Читать книгу Dick and Larry: Freshmen - Lynde Francis - Страница 6

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“Say, Maxie; what the di—hinkle is the matter with that red-headed room-mate of yours, I’d like to know?”

It was the beginning of the college year, and Old Sheddon was settling into its stride. On the campus, between classes, two first-year men were heading for their rooms and a study period. Wally Dixon, the bigger of the two, was the one who asked the disgusted question about Larry Donovan.

“Larry’s a good old scout,” said Dick Maxwell, dodging a small problem that he himself was unable to answer. “He’s a regular fellow, all right, when you come to know him.”

“Know him?” roared Dixon; “I’d like for you to tell me how anybody ever gets to know him! Look at the way he acted after you, or somebody, got him out for the class scrap at the bridge. He was a pink winner that night, with the neat little Indian-fighter trick that he pulled, and everybody on the job knew it. But when some of us went to him the next day to find out which of the class offices he’d like to have handed him, he bluffed us cold!”

“Don’t you go and lay that up against him,” Dick urged. “It’s—it’s just his way, you know.”

“Well, if anybody should ask me often enough, I’d say it’s a mighty queer way. Acts as if he had a grouch against the world.”

Dickie Maxwell, loyalest of chums, hardly knew what to say. Dixon was the son of a wealthy Kansas City packer, and Dick felt that it would be next to impossible to make him understand Larry’s attitude. For that matter, he, Dick, couldn’t understand it himself. Beginning with workmanlike contempt for what he called the “boys’-play” side of college life, Larry’s grouch, or indifference, or whatever it was, was developing into something a good bit like antagonism toward everything but the daily study grind, and what he could get out of that.

“I’ll say he’s heading in to be a worm,” Dixon went on; “worm” being Sheddon slang for a fellow who scamps the college “activities” and lives and moves and has his being in the classrooms and study periods. “He’s ripping material for the athletic squad, and if he had even a whiff of college spirit he’d be showing up in the try-outs. You ought to labor with him, Maxie; he’s needing it.”

The two parted at the campus gate, and when Dick reached his room at Mrs. Grant’s, he found Larry scowling over a problem in his trigonometry.

“Chuck the grind and talk to me a few minutes,” was Dick’s greeting as he came in. Then: “You’re cutting all the athletic try-outs, Larry. What for?”

Larry’s frown deepened. “I don’t see why I can’t make you understand,” he broke out half impatiently. “You, and most of the other fellows, I’d say, are here mostly to have a good time—or that’s the way it looks to me. I’m not. I’m here on borrowed money—no, hold on,” he protested, when Dick would have interrupted, “I know your father doesn’t look at it that way, but I do. And because it is borrowed money, I want to get the worth of it.”

“Well,” Dick retorted, “that’s just what I’m scrapping about. You won’t get the worth of it if you go on cutting out a good half of what college ought to mean to a fellow. I’ll bet you fairly ache to go on the field every time the bunch takes a try-out.”

“If I do, I take it out in aching,”—glumly.

It was the same old thing. As the son of a workingman, Larry, as we have seen, had early drawn a line upon the off side of which he had taken his stand stubbornly. College, as it appeared to him, was a place where rich men’s sons came to study as little as possible, and where a workingman was admitted only upon sufferance, as you might say.

Now when a fellow goes about with a chip on his shoulder there are plenty of people who will oblige him by knocking it off. Larry had already had kindnesses not a few shown him, and even hilarious adulation when—dragged into it bodily by Dick—he had taken part in the class “scrap,” and had led the green-caps to the first Freshman victory won in eight years. But, on the other hand, a few snobbish fellows had “shown him his place,” as he put it, and it is human nature to see the thing you are looking for, and to miss the things you’ve already made up your mind don’t exist.

“I don’t think you’re doing yourself, or Old Sheddon, fair justice,” Dick said at length. “If you were thick-headed and had to bone hard to keep up, it would be different. But you’re not—and you don’t.”

“Listen,” said Larry; “those fellows in the athletic bunch are out after ‘material,’ but that is just as far as it goes, Dick. They’d take me on as a sort of promising chunk of bone and muscle—and that’s all. I’m not in their class.”

Dick flapped his hands in despair.

“You’re the limit, Larry! That ‘class’ notion of yours, in free-for-all America, is simply bunk!”

“Is it?” Larry queried sharply. “I can prove what I say. Look at little Purdick—waiting on table in Hassler’s restaurant to earn his way: does anybody ask him to get in on any of the try-outs? Not so you could notice it. Look at Jungman, tending furnaces and wheelbarrowing ashes: Saturday, when some of the fellows were going for a hike, one of ’em said: ‘Let’s make Jungman take time off and go with us.’ Were there any frantic shouts of approval? Not on your life. Instead, Banker Waldrich said, ‘Oh, nit! he isn’t our sort.’”

Again Dick made the gesture of despair.

“I guess you’re hopeless!” he gave up; and with that he went to get his own book.

Though he said this—meaning it at the moment—Dick didn’t let up on the athletic urgencies; and faithfully, in season and out of season, he labored with Larry. As sometimes happens, even in an engineering college, a Freshman class had entered with rather scanty material in it for the class teams. And, since the ’Varsity teams have to grow up out of incoming material, the athletic “scouts” were digging hard for Freshman candidates. Unhappily, however, the fellows who approached Larry always seemed to rub him the wrong way of the grain; or he thought they did, which amounted to the same thing.

After all, it was less Dick’s urgings than a word spoken by Mr. Waddell, the pattern-shop instructor, that turned the tide. It was on an afternoon while the try-outs were still going on, and Larry was doing a little extra work in the shop. Passing through, the instructor stopped at Larry’s lathe, and there was a little talk turning upon Larry’s absence from the athletic field when everybody else was there.

Much to Larry’s surprise, the instructor took sides with Dick and the other urgers: it was a student’s duty to uphold, not only the honor of his college in class work, but in the “activities” as well. Larry thought it all over soberly, and that evening made a large and generous concession to Dick.

“This athletic business,” he began, without preface; “I’ve about made up my mind to try out for the foot-ball squad.”

The sudden shift nearly knocked Dick speechless, but he caught his breath and pounded the shifter on the back.

“That’s the right old stuff!” he exulted; “Gee-gosh! but you make me glad all around the block!”

“Hold up,” Larry amended; “I don’t want any more credit than belongs to me. I’m going in because I guess I owe it to Old Sheddon. But I’m not kidding myself any, whatever. If I get in and play a good game, the bleachers’ll give me the glad hand. But off the field I’ll still be Larry Donovan, mechanic, and the son of a mechanic.”

“Confound your picture!” said Dick, half laughing and half provoked, “you ought to have a licking, and if I were big enough I’d give you one! Why, you poor fish, don’t you know that your good, sane, ‘workingman’ ancestry is the thing you ought to be most thankful for? It is the foundation upon which the real America is built!”

Larry grunted and looked up suspiciously.

“Where’d you get all that flowery stuff?” he demanded.

“I read it in a book,” Dick confessed brazenly. “Just the same, it’s so.”

The next afternoon Larry reported to Brock, the head coach, at the gymnasium, offering himself for the try-outs.

“What have you done?” snapped the square-faced, broad-shouldered man-picker who was filling the Sheddon teams.

“Little High School baseball and foot-ball.”

“What place in foot-ball?”

“End one year; right half the next two.”

The shrewd gray eyes of the coach swept him up and down.

“H’m; you were the bridge-scrap leader, weren’t you? Come in here and strip and let’s have a look at you.”

Larry took his “physical” without a flaw; heart action perfectly normal, weight within a pound and three ounces of what his age and height called for, chest expansion well above normal. In addition, his summer’s work on the railroad-building job in the Colorado mountains had made him as hard as nails.

“You’ll do,” said the coach, and sent him to the field.

If he had been twice as finical as he was, he couldn’t have found any fault with his reception. The memorable bridge scrap was still fresh in mind, and his subsequent refusal to turn out for athletics seemed to be forgotten on the spot. Naturally, he was cast at once for Freshman foot-ball; and after a hard-working hour in the field he went to the showers with his blood dancing and with the feeling that perhaps, after all, he had been overhasty in jumping to the conclusion that his family’s station in life had anything to do with the way the fellows were regarding him.

But the good effect of this first little dip into the bigger pool was all spoiled while he was dressing in the locker-room. The steel lockers were arranged in double rows, with dressing alleys between; and in the next row two of his fellow classmen, McKnight and Rogers, out of sight but, unhappily, not out of hearing, were discussing him.

“Well, the offish worm turned out, at last, didn’t he?” McKnight was saying. “That’s Dickie Maxwell’s doing, I’ll bet. Don’t see how Maxwell can room with a fellow like him.”

“He may be a grouch, but he certainly can play ‘feet-ball,’” Rogers replied. “I’d hate to have him on a team against me.”

“He’s the rough stuff”—this was McKnight again—“but that’s about what you’d expect. They say his dad’s a section-man, or something, on a railroad. Queer how such fellows break in.”

