Читать книгу Dick and Larry: Freshmen - Lynde Francis - Страница 5

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They were not twins; they were not brothers or even relatives. For that matter, at the moment when their train was clattering over the last few miles of the long journey from the far-western home-land to the college town where they expected to spend the next four years, the joint name by which they were to be known at the take-off had not yet been coined. But, as everybody knows, there is no accounting for college nicknames. They are handed you right off the bat, and that’s all there is to it.

To make the “twin” thing still more of a joke, they didn’t look much more alike than Little Lord Fauntleroy and Huck Finn. About the only feature they had in common was a rich stain of brown sunburn, acquired in a summer of railroad building in the Timanyoni Mountains of western Colorado. Dick Maxwell, son of the general manager of the Nevada Short Line, was possibly twenty pounds the lighter of the two, and he had the fine-lined face and easy manner of a fellow who has never had to think of how his clothes fitted, or what to do with his hands; while Larry Donovan—but Larry deserves a paragraph to himself.

He had the window seat in the Pullman section, and was staring out at the rather monotonous Middle-Western farmstead landscape hurtling past with that sort of half-shy look in his good, wide-set eyes which is the first symptom of homesickness. The big-framed, curly-headed fellow, who had been Dick’s partner on the summer job, was the son of an ex-locomotive engineer on the Short Line, and he owed his college chance partly to the good work he had done on the railroad-building job, and partly to the generosity of Dick’s father. In a grim, workmanlike way, he was determined to make the utmost of the chance; but that fact didn’t say anything whatever to the other fact that this was his first long-distance jump from the home circle.

“Why the wan look to starboard, Larry?” Dick asked with the grin which, on his face, was never more than a good-natured, quizzical smile. “Thinking about the little old home shack back in Brewster, and how far away it has gone?”

Larry turned slow eyes upon his companion.

“Don’t see how you can take it so easy,” he grumbled back; and then, after a moment’s thought: “Maybe I can, too. You’re used to being away from home and mixing and mingling with people. I’m not.”

Dick smiled again.

“Not getting scared out already, are you?”

“No; it isn’t scare; it’s—well, I don’t know just what you’d call it. But I’d give a lot if we were settled down, and I knew what to-morrow’s job was going to be, and was boning for it out of a book.”

Dick turned short upon the wisher.

“See here, Larry,” he said; “don’t you go starting in at Old Sheddon on the wrong slant. You did it in Brewster High—you know you did; never came out to class doings, or anything. I remember you told me once that the fellows and girls didn’t need a ‘greasy mechanic’ to fill out the list. Dad says there’s a lot more to college than just sticking your nose in a book, and I believe it. You’re going to miss it by a long mile if you do the turtle-in-a-shell act.”

What Larry Donovan might have replied to this little lecture on turtles and their habits was forestalled by a panorama of suburban homes flitting past the car windows, a grinding of the brakes, the rumbling of the train across a bridge, and the long jump was fully taken.

Being strangers from afar, the two Freshmen did not expect to be met at the station, and they were not. But Dick knew what to do and where to go.

“A ‘Sheddon’ street-car is what we want, and there’s one coming, right now,” he said; then: “Hoo-e-e-e! Look at the green caps on it. I thought we’d be the only early birds, but it seems we’re not.”

They didn’t get seats in the small trolley car, because the seats were all packed and jammed, and so was the aisle; but they crowded in, some way. While they were stowing their grips, a thick-bodied fellow, with a wide mouth and a voice like that of a megaphoning yell leader, asked Dick where they were from.

“Brewster,” said Dick, as if the name of the small home city were enough to identify it anywhere.

“And where in the cat’s name is Brewster?” boomed the big voice.

“I’ll tell you—strictly in confidence,” Dick replied, wrinkling his nose. “It’s in Timanyoni Park.”

Right then and there the nickname was born.

“Ho, fellows!” roared the megaphonic chap, commanding the instant attention of the packed carful, “we’ve got ’em, right here; the only original stem-winding, stem-setting doodle-bugs from the wild and woozy—the Timanyoni Twins!”

Dick laughed with the rest of the carful, and Larry felt himself blushing a dark, dark red under his masking coat of sunburn—which is as good a way as any of telling how this sudden thrust into the limelight affected each. Beyond the christening, Dick fell easily into talk with the megaphonist—Wally Dixon, by name, and hailing from somewhere in Missouri. But Larry was soberly uncomfortable until they left the car to lug their grips down a cross street which skirted the Sheddon campus.

The “Man-o’-War” was the house they were looking for, and they found it—a respectable two-storied dwelling, as little like a ship as might be—on a corner facing the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Dick’s father had written ahead to engage their room, and it was good, motherly Mrs. Grant herself who opened the door for them.

Mrs. Grant proved to be as hospitable as she looked. There were to be six fellows in the house, she explained; two Juniors who had been there the year before, and four Freshmen. One of the Juniors had arrived, but the other and the two additional Freshmen were yet to come. Dick and Larry were to make themselves at home, and the arrived Junior, a husky-looking chap named Merkle, would show them their room.

Merkle did the showing—to a large, plainly furnished room on the second floor—and took an upperclassman’s privilege of casting himself into the one easy-chair while the newcomers unpacked their grips.

“Where are you fellows from?” he asked.

This time Dick did not try to be funny. “Brewster—western Colorado,” he replied.

“Some little jump, I’ll say,” Merkle commented. “Ever here before?”

“Nope.”

“Then you’ll want to know some of the Sheddon traditions; every college has ’em. If you know ’em beforehand, it’s easier.”

“Shoot,” said Dick; “we’re here to learn.” Then, with a fine assumption of uninformed innocence: “Where can I get one of those sweaters with an ‘S’ on it, like the one you’re wearing?”

“That’s the first of the traditions,” returned the big Junior, with a little frown; “not to be fresh with your elders.”

Dick apologized handsomely.

“That was fresh,” he admitted. “I can see that the green cap is going to fit me like a tailor-made suit of tights. Please forget it, and tell us some of the traditions.”

Merkle briefed them. No smoking on the campus—which didn’t hit either of the “twins” because as yet they didn’t smoke anywhere—no cutting of class or college celebrations; no backing down when they were asked to take part in any of the college activities; no shirking of the “try-outs” for the various athletic teams.

“Lots of other little stunts that you’ll absorb as you come to ’em,” Merkle concluded; adding: “Of course, you’ll both be in the bridge scrap. You can’t do much but make a loud noise on the side-lines, because you’re not beefy enough”—meaning Dick; “but you”—with a nod for Larry—“you look fit enough to heave a locomotive off the track. Played on your High School eleven, didn’t you?”

Larry nodded, and Dick explained: “Half-back; he’s too modest to tell you so himself. But what about this bridge scrap?”

“It’s the pure quill,” said Merkle. “Dark night; single-span concrete bridge about a mile back in the country. Sophomores defend it; Freshies try to rush it. Two upper classes on hand to keep the murder list as low as possible. You’ll like it.”

“What do we get out of it if we win?” Dick demanded.

“Undying fame—and the right to paint the numerals of your class on the portal arch. It’s been eight years since a Freshman class did it.”

Dick nodded.

“Sounds pretty all right to me.”

“And how about you, Curlyhead?” Merkle turned to Larry.

At this, the Donovan downrightness came to the fore.

“I’m not aiming to play horse,” he said, speaking slowly, as his habit was when he was appealed to. “I came here to study.”

The upperclassman’s frown was portentous, as became his dignity.

“See here, Donovan,” he returned; “I can tell you one thing: you won’t get very far if you begin by knocking the college spirit. You’ll not be urged, or even asked, personally, to go with your class into the bridge scrap. But unless you can flash up a doctor’s certificate to show that you’re physically unfit—well, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes after the fact; that’s all.”

“Larry’s all right,” said Dick, hastening to make peace. “He’s just too modest to brag. When does this bloody event eventuate?”

“Pretty early in the game: fellows don’t get down to brass tacks in their college work until after it’s come and gone. You’ll have all the notice you’ll need. What schools do you enter?”

“Civil for me; Mechanical for Larry.”

“Good on the Civil end; I’m one of ’em myself,” said Merkle, extending a ham-like hand. “You’ll like the Dean. He’s some Ranahan on field work.” Then, heaving himself up out of his chair: “There goes Mother Grant’s little supper tinkle bell. You’ll register in, Wednesday, and then you’ll have a day or so to shake yourselves into place. Sheddon’s a good old dump, but if you’ve been brought up by hand, you may find her a little raspy on the nerves, as all engineering schools are likely to be. But she’s fair and square and just. You get about what you go out after. Let’s jump down and bite a piece o’ pie.”

With two days to spare before the Registrar’s office would open, the “twins” had time to look about a bit. Finding that they had the freedom of the campus and its buildings, they made a round of the different schools, “rubber-necking,” as Dick put it.

In addition to being the technical end of a State University, Sheddon was—and is—a considerable university in itself. The “rubber-neckers” wandered through building after building; Agriculture, with its up-to-date farm machinery, spotless dairy, and model farm; Chemistry and Pure Science, with their splendidly equipped laboratories; Electricity, with wonders to which their High School course had barely introduced them; Civil Engineering, with its museum of surveying instruments; and Mechanical, with its laboratory, big lecture-rooms, testing lab., foundry, blacksmith-shop, pattern-shop and machine-shop complete to the smallest practical detail.

Larry Donovan warmed up with his first touch of real enthusiasm as they were inspecting the shops. He had worked in the home railroad shop to earn money for his High School course.

“This is something like!” he exclaimed. “Let me get into my overalls and jumper, and I’ll be right at home here. Just look at those lathes—motor-driven and up-to-date to the last bit of polish on the face-plates.”

With his customary ease of fitting himself into whatever niche he happened to drop into, Dick made a good many acquaintances during those preliminary days, and was hail-fellow-well-met with a score and more of his classmates by the time the registration was over and the student body was getting its assignment cards filled out.

But with Larry it was altogether different. While Dick made friends who told him what to do and how to do it, Larry plugged along on his own—and made hard work of it. Of course, this was strictly his own fault; but even at this early date in his college career he was beginning to draw a line which was later to give him no end of trouble and heartburnings.

As well as he knew Dick—and they had been the closest of friends in the home High School—he was already asking himself if Dick’s ready acceptance by everybody wasn’t due to the fact that Dick’s father was general manager of a good-sized railroad. Admitting that accusation—and he was admitting it almost before he knew it—it was only a step over to the other side of the misleading equation: if a fellow’s ranking in Sheddon was going to be based upon the social or financial prominence of his family, what sort of a show did the son of a crippled ex-locomotive engineer stand?

It was after supper on the day when they got their assignments, and the two had gone to their room to “chop the first air-hole in the study ice,” as Dick put it, that Larry’s attitude got its first public airing, so to speak. And some mention of the impending bridge scrap was what opened the door.

“No,” said Larry, frowning, “I’m not in on that, or any other side-line foolishness, Dick. As I told Merkle that first evening, I’m not here to play horse. My assignment card is full enough to keep me good and busy, and if I can claw through this first semester without flunking something, I’ll be lucky.”

Dick squared himself behind the study table and looked his room-mate in the eye.

“You’re side-stepping, Larry,” he broke out accusingly. “It isn’t the work that makes you say that. You know perfectly well that you can run rings all around me, with your little ‘it’s dogged as does it,’ when it comes to the study part. You’ve got some other reason up your sleeve. What is it?”

Larry tried to set the real reason in presentable shape. But, after all, it didn’t sound so very good when he voiced it.

“I was a workingman before I came here, and I’m a workingman yet.”

“Granny!” Dick scoffed. “We’re all workingmen—or, if we’re not, we’d better be.”

“You know what I mean,” Larry insisted; adding: “I’m not kicking. It’s the way it is out in the world, and I suppose there is no reason why it shouldn’t be that way in college. You’ve made an armful of friends already, while I know maybe half a dozen fellows well enough to nod at ’em. Sometimes they nod back, and sometimes they don’t.”

“Fiddle!”—Dick seemed to be carrying an overload of derisive ejaculations. “You’ve simply got the bug, Larry! If you let it keep you from being a real Sheddonian—pep, college spirit and all—it’ll bust you, world without end.”

“I can’t help it,” said the workingman glumly. “I didn’t make things the way they are made. Here’s a sample of it: You’ve met Eggleston—the dandified chap that rooms two doors down the street. I happened to butt up against him to-day, and he introduced himself and asked if I were the son of Mr. Herbert Donovan, the big consulting engineer, of St. Louis. When I said No; that my father was a locomotive engineer; he froze up until you could hear his skin crack.”

“Bosh!” snorted Dick, trotting out another of the derisives. “If you’re going to let a snob like Harry Eggleston set the pace for you—”

The interruption was a hoarse cry from the street: “Freshmen out! All Freshmen out!” Dick opened the window and stuck his head out.

“What’s broke loose?” he asked.

“Turn out! The Sophs are paintin’ one of our fellows green down in Adams’s field barn! Turn out!”

Dick shut the window and went to get his cap.

“You’re coming, aren’t you, Larry?” he said; adding: “This is a class job, you know.”

Larry shook his head.

“Might as well begin in one place as another, Dick: I’m not in on the rah-rah stuff.”

Dick Maxwell’s temper was easy-going, but about once in a blue moon it got away from him.

“That’s yellow, and you know it!” he flamed out; and with that he was gone. But he had scarcely reached the sidewalk before Larry was at his elbow.

“I can’t stand for that—from you, Dick,” was all the explanation that was offered; and, of course, Dick was instantly penitent.

“I’m a liar!” he blurted out contritely. “Nobody knows better than I do that there isn’t a single yellow drop of blood in you, Larry. There goes a bunch of our fellows now—let’s run.”

The hazing episode proved to be merely an incident. Enough Freshmen were rallied to rush the field barn in Adams’s back forty; the artistic Sophomores were scattered; and the victim, who proved to be the big, husky “Aggie,” Welborn, who roomed at Mrs. Grant’s, was rescued. Of course, Welborn was a sad sight. The artists had stripped him and he was well daubed with green paint. Nevertheless, he was cheerfully triumphant. “I got five of ’em, b’jing! before they got me,” he gloated, with a grin that the green paint made peculiarly hideous. “Whadda you reckon’ll take it off?”

“Turpentine,” suggested somebody in the mob of rescuers; and two of the light-footed ones ran for a drug store.

With the worst of the paint removed, Larry and Dick took Welborn home, where they commandeered the bath-room and worked over him until he was well-nigh blistered but clean.

“Gosh! talk about Turkish baths!” gurgled the big victim, as they were sousing him for the final time in the tub of hot soap-suds. “I’ll say this beats ’em a mile high! Wait till we got those Soffies at the bridge! I’m goin’ to take a stick along and notch it every time I put one of ’em to sleep.”

“Well?” said Dick to Larry, after they had tucked the cheerful victim into his bed, and were once more in their own room, “changed your mind any?”

“Not a minute’s worth!” was the gruff reply. “It’s all tom-foolishness, and I don’t want any of it in mine.”

“But you’ll turn out for the bridge scrap, won’t you?—for the honor of the class?”

“Not so you could notice it,” Larry refused; and with that he stuck his face into a book.

For some days the “shaking-down” process which every college has to go through at the beginning of the scholastic year went on—with small satisfaction to any sober-minded member of the faculty, or to fellows who, like Larry Donovan, were not yet imbued with that elusive thing called “college spirit.” Hazings, some of them mild, and some not so mild, went on nightly. Freshmen, unwarily out after dark in numbers too small for defense, were paddled, painted, and made to do stunts ridiculous, and sometimes rather harrowing.

After the Welborn incident, Larry refused to pay any heed to the nightly call of “Freshmen out” and Dick forbore to urge him. But at last a night came when the call—unheeded when it was raised from the sidewalk—was hurled in at short range by Welborn himself. He found Larry alone, poring over his mathematics, as was his usual custom.

“Hey! what the dickens are you hived up here for, when the Soffies are out in force and murderin’ us?” he roared. “You’d sit here with your nose in a book while they’ve got your side-partner, Dick Maxwell, half naked and chased up a tree back of the athletic field? You haven’t any red blood in you, Donovan; that’s what’s the matter with you!”

Larry jumped up so suddenly that his chair went over with a crash. “Show me!” was all he said; and a minute later he was racing at Welborn’s heels, down the street and across an open lot to where half a dozen yelling Sophomores were doing a scalp dance around a big black-walnut tree. In the higher branches of the tree to which they had driven him by throwing clods at him a slender figure in a close-fitting suit of underwear was picked out by a light of a small bonfire. And the autumn night was cold.

Welborn spoke for the first time as he and Larry were hurling themselves over the fence. “B-better get some more of the fe-fellows!” he gasped. “There are too many of ’m for just us two!” But Larry acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Come on!” he said; and, two to six, they went in.

It was a warm little tussle for a few minutes, with most of the rules eliminated. Like Larry, Welborn had played foot-ball; and, again like Larry, he had the weight. Bucking the dancing ring as one man, they broke the line; and another tackling rush dissipated it.

Back in their room, Larry once more planted himself before his book, but as he opened it, he said to Dick, without looking up: “You may count me in on that bridge business, if you like. I don’t ‘savvy’ that sort of thing, as you know; but those fellows need a lesson—and they’re going to get it. No; don’t make any mistake,” he went on, as Dick was about to offer congratulations. “I haven’t any ‘class spirit’ or ‘college spirit,’ or whatever you call it. But when they hit you, they hit me; that’s all.”

The night of the bridge scrap—which, by Sheddon tradition, was to end all hazing—came in due course; a night a bit cloudy, and, by consequence, as dark as Erebus. Quite early in the evening the class began to gather, and the cries of “Freshmen out!” “All Sophomores out!” began to be lifted in the college suburb streets very shortly after supper.

True to his own traditions, Larry sat down at the study table and boned his Math. for the next day, resolutely shutting his ears to Dick’s agonized protests to the effect that all the fun would be over before they could get in on it. It was half-past eight before the boner shut his book and announced his readiness. But while he was getting into his oldest clothes and overalls, he once more defined his position.

“Don’t you get ‘hope up’ about me, Dick. I’m going in on this because it seems to be a job that has to be done before the Soffies will mind their own business and let us alone. That’s all there is to it, so far as I’m concerned.”

“Maybe you’ll have another angle on it before we get through,” was all that Dick said in reply; and they set out.

As Dick had predicted, they were a little late; when they reached the streets they found them deserted. But they knew the location of the bridge, a mile back of the campus; and the mile was covered at a dog-trot.

Though they had been tardy for the assembling, they were in time for everything else. While the night was dark, the battlefield was luridly illuminated by flaring gasoline torches. The bridge was a modern concrete structure of a single long span over the small river; broad, and with footways at the sides protected by parapets breast-high. At either end was an ornamental portal arch, and it was upon this that the winning class was permitted to paint its year numerals.

When Larry and Dick arrived upon the scene, the Sophomores had taken possession of the bridge, and the Freshmen were massed in the road. Upperclassmen—Seniors for the Sophomores and Juniors for the Freshmen—were “frisking” the combatants for weapons. No fellow with good red blood in him would go into such a conflict armed; but in a bunch of six or eight hundred undergraduates there are always a few “yellows,” and they had to be searched.

As the Juniors in pairs searched the green caps, others followed with strips of white cloth to be worn on the arm as a distinguishing mark by the attackers. “Fair play!” was the oft-repeated caution of the upperclassmen; and dire punishment was promised to the fellows who should break this tradition.

Dick plunged into the thick of things as soon as he had been searched and marked; but Larry stood aside, grimly sizing up the situation. The first thing he remarked was the time-immemorial handicap of Freshman classes, namely, the lack of leadership which is the natural consequence in a body of fellows getting together for their first united effort. Wally Dixon, the big-voiced young Mechanical who had given Larry and Dick their joint nickname on the day of their arrival, was commanding and shouting and trying to bring some sort of order out of the chaos; but he was not making much headway.

The searching and marking finished, the upperclassmen laid down the iron-clad rules of the game. Slugging was prohibited, but anything less than a knock-out went. Prisoners could be taken by either side, but they had the privilege of escaping and rejoining their own side if they could. Time would not be called until one side or the other was clearly victorious.

When all was ready, the Freshmen made their first charge, with Dixon trying to get team play by forming his men into a flying wedge. Larry, from the half-back position into which he had mechanically dropped, saw at once that it was going to fail. The Sophomores were massed solidly all the way across the bridge, and the loosely-formed wedge doubled up like a handful of sand and went to pieces when it struck the obstacle.

For a shouting, ear-splitting five minutes there was a hilarious free-for-all, in which a dozen or more of the attackers were taken prisoner and shoved to the rear under guard. Then the defenders charged in their turn—good, old-fashioned mass play, this was—and drove the disorganized mob of Freshies off the bridge and a hundred yards or so up the road.

In the little lull which followed the return of the Sophomores to their stronghold, there was dazed confusion in the ranks of the defeated, with Dixon trying in vain to rally them into fighting shape again. Into the midst of things Dick Maxwell hurled himself like a human bombshell.

“Fellows!” he yelled, “what we’re needing is a leader! Dixie, here, is doing his best, but it isn’t good enough. Isn’t that so, Wally?”—appealing to the big voice.

“You said a whole mouthful,” Dixon admitted, with splendid class spirit. “I’m only pinch-hittin’ for the right man. Who is he, Maxie?”

“I’ve got him right here!” Dick shouted, dragging Larry forcibly into the inner circle. “Here’s an old codger that’s handled grown men on a railroad job! Climb in, Larry, and tell us what to do!”

Of course, Larry would have backed straight out if he had been allowed to. But even at this early period a lot of the men knew Dickie Maxwell, and were perfectly willing to take his word. “Donovan! Donovan! What’s the matter with Donovan? There’s nothing the matter with Donovan! He’s all right, you BET!” the shout went up; and Larry found himself elected.

“If you will have it that way,” he yielded gruffly. “What I don’t know about such foolishness as this would fill a rain-water hogshead. But if the job’s got to be done, we’ll do it: just get that rubbed into your hides—every last one of you. We’re going to do it!”

“Bully for the Timanyoni Twin! Tell us how!” yelled the mob.

“Listen, then: we can’t buck that line solid, and get anywhere. Those fellows have been together long enough to know team play, and we haven’t. I want twenty men who can swim, and who aren’t afraid of getting wet. Volunteers come over to this side of the road. You other fellows mass across so they can’t see what we’re doing.”

He had his twenty in a half-second—and forty more on top of them. Rapidly he made his selection, with Wally Dixon for a captain. Not knowing more than a handful of the men, individually, he picked chiefly for size. Since his plan bulked large on the side of secrecy, he took the twenty apart and gave them their instructions. After which, they vanished in the darkness—not in the direction of the bridge.

“Now for a little drill work!” Larry called out, going back to the army proper. “Let me show you what a flying wedge really ought to be,” and for as much as fifteen minutes he kept them forming and re-forming in the road, the only shirker being Dickie Maxwell, who stood aside with his eyes fixed upon a certain point in the woods backgrounding the farther end of the bridge. And in the meantime, most naturally, the thus-far-victorious Sophomores were hurling all sorts of epithets across the dead-line, singing and shouting like the pack of young barbarians which, for the moment, they were.

Larry was forming his charging wedge for about the twentieth time when Dick, straining his eyes, saw a tiny match-light flare, lasting no longer than an eye-wink, on the farther bank of the river a few yards above the bridge approach. Instantly he darted across to Larry. “Six—fourteen—five!” he yelled, giving the old foot-ball signal; and Larry leaped to his place at the cutting edge of the wedge. “This time we GO!” he bellowed: “Now, then—for all you’re worth, and hang on till the last man of you is dead!”

Once more the defenders of the bridge met the charge gamely. Their front line bent, buckled, straightened itself again, and flying detachments from either flank tried to cut the splitting point of the wedge off from the tremendous shoving force behind it. Larry, head down like that of a butting ram, and his racking elbows boring a path straight into the crowding mass, seemed to bear a charmed life. Dragging hands clawed at him, fists beat upon him. Once a slugger, meanly taking advantage of the turmoil, kneed him in the stomach; but still he kept his feet and held on.

It was only a matter of minutes. While the Sophomore front line was buckling for the second time a wild yell went up from their rear. The small guard they had left to hold the northern end of the bridge had given way at the charge of the twenty huskies Larry had sent to swim the river, and in another half-minute the yearly class struggle had passed into history. Larry’s ruse had been the simplest of tricks, but even a simple trap works if it has never been tried before. Caught between two fires, the bridge defenders broke in confusion, and after that, it was every man for himself and a get-away.

The Sophomore front line was buckling for the second time

Of course, Larry had his reward—and Dick, too, for that matter. For an uproarious half-hour the victorious Freshmen marched back and forth over the bridge, carrying the “twins” shoulder-high and shouting themselves hoarse for Donovan and Maxwell, the class, Old Sheddon, and the epoch-marking scrap which would put Freshmen numerals on the portal arch for the first time in eight years.

But after it was all over; after the shouting, singing mob had made its way back to the college suburb and dispersed, and Dick, hero-worshipping in proper fashion by applying the contents of Mother Grant’s arnica bottle to the handsome array of bruises Larry had acquired in the battle, ventured to add a little adulation of his own to the class leader’s triumph, Larry cut him off morosely.

“None of that from you, Dick!” he growled. “I know just how much and how little all this shouting and yelling is worth, and so do you. To-morrow morning nine-tenths of those fellows won’t know me when they meet me on the campus. For just about that percentage of them I’ll drop back and be just what I am—a workingman and the son of a workingman. They wanted a hard-hitter to-night, and I happened to be it. But that’s all there is to it. No more rah-rah stuff for me.”

“But you can’t—you simply can’t go through college with that sort of a slant on things!” Dick protested, almost tearfully. “It isn’t human! You’re simply batty on that ‘workingman’ stunt. Why, those fellows you captained to-night will black your shoes—do anything on top of earth for you, if you’ll only let ’em!”

But “letting them” was the hitch that Larry Donovan, in the very beginning of his college career, was allowing the stubborn part of his own character to knot around him. There is no variety of pride quite so unreasoning as poverty-pride; and when Larry tumbled into bed a little later, it was with the fixed idea that he was going to be in college without being of it; that he would hoe his own row and let others do the same; a determination which, farther along, was to lead to—but of that more in its proper place.