I didn’t have to make one,” said Lester.

That evening the members of the senior class crowded into the assembly
room; they filled the benches; they sat on the radiators; they stood
against the walls and in the doorway. The notice of the meeting
had excited curiosity, which had become increasingly keen since it
appeared that no one knew why the meeting had been called. During the
preliminary noise, the scraping of chairs and benches on the floor,
the thumping and scuffling of feet, and the loud buzz of conversation,
Lester sat on a bench immediately in front of the platform, silent,
unresponsive to those near him.

McKee mounted the platform and stood behind the chairman’s table. He
rapped on the table; he raised his voice; gradually the crowd became
silent.

“The meeting will please come to order,” shouted McKee. “I have called
this meeting at the request of our first marshal, and I will ask Mr.
Lester Wallace to state what is in his mind.”

Amid enthusiastic applause Lester rose. This was the first opportunity
that the class as a whole had had to show its satisfaction at the
outcome of the election. The applause swelled, slackened, and swelled
again; it continued and continued while Lester, white and unsmiling,
waited for a chance to speak. At last there was quiet, and he began in
a voice that shook a little:

“Fellows, I wanted you all to be here――”

“Louder!” came a shout from the back of the room.

“Get up on the platform!” cried another voice.

“Yes! Platform!” shouted others.

Lester obeyed the command; he stepped up on the platform and took his
stand beside the chairman’s table. “Fellows,” he said, “ever since the
election I’ve been very uncomfortable in my mind. I’ve known that I’m
not fit to be first marshal or to hold any office in the class.”

A cry of derision and protest went up from the audience.

“I’m in earnest about this,” Lester continued when he was able to make
himself heard. “There isn’t one of you that would have voted for me if
he’d known what I know about myself.”

“We’re all miserable sinners,” cried a cheerful voice; and the crowd
broke into laughter that kept renewing itself irrepressibly just as
quiet seemed about to be restored.

Lester stood perplexed; that his tragic speech should be greeted with
laughter was a thing for which he was quite unprepared. “I ought to
have withdrawn my name instead of allowing it to be voted on,” he said,
and again he was interrupted.

“Sit down!” shouted some one.

“Forget it!” cried another.

And both outcries brought great demonstrations of approval from the
audience.

“I’m not going to sit down, and I can’t forget it,” Lester said with a
flash of spirit. “I wish I could. I’m here to tender my resignation as
first marshal, and I hope you will accept it unanimously.”

“Why?” shouted several voices.

“Because I’ve done a thing that makes me unfit to hold any position of
honor or trust in the class,” said Lester firmly.

“What was it?” demanded some one.

Then there was a hush. Lester looked out over the audience; his face
was pale. “I stole a fellow’s theme and passed it in as my own,” he
said. “I’m through. Elect some one else.” He stepped down from the
platform and took his seat while his classmates sat in silence.

In the middle of the hall Farrar rose. “Mr. President!” he said. Farrar
had a big voice of great carrying power; moreover, his manner was
forcible and decisive.

“Mr. Farrar has the floor,” announced McKee.

“I wish to say I respect Lester Wallace for his courage,” said Farrar.
“And I move that his resignation be not accepted. We can afford to
overlook this slip of his that he’s told us about. He was the choice
of the class, for first marshal, and I don’t believe that any one here
is going to feel that the choice was a mistaken one. I move that his
resignation be not accepted.”

“Second the motion!” shouted some one amidst a great burst of applause.

Then Robert McClure, who had been an active supporter of Farrar, stood
up. “Mr. President,” he said. “I think that this question is one that
shouldn’t be decided hastily. I think we ought to have more information
before we come to a decision. We don’t know anything about the
circumstances in regard to this theme that Mr. Wallace has mentioned.
I hope we may have some further information. And, anyway, I think we
ought to hold a new election. We want to settle this matter with common
sense and deliberate judgment, not with snap judgment and emotion.”

Lester again rose and faced the audience. “I will give you all the
information I can. I was in trouble with the college office; I was
trying to make up work in other courses, and I neglected my work in the
composition course. A theme was due, and I hadn’t written it. I knew
that if I didn’t hand it in, I should be put on probation. I took a
friend’s theme without his knowledge and handed it in as mine. That’s
the whole story. I want to say that, much as I appreciate Mr. Farrar’s
remarks, Mr. McClure is absolutely right. I have resigned as first
marshal, and the class will have to hold another election.” He sat
down, and again there was silence.

McKee, the president of the class, rose. “We all regret very much the
action that it seems necessary to take,” he said. “I will appoint, as a
committee to arrange for a new election of class officers, Mr. McClure,
Mr. Ives, and Mr. Roberts; and I will ask them to publish as soon as
possible the announcement of such arrangements as they may make. The
meeting is adjourned.”

McKee leaped from the platform and seized Lester’s hands. “That took
courage, old man,” he said. “I hope they reëlect you just the same; but
if they don’t, remember this: there are a lot of us that stand by you.”

“Thank you, Tom.” Lester found now that he could not speak; and there
were other fellows crowding round him with assurances of their unshaken
faith. He got away from the throng as soon as he could and went to his
room.

Richard Bradley arrived a moment later; he came at once to Lester and
seated himself on the arm of his chair. “I’m sorry I’ve been so mean to
you, Lester,” he said.

“You haven’t been mean; you’ve been just right,” Lester answered. “And
I’m glad now that every one knows. It makes me ashamed, but somehow
it’s a relief. I hope you’ll think better of me sometime, Dick.”

“I think better of you now,” Richard said. “And I can tell you one
thing, Lester; whether you’re elected marshal or not, you haven’t lost
a single friend.”

Nevertheless, the ordeal through which Lester now had to pass was
humiliating to one who had never been distinguished for the virtue of
humility. He felt that wherever he went he left a trail of gossipers
behind him. He knew that his fall from grace was the subject of
discussion wherever two or three seniors were gathered.

The committee appointed by McKee issued a notice that the election
would be held on a certain day; and in the interval before that day
debate as to Lester’s availability went on almost without ceasing.
David Ives and Richard Bradley declared that atonement washed away
sin; they pleaded that Lester should be triumphantly reëlected first
marshal――with an even larger majority than before, if possible; they
pointed out that by thus honoring him the class would be recognizing
not merely the athlete and popular hero, but also a fellow who had
shown moral courage of a high sort. The argument was attacked; the
exact details and circumstances of Lester’s crime were inquired into
and brought to light. The investigators declined to exonerate him
because of a belated confession. Why, they asked, should a fellow who
had done a thing of which he finally had the grace to be ashamed be
preferred over fellows who had never stooped to a dishonorable action.

The election was held. Farrar was chosen first marshal, Colby second,
and McKee third. Lester received thirty votes out of four hundred and
forty.

The election, the resignation, and the new election were not events
that could escape publicity. The college newspaper contained accounts
that hinted at the facts without actually giving them. Lester knew that
the story would go everywhere; he wrote a detailed narrative and sent
it to his father. The letter that he received in reply made him think
that his family, who were those most cruelly hurt by the act, would be
the last to forgive. The letter closed with the words: “Your mother and
I had been planning to come on for your graduation. I don’t think now
that we can bring ourselves to do it.”

There was another letter that Lester wrote, as bulky and explicit
as that which he had sent to his father. It went to Ruth Davenport,
at St. Timothy’s. Her reply showed a more forgiving heart; and the
correspondence that followed was a thing that helped Lester in a dark
time.

The other thing that helped him was his newfound earnestness in
study. In former days he had given the greater part of his time to
the pursuit of amusement; now during the winter months virtually the
only recreation that he permitted himself was reading. When spring
came he went out again for baseball; and, playing first base on the
university nine, he showed more zest in the practice than he had ever
exhibited before. His experiences and the reflections to which they had
given rise had in a few months matured him. Some of the fellows on the
nine came to look to him rather than to the captain for leadership;
and he was tactful in contributing to the general efficiency of the
team without infringing on the captain’s prerogative. He enjoyed
playing baseball, and this year he played it with something more
than enjoyment. To help the nine to win seemed to him his special
responsibility; it would be part of his atonement.

He adopted Mr. Dean’s suggestion and went up to St. Timothy’s School
for a Sunday. Revisiting the place had such charms for him that soon
afterwards he proposed to David that they make a trip to it together.

“Fine idea,” said David. “I’ve been more or less neglecting Ralph. It’s
time I was seeing what the kid is up to.”

One of the things that Ralph was most astonishingly “up to” was art.
With embarrassment and blushes he brought out a large portfolio filled
with drawings, which he exhibited to his brother. David examined them
with increasing respect. He knew just enough about the fine arts to
know that for a schoolboy the sketches were extremely good. There were
pictures of school scenes, of the pond with the crews on it, and of
various masters; there was a sketch of Ruth Davenport, at which David
looked with special interest.

“That’s a mighty good likeness,” he said. “You’ve improved a lot over
the little kid sketches you used to make. Has anybody been teaching
you?”

“No.” Ralph looked at his brother hopefully, shyly; and then said, “I
want to be an artist, Dave.”

“When did that idea come over you?”

“I don’t know exactly. This year. I know that it’s the one thing I want
to do.”

“You’ll have to talk it over with Mr. Dean. Pity he can’t see your work
and judge for himself.”

“Yes. But if I were to take lessons this summer, and the teacher
thought it worth while for me to go on――”

“You wouldn’t want to give up going to Harvard, would you, in order to
start right in and study art?”

“I’d give up anything!” Ralph’s eyes flashed; David was amazed at
the glint through their softness. “I should like to go to Harvard,
of course, but if it’s wise for me to go to an art school instead, I
shouldn’t hesitate. Not for a minute.”

“Did you get Ruth to sit for that portrait?”

“Yes. No; that is, she asked me to do a sketch of her. Tom Windsor had
been telling her about some drawings I’d made of fellows, and she gave
me this chance.”

David looked at the picture again admiringly. Though Ralph was just a
boy, he had somehow caught the whimsical, appealing expression that
played about Ruth’s lips and the merry look of her eyes.

“That’s all I’ve got to show you,” Ralph said and began to put away his
work. “It’s too fine a day to sit indoors.”

They went for a walk past the old mill and then out to the wood road
that led to the lake. It was a warm and sunny afternoon in June, with a
light wind that set the long grass of the meadows streaming, the gold
of the dandelions glittering, and the tender green leaves of the young
birches dancing; in the meadows chirped robin and blackbird; among the
birches and the pine trees song sparrows and thrushes were singing;
down through the forest, melody and sunlight showered together, and the
ground exhaled the fragrance of moss and fern and violet――all the moist
odors of the spring.

There was the flash of a bird overhead across the shadowed path, and
then from a copse near by came a plaintive fluting call.

“A veery,” said Ralph.

“Well!” exclaimed David, “I don’t know a veery from a vireo. And you
didn’t either a year ago.”

“I’ve got interested in birds this spring. Tom Windsor is a shark on
them, and so is Mr. Randolph. I’ve gone out with them a good deal.
Anything that has color I like to know about and watch.”

David was silent, marveling at his ignorance of his own brother, his
ignorance of the developing and unfolding that had been taking place in
the boy. No longer was Ralph just an unformed human being of obvious
impulses. What reserves of feeling and determination and thought had
been assembling in him during this year in which he had assumed both a
new gentleness and a new harness? David felt a new sense of respect for
his brother, and also and rather sadly he felt more remote from him.

Trying to read his brother, he kept glancing at him while they walked
quietly along the grassy wood road. Suddenly Ralph stopped; David,
following the direction of his gaze, saw seated on a knoll under some
pine trees a little way ahead a man and a girl; the man’s arm was round
the girl’s waist, and their heads were close together. Their faces were
not visible; but the white hat with the cherry-colored ribbon and the
white dress with the cherry-colored sash made David know that the girl
was Ruth, and the man he recognized as Lester.

Noiselessly and without looking behind them, Ralph and David retraced
their steps. Neither of them spoke for some time.

“You won’t tell any one,” David said.

“No, of course not.” Ralph’s tone was indignant. Then the schoolboy in
him found expression. “Blatch and Manners will be all broken up. I bet
they soak it to the fellows in Latin and mathematics when they learn.
They’ll just have to take it out on somebody.”

“You don’t sound very sympathetic with them.”

“Well, it seems ridiculous to think of them or anybody else imagining
that they had a chance when there was Wallace!”

“Yes,” said David, “it does seem ridiculous.”

He spoke gayly, and in truth there was nothing but unselfish gladness
in his heart. A year ago such a discovery as he had just made might
have occasioned other emotions. But it was all right now; it was all
just as it should be. Lester was a mighty lucky fellow, and when you
came right down to it, David loyally added, Ruth Davenport was a mighty
lucky girl.

CHAPTER XIX

ATTAINMENT

The afternoon of Class Day was bright and sunny; the curve of the
Stadium, banked with spectators, mostly feminine, glowed and sparkled
while the seniors, in academic cap and gown, marched behind their
spirited brass band into the arena. Seating themselves upon the grass,
they formed a somber center for a setting so gay and flashing; yet the
jewel, if so the composite mass might be designated, was not without
its sparkle. For the class humorist, Harry Carson, mounted the platform
and, standing against a screen of greenery that had been erected for
the occasion, delivered his address. David was sure that no other Ivy
orator had ever been so witty or so brilliant or had ever drawn such
frequent bursts of laughter from an audience. He gave his ears to the
speakers, but his eyes to his mother and Katharine Vance, who were
sitting together in one of the lower tiers of seats. He was eager to
see how they were responding to Harry Carson’s humor――eager to see them
laughing at the jokes. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that he
was eager to see Katharine laughing and amused. She did not disappoint
his glances; her sense of humor was sympathetic with his, and she had
a sufficient knowledge of college matters to appreciate some of the
orator’s remarks that left Mrs. Ives, who was less well informed,
looking bewildered. David was finding in those days that the best
enjoyment of all lay in seeing the person for whom he cared enjoying
the things that he enjoyed.

After the Ivy orator had finished, Jim Farrar, the first marshal, led
the cheering――for the president of the university, for the faculty, for
the football team, the crew, the nine. Lester Wallace was in New Haven
with the nine, battling against Yale at that very hour. The last and
most appreciated cheer was for the ladies; when the applause occasioned
by it had died away, the band struck up “Fair Harvard,” and the
spectators rose and joined with seniors and graduates in the singing.
Then, while the band played a lively air, the seniors marched out along
the track directly beneath the lowest tier of seats; and while they
marched they were pelted with bright-colored streamers and with showers
of confetti; they were pelted, and they returned the pelting; back and
forth flew the light missiles, weaving gay patterns in the air. David
waved to Katharine Vance; her eyes flashed a merry greeting in reply;
then she flung a small paper bomb at his head. David caught it and
threw it back; it struck the brim of her hat and burst into a shower of
bright fragments. Then a streamer tossed from some other hand entwined
itself round David’s neck and another bomb caught him in the ear and
exploded satisfactorily; he passed on, fishing with one finger for the
scraps of paper that were working down inside his collar.

At the exit David fell out of line and stood for a while looking on
at the lively scene. The graduates marched by in the order of their
classes, pelting and being pelted; shrieks rose from ladies who were
unable to dodge the soft missiles; triumphant shouts and laughter came
from those who scored or suffered hits; arms waved, heads and hats
ducked and bobbed, colored streamers fluttered and floated and flashed;
and the brass band receded into the distance, with the black-gowned
seniors marching behind it.

David made his way up into the section in which his mother and
Katharine were stationed. He stood with them and watched the final
exchanges between the spectators and the last stragglers among the
graduates.

“I don’t think any of them look as nice as this year’s graduating
class,” said Katharine.

“And I’m sure that none of them ever had such nice people to see them
graduate,” said David.

Katharine, with her gay laugh, and Mrs. Ives, with her quiet smile,
were equally pleased.

“I suppose some time, David, you’ll get over making such polite and
flattering remarks to me,” said Katharine.

David affected surprise. “Why, what was there in that remark that you
could take personally?”

“Oh, I wish I had a real bomb to burst on you!” exclaimed Katharine.

“Then I should not be able to take you to the festivities this
evening,” said David. “I suppose that now we might as well be on our
way.”

At Harvard Square Mrs. Ives left them and went home; the festivities,
she said with a laugh, were not for her. Katharine and David stopped in
front of the bulletin that announced the victory of Harvard over Yale
in baseball by the score of 5 to 3.

“Isn’t that great!” said David. “Now to-morrow we’ll surely win on our
own grounds. I wonder what Lester did.”

“Sometimes you make me almost jealous of Lester,” said Katharine. “I
almost think you like him more than you do me.”

“I like him a lot,” replied David. “But not more than I do you.”

The “spread” to which David conducted Katharine was one of numerous
“spreads,” as they were called, at which members of the graduating
class entertained their relatives and friends. This particular one was
held on the lawn adjoining a dormitory; small tables were set out on
the grass; in a tent at one side there was dancing; electric lights
in Chinese lanterns that were strung overhead illuminated the scene
when twilight fell. Katharine and David and Richard and Marion Bradley
seized upon a table and refreshed themselves with lobster-Newburg,
strawberries and ice cream; then they strolled about among the tables,
greeting friends and being introduced to friends of friends. Romance
was in the air; several engagements that had been announced that day
were a topic of conversation, particularly as the seniors who had thus
plighted themselves and the girls to whom they were plighted were
present and were receiving congratulations and undergoing inspection.
It was impossible for Katharine and David to remain unaffected by such
an atmosphere.

“Don’t I wish we were announcing our engagement, too!” murmured David
to her in one of the moments when they had the table to themselves.

“But you know we’ve talked it all over, David. And with four years in
the medical school ahead of you――it would be foolish, wouldn’t it?”

Katharine’s voice was a little wistful; it betrayed a desire to be
overruled.

“Then let’s do something foolish,” said David earnestly. “I know
there’s nothing that can change my feeling about you in four years,
or in forty. Our families know how we feel about each other; they’re
satisfied. What’s the use of pretending we’re not engaged, when we are?
Let’s have the fun of it to-night.”

“Goodness!” said Katharine. “It awes me awfully. But――all right. How do
we begin?”

“Let’s begin with Richard and Marion,” said David. “Here they come now,
back from dancing.”

“Shall we, really?”

“Yes. Be a sport.”

When Richard came up he asked, “Why aren’t you two dancing? Have a turn
with me, Katharine.”

“She’s got something to tell you first,” said David.

“You needn’t put it all on me,” said Katharine. “You can tell Richard.
Marion, I know you’ll be glad to hear that David and I are announcing
our engagement.”

Marion looked for an instant startled and uncertain, and for the same
instant her brother stood gaping. Then she exclaimed, “Katharine dear,
it’s true, isn’t it!” and flung her arms about her friend’s neck.

Richard seized David’s hand, crying, “Bully for you, Dave!” and with
the other hand grasped Tom Anderson, who happened to be strolling
by. “Here Tom, what do you think of this? New engagement, just out!”
And before the astonished and somewhat embarrassed Tom had finished
congratulating the pair, Richard had hailed other friends; and
presently Katharine and David were the center of more attention than in
their rashness they had bargained for.

Later they slipped away from the spread and went into the College
Yard. There they heard the glee club sing and walked under the Chinese
lanterns that were swung among the trees, and stood by the fountain
that played and plashed and shone in the soft light.

“I’ve come to every class day since I’ve been in college,” said David.
“But it’s more like fairyland to me to-night than it’s ever been
before.”

“For me, too, David,” said Katharine in a low voice.

It was late that evening when David arrived at his room in the
dormitory. He had begun to undress when there came a knock on the door,
and Lester entered. He was looking very happy.

David hailed him jovially. “Tell me, Lester, what did you do? Crack out
a couple of home runs, or something like that?”

“No; I only got a double.”

“How many on bases?”

“Two.”

“So you brought in two runs. Well, that’s not so bad. And I guess
you’ll do even better to-morrow.”

“I hope so,” said Lester. “I’d like to do well to-morrow, for you see
Ruth will be there. I wanted to tell you, Dave; to-morrow she and I are
announcing our engagement.”

“Fine enough!” cried David. “I always felt it would come sometime. It’s
splendid, Lester. But I beat you to it. Katharine Vance and I announced
our engagement this evening.”

Lester was enthusiastic in his expressions of rejoicing.

“I suppose in a way it was rather foolish of us,” admitted David.
“With four years at least ahead of me in which I shan’t be earning
a cent, and probably six or seven, anyway, before I can afford to
get married. But Katharine was game for it――and somehow there’s a
satisfaction in letting our friends know how we feel about each other.”

“Yes,” said Lester. “Ruth and I have no very immediate prospects. I’ve
got over those get-rich-quick ideas I used to air so freely, Dave. I’m
starting in next week to work in a cotton mill down in New Bedford.
I’m going to try to learn the business from the bottom up.” He added
musingly, “With the real things of life so close to us, isn’t it funny
that I should think of that game to-morrow as so important?”

“No,” said David. “Of course it’s important. It’s a thing you’ve worked
hard for; it’s a thing the whole college is keen about.”

“Yes, but it’s more important than in just that way,” said Lester
slowly. “I feel as if it were going to be the first real test of me
for Ruth. She’ll be with my mother and father; they saw the game at
New Haven to-day. At one time I thought they wouldn’t come to see me
graduate――you know why.”

“Of course they’d come.”

“Yes, they’ve forgiven me. So has Ruth. I told her the whole story
about myself, Dave.”

“That must have been hard,” said David, a good deal moved.

“I felt that it was only fair to her. It was right that she should know
how weak I’d been and should realize what a chance she might be taking
if she said yes. It hurt her terribly. But she believes in me in spite
of all. She feels sure I can never be so weak again. You and she have
been as splendid to me as any two human beings could be――far more so
than I deserved.”

“She’s a brick,” said David. “And you don’t need to worry about the
need of making a good showing in the game to-morrow. You’ll do that,
anyway; but you could strike out every time you came to bat, and it
couldn’t affect Ruth’s feelings for you in the least.”

“It mightn’t, except that she realizes I have a special responsibility
to the college and the class, after what I did. And if instead I should
do poorly――”

“Forget it,” said David. “You go right to bed and sleep. You’ll do your
best. Don’t worry.”

“I guess that’s good advice.” Lester turned to the door. “Oh, by the
way, Dave, would it be all right for me to bring Ruth and mother and
father round to your house after the game? She’d like to see your
family, and so should I.”

“Mother and Mr. Dean will be delighted,” said David. “I’ll have
Katharine there, too.”

David sat with Katharine at the game, and in the row in front of them
and only a short distance away sat Ruth and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace.
Across the intervening backs they exchanged nods and smiles. Ruth
at the beginning of the game was radiant, but as it proceeded the
expression with which she followed Lester’s movements became anxious
and troubled. As for David, the course of events filled him with
dismay. Harvard was being beaten, and almost worse than that Lester
was playing wretchedly. He muffed a throw at first base that let in a
run; he struck out in the second inning, when he first came to bat; he
struck out again in the fourth and again in the seventh.

“Isn’t it awful!” David muttered to Katharine, when after the last
failure Lester walked with hanging head to his seat.

“Yes, I feel so sorry for him. I suppose he’s just overcome with the
responsibility――having Ruth here, and their engagement just out, and
everybody expecting him to do great things.”

Overcome by the responsibility; yes, that was it, David knew, and he
knew that Lester would interpret his failure in this game as another
manifestation of incurable weakness. Of course Ruth would not so regard
it, but David found himself concerned now with Lester’s own soul and
the damage that would be done to it should that self-confidence which
had been already so shaken be destroyed.

When Harvard came to bat in the last half of the ninth inning, Yale was
leading by a score of 6 to 3. People were already leaving the stands,
and moving languidly toward the gate, admitting defeat. Then suddenly
the whole complexion of the game changed; a base on balls, an error, a
scratchy little infield hit; the bases were filled, with none out, and
the spectators were on their feet, cheering and shouting.

“He can’t strike out now; he can’t!” murmured David.

For it was Lester that advanced to the plate.

“Why don’t they put some one in to bat for that fellow!” exclaimed a
man standing behind David.

He had hardly finished the remark when the pitcher delivered the last
ball of the game. There was the resounding crack of a clean and solid
hit; there was a tumultuous outburst of sound from the crowd; the ball
flew far over the head of the center fielder, who went sprinting after
it to no purpose. “The longest hit ever made on this field,” affirmed
the ground keeper afterward. The centerfielder was just picking up the
ball when Lester crossed the plate with the fourth run of the inning,
the winning run of the game.

Before he could make his escape a mob of shouting classmates bore
down upon him. Hundreds of Harvard men swarmed over the fences and
in an instant had possession of the field. Lester was hoisted to the
shoulders of a group who clung to him firmly despite his struggles
and appeals. “Right behind the band!” they shouted; and right
behind the band they bore him, up and down the field, at the head
of the ever-lengthening, joyously serpentining, and wildly shouting
procession. All the other members of the team had been allowed to slip
off to the locker building; but the crowd clung to Lester; they bore
him proudly, like a banner. They carried him past the stand in which
Ruth sat; he looked up at her; she waved to him; and probably Katharine
and David were the only persons who saw the tears running down her
cheeks.

An hour later there was a joyful gathering in Mrs. Ives’s parlor. Mr.
Dean succeeded in capturing Ruth with one hand and Lester with the
other.

“So you’ve closed your athletic career, Lester, in a blaze of glory
and a blare of sound. I’m delighted――especially for Ruth’s sake. But I
don’t mind saying that your great triumph is not in winning the game,
but in winning Ruth.”

“Indeed, I realize that,” said Lester.

“Anyway, that home run was the most splendid sort of engagement
present,” said Ruth. “If you’d struck out that time and given me a
string of pearls, it couldn’t have consoled me.”

“If I’d struck out that time,” said Lester, “I don’t believe that even
you, Ruthie, could have consoled me.”

“We’d have been two broken hearts, still trying to beat as one,” said
Ruth.

“Well, I guess it would be pretty hard for us to be any happier than
we are,” said Lester. “And, Mr. Dean, I want to tell you before saying
good-bye how grateful I am for the great help that you gave me. And
when I say that, Ruth knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Yes,” said Ruth in a low voice. “I’m so glad he came to you, Mr. Dean.”

“God bless you both,” said Mr. Dean. He squeezed Lester’s hand; then
he drew Ruth to him and kissed her.

That evening Mr. Dean asked David to come to his room for a few
moments. He seemed to David somewhat ill at ease; he greeted him with a
curious formality, bade him take a chair, and then, after an interval
of silence, said abruptly: “David, I suppose you realize that I’ve
practically adopted you and your mother and Ralph as my family. At
my death such property as I have will go to you and Ralph. I have no
near relatives, as you know, and I believe there is no one who would
be likely to contest my will, or in the event of contesting it likely
to succeed. I don’t believe in long engagements. Five or six months
or at most a year is sufficient as a probationary period. If you and
Katharine are just as sure six months from now as you are to-day, I
think that then you had better get married. You will do better work
in the medical school if you are married and settled down instead of
impatiently waiting to be. I could arrange matters so that you could
live comfortably――not extravagantly, of course. It is what I should do
if you were my own son. You stand in that relation to me.”

“I don’t see how I could let you do that, Mr. Dean,” said David,
with distress as well as gratitude in his voice. “Somehow I’ve often
wondered whether it was right that I should accept so much from you as
I have done――whether it was altogether manly of me. I hope I don’t hurt
you when I say this. But I’ve never been quite comfortable about it.
Whether I wouldn’t have been better satisfied with myself if I’d worked
my way through college――paid for my own education――”

“My dear boy, don’t I know you’ve often been troubled by those doubts!
But it wasn’t selfishness on your part that impelled you to accept my
assistance. There was the obligation not to reject an arrangement that
would improve your mother’s circumstances and that would give Ralph
his chance. There was my own peculiar need, which you could hardly
in compassion have refused. No, you’ve given quite as much as you’ve
received. You needn’t have scruples on that score. And now in regard to
Katharine.”

He rose and made his way to his bureau, where his hand unerringly
searched out and picked up a framed photograph of a young woman who was
dressed in a fashion of fifty years ago. David had often wondered about
that photograph――who the girl was and why, even in his blindness, Mr.
Dean had always been careful that it should occupy the central place
on his bureau.

“David,” said Mr. Dean, holding out the picture, “there is the
photograph of the girl to whom I was engaged when I was in college.
When I graduated, I went into teaching at a small salary; we felt
that we could not immediately afford to get married, but in a year or
so――well, eventually I did win some increase in salary, but when I did
my mother’s health was failing, and what I earned barely sufficed to
keep her properly cared for until she died. At the end of four years
it seemed to us that we could get married. Our plans were all made
when Lydia――that was her name――was stricken with scarlet fever. She
died in two weeks. Less than a year later an uncle of my mother’s, a
childless widower who had gone West in his early youth and who had
never manifested the slightest interest in his relatives, died and left
me a hundred thousand dollars. That money might have been of so much
use to me and was of so little! I don’t want you, David, to run the
risk of missing your happiness as I missed mine. I don’t even want you
to go through four years of waiting such as I passed through. Indeed,
I’m determined not to allow it. You must talk with Katharine and tell
her what I’ve said; and perhaps she will come and let me talk with her.
If she does, I shall tell her that I feel――I know――my Lydia’s spirit is
hovering near, watching you and her, watching you and her wistfully.
Sometimes of late when I hold this photograph I feel again my Lydia’s
hand in mine.”

Mr. Dean’s head had sunk forward upon his breast, his voice had grown
dreamy, he seemed suddenly to have forgotten David’s presence. But
only for a moment; he raised his head and said with brisk and cheerful
command that brooked no argument: “So we won’t discuss it any more,
David. Run along now and tell Katharine what I’ve made up my mind to
do.”

After David had left the room, Mr. Dean remained seated in his chair,
holding the photograph, lightly caressing it with his fingers.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to
follow the text that they illustrate.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.

――Page 58: “You can get them at the store in the basement of the study
and went to the locker room to hang Wallace here.” (printer’s error,
and partially repeated on next page in proper context); _changed to_
“You can get them at the store in the basement of the study.”

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