“Oh, cut that!” said the other voice, in a tone of marked disapproval. “Can’t you ever forget that you were born with gold fillings in your teeth, Knighty? My father was a house carpenter, if it comes to that.”

“But he didn’t stay a house carpenter,” was the quick retort. “Just now he’s the head of the biggest contracting firm in the State of Iowa.”

“That doesn’t cut any ice, Knighty. You’ve got to take a fellow for what he is; not for what his father is or was.”

“That is exactly what I’m doing with the ‘worm.’ Donovan may be all right on the team, but I’d hate to see myself rooming with him.”

Larry was fully dressed by now, and he didn’t wait to hear any more. And it was only human nature again that made him remember bitterly what McKnight had said, and forget the sensible and ameliorating Rogers’ replies.

“Things break all right for you this afternoon?” Dick asked that evening after he and Larry were hived in their room.

“Oh, good enough, I guess,” was the morose reply.

“Coachie didn’t turn you down, I don’t think!” chucked the class recruiter. “Foot-ball squad, of course?”

“Freshman team,” said Larry, without looking up.

“Good! You’ll get inoculated with the real, old, simon-pure college spirit, after a bit, Larry.”

“Don’t you believe it for one single minute!” Larry flamed out hotly, in the remembrance of his wrongs. “I’m in, and I’ll stay in because I’m not a quitter. But I haven’t changed my mind a single atom!” And he repeated, for Dick’s benefit, the talk he had overheard in the locker-room; or rather, to be strictly accurate, he repeated McKnight’s part of it.

“You see, it’s just as I’ve been telling you,” he wound up in a burst of contemptuous passion. “They’re glad enough to use me as a promising bunch of bone and muscle, and that’s all. I’ll stick, for the sake of what Sheddon’s going to give me. But when it’s over, I’ll still be fighting on my side of the fence—which isn’t Ollie McKnight’s side by a thousand miles!”

True to his determination, Larry “stuck,” and after a few days of practice the Freshman team found that it had acquired a prize. Larry played with the same grim resolution that he put into his classroom work. Playing first at end, he was presently given his old High School position at half-back. For this position he was well qualified, having weight enough to buck the opposing line, combined with the speed necessary to circle the ends and slip through tackle.

It was in one of the preliminary practice games with the ’Varsity that he made his mark. As usually happens, the big fellows ran away with everything in sight, but after the game, just as Larry was leaving the locker-room, Brock, the head coach, stopped him.

“I’ve been watching your play this afternoon, Donovan,” he said brusquely. “You have the makings of a good half-back in you. How do you stand in your classroom work?”

“All right, so far, I guess,” Larry replied.

“We begin playing the schedule next week,” Brock went on. “How would you like to go along as a sub? Of course, I couldn’t put you in the Conference games, but there’ll be others.”

You’d have to be a college Freshman yourself to know how this hit Larry. It is only about once in an elephant’s age that a raw Freshie is ever singled out as even a remotely possible substitute on the big team. But right there the growing bitterness got in its work. Once more he was being taken up for his brawn, and maybe a little for his brain, but not for anything else.

“I guess I’m not available,” he said, and it came out a lot more bluntly than he had meant to make it.

“All right,” returned the coach. “It’s up to you, of course.” And that ended it.

After this little talk with Brock, Larry played all the harder in the practice games—which was the way he was built. Back in the old life, which now seemed so far away, he had wiped engines in a locomotive roundhouse; and because it was a disagreeable, dirty job, he always did it just a little more than thoroughly. Here was another engine-wiping job, he told himself; and, since he had undertaken it, he would go through with it.

Matters and things ran along this way until the foot-ball season was well started. There were class games on the home field, in one of which the Freshmen, clinching their success in the bridge scrap, literally wiped the earth with the Sophomores in a score of 47 to nothing, and public acclaim—what there was of it—gave the credit, or a good share of it, to a certain red-headed, big-boned half-back, whom nothing seemed to be able to stop.

Meanwhile the ’Varsity was playing around the circle, and having hard luck. Not once, as yet, had there been occasion to call out the “snake dance” and “night-shirt parade” with which Sheddon victories were celebrated. Through all this, Larry seemed to be the only member of the student body who remained unmoved. Day after day he plugged along, religiously giving his afternoons when his team was called out; but that was all.

“Larry, you’re a fright—simply a fright!” Dick stormed, one evening when the news had come of another defeat for the “Blacksmiths.” “How you can go on, just as if nothing was happening, when——”

“Might say nothing is happening—to me,” put in the offish one grumpily.

“Of course it’s happening to you!” Dick yelped. “Aren’t you a part of Old Sheddon, I’d like to know? Haven’t you any heart at all?”

Larry jumped up and tramped across to the window which, in daylight, looked out upon Engineering Lab., and gave a cornerwise glimpse at the athletic field. When he turned back to face Dick his lip was shaking.

“It does get me, Dick! I’ve fought it—fought it just as hard as I could. I know the fellows don’t like me, and a lot of ’em are calling me a ‘worm.’ Just the same, it’s breaking my heart to see Sheddon losing this way! I——” and he turned to the window again, quickly, this time, as if to hide something that he was ashamed to let Dick see.

In a second Dick was beside him.

“Larry, you old sorehead—you don’t know how much good it does me to hear you s-say that!” he stammered. And then, in a steadier voice: “You’re all wrong about the fellows not liking you: they’ll like you just as much as you’ll let them. There isn’t a worth-while fellow in Old Sheddon that cares a hoot whether you’re rich or poor. If you’d only loosen up——”

Larry did “loosen up” the next day when he was on the field with his team; and it was Oliver McKnight, son of any number of millions of Consolidated Steel, who applied the loosening twist. In an intermission, McKnight came and flung himself down beside Larry.

“Say, Donovan,” he began abruptly, “you ought to push my face in. Four or five weeks ago I said some things about you to Cal Rogers that gave you a good right to hate me straight through the four years. Of course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me; but that only makes it worse—looks as if I didn’t have the nerve to say such things to your face. I was a mucker; and ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand enough to come and tell you so.”

There was more than a drop of good, warm, Irish blood in Larry Donovan’s veins, as his name would indicate, and for an impulsive half-second he wanted to throw his arms around the pampered son of Consolidated Steel. He didn’t quite do that, but he did say what was fitting.

“That’s all right, Mac—perfectly all right. You just forget it. I won’t say that it didn’t rub me the wrong way at the time, but——”

“Thanks, old scout,” McKnight broke in. “I’ve had that on my chest until I’m sore as a boil. What chance do you think we’re going to stand to lift the hoodoo to-morrow?”

The morrow was the day set for the “Blacksmiths” to play Rockford Poly on the home field. Rockford was not in the Conference, but it had a strong eleven, and even the best friends of the Sheddon team were saying that they hadn’t a chance in the world. But at McKnight’s question Larry scraped around and found a bit of the newly boosted college loyalty.

“We’ll never say die till we’re dead,” he asserted. “We’ve got to get in with both feet and put a barrel of pep behind our fellows to-morrow. We simply can’t let them lose!”

“Gorry! it sure sounds good to hear you talk that way. But we’re lame, Donnie. Since Critchett and Johnson were laid out in that game with the down-State eleven, we’ve been sewed up. Brock’s put in all of his subs, first and last, and they’ve fizzled on him, one after another. Shebbie’s been keeping in wire touch with the team, and he says we’ll have to have new material here to-morrow for Brock to draw from.”

It was here that Larry showed that he could be generous.

“You’re the best all-round man on the Freshman, Mac, and here’s hoping for you,” he said; and he meant it.

“Not on your cabinet photo!” retorted the son of much money. “If it comes down to us, you’re It. You’ll be here on the field, won’t you?”

“Sure thing!” said Larry; though, up to that heart-mellowing moment when McKnight had made the amende honorable, it had been anything in the world but a sure thing.

Dickie Maxwell saw a new light in his room-mate’s eyes that night as they settled themselves on either side of the study table, but Dickie had a wise streak in him which came to the surface once in a while, and he forbore to say anything. But, just before they turned in, Larry had his say.

“You remember that bleat that I made about Ollie McKnight four or five weeks ago, Dick?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“I guess I was pretty thin-skinned about that. Mac’s all right. He came to me to-day and squared things like a man. I’m telling you because I beefed to you about what he said; but you’re not to let it go any further.”

The day of the Sheddon-Rockford game was all that could be desired, weather-wise. A light frost during the night—not enough to hurt the field—put a keen tang in the air: but the sun was like the one in Alice in Wonderland—shining with all its might. A “pep” meeting of the student body had been held the night before, and when the game was called there wasn’t a vacant seat on the bleachers.

The Rockford team, big fellows, to a man, showed up in fine form, and it was evident from the kick-off that it was to be a fight for blood. Brock’s men, playing for the first time in the season on their home field, and with all Sheddon present to shout encouragement, did their best; but it wasn’t quite good enough. At the end of the second quarter the score stood 7 to nothing in favor of the visitors, Rockford having pushed the ball over for a touch-down and kicked goal—at which the trainload of rooters who had come over from Rockford were yelling their heads off.

“Our offense is pitiful!” Larry told Dick in the intermission. “Shubrick acts as if he’d been crippled, and he’s the only back that’s any good. Brock ought to take him out.”

As he spoke, one of the subs came running up to them, breathless with excitement.

“Donovan!” he panted, “coach says get on your uniform, quick! He’s going to put you in Shubrick’s place next half!”

For a moment Larry stood as if dazed. But the next instant he was racing for the gymnasium with Dick at his heels.

While Larry fairly jumped from his “civies” into his foot-ball togs, Dick talked excitedly. It was a chance—biggest chance that had ever been given a Sheddon Freshman—Larry could put it through—he must put it through; and things like that.

“I’ll be found trying,” was all Larry said; but there was a “do-or-die” grin to go with the promise as he jerked his belt tight, grabbed up his headgear, and started for the field on a run.

A moment later he was reporting to the coach. The members of the team were stripping their sweaters preparatory to the dash on the field for the second half.

“I’m not going to start you, Donovan,” said the coach, putting an arm across Larry’s shoulders. “You sit on the bench with me and I’ll send you in when you’re needed.”

Sitting quietly beside the coach, Larry looked on while Rockford took the ball and, by superior weight and superb interference, pushed it over for another touch-down just as the third quarter ended. The goal was missed, and with just fifteen short minutes left to play, the score stood Rockford 13, Sheddon nothing.

Suddenly Brock gripped Larry’s arm.

“Now’s the time. You take Shubrick’s place. Remember to report to the referee. Then, after the first play, tell Clark to run 43—with you back—that’s you, just outside tackle on the right; and then to call you back on the other side and run 44—that’s off tackle on the other side. Tell him to keep on running you as long as you can gain. You’re our only chance, boy!—and I believe you’ll pull us out of the hole!”

Larry didn’t speak; he merely grinned and dashed on the field with his fists clenched so tight that his finger-nails were white, and with his teeth set.

“Donovan for Shubrick at right half!” he snapped at the referee. “Shubrick out!” shouted the referee; and a moment later blew his whistle for the resumption of play.

Sheddon had received the kick-off on the thirty-yard line. On the first down, Shubrick had been thrown for a loss. Clark, Sheddon’s quarter, did not wait for the coach’s instructions. He had seen Larry play and knew his power. As soon as Larry was in position, Clark barked his signal: “Formation right! Donovan back! 32—43—59!” The ball came to Larry on a direct pass from the center. Starting toward opponent’s tackle, he swerved suddenly to the right and found his hole just inside of the end. Rockford’s full-back got him, but he had gained five yards.

“Good boy, Larry!” yelled Dugald, the big Sheddon captain, helping him to his feet. “Do it again!”

“Watch me!” Larry grinned, jumping back to his position.

And, sure enough, he did do it again, on the same play, only this time for seven yards and a first down. By this time the Sheddon bleachers were beginning to realize that something was happening. There had been little cause for joy in that section of the stands during the first half. But now business was certainly picking up.

“Who’s the new man?” the cheer leader called to the coach.

“Donovan!” the coach shouted back; and then the cheer leader turned to the stands and held up his hands.

“Everybody get into it!” he yelled. “Fifteen for Donovan!” and the fifteen might have been heard in the next county.

Larry heard them just as he got the ball for the straight third time. The opposing end had crowded in close to stop him, so Larry simply ran around him, taking the ball to Rockford’s ten-yard line, where Rockford’s quarter-back brought him down by a beautiful diving tackle.

Immediately Rockford’s coach sent in several substitutes in an attempt to stem the tide and prevent a score. The Rockford captain was walking up and down, slapping his linemen on the back, and urging them to “get low,” while the Rockford bleachers answered Sheddon’s chant of “Touch-down, Sheddon! Touch-down, Sheddon!” with a prayer to “Hold ’em, Rockford! Hold ’em, Rockford!”

Sheddon’s full-back shot into the line for a scant yard. He tried again, but could add only two more. Two more downs to make seven yards and a touch-down. Sheddon’s rooters stood up. Something was wrong. First came cries from individuals: “Give it to Donovan!” Then the stands roared out, “Give it to Donovan!”

Rockford knew then that it was to be given to Donovan, and quickly set themselves to stop him. This time the signal was for a mass on left tackle. But Larry saw at a glance, as the ball came into his hands, that the Rockford players were bunched just where the play should go ... and in the same glance he saw that there was a hole through right guard. Leaving his interference, he shot through the hole, dodged the full-back, and dived across the goal line.

Dugald kicked goal, while the Sheddon stands rang with the name of Donovan, and the Sheