David Ives
Date: 2024-02-22T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Sports -- Juvenile fiction; Students -- Juvenile fiction; Private schools -- Juvenile fiction; Harvard University -- Juvenile fiction

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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

“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

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

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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?”

“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.

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—”

“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:

Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to follow the text that they illustrate, so the page number of the illustration may not match the page number in the Illustrations.

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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Table of Contents

- DAVID IVES
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I FAREWELL TO ROSEWOOD
- CHAPTER II A GENTLEMAN AND A SCHOLAR
- CHAPTER III HOSTILITIES
- CHAPTER IV FRIENDSHIPS
- CHAPTER V THE RETURN
- CHAPTER VI PROBATION
- CHAPTER VII BLINDNESS
- CHAPTER VIII WALLACE’S EXAMINATION
- CHAPTER IX DAVID’S ENLIGHTENMENT
- CHAPTER X MR. DEAN PROVIDES FOR THE FUTURE
- CHAPTER XI THE FAMILY MIGRATION
- CHAPTER XII THE NEW NEIGHBOR
- CHAPTER XIII HERO WORSHIP
- CHAPTER XIV ANTI-CLIMAX
- CHAPTER XV THE TORN PAGE
- CHAPTER XVI LESTER AND DAVID
- CHAPTER XVII THE FIRST MARSHAL
- CHAPTER XVIII RELINQUISHMENT
- CHAPTER XIX ATTAINMENT
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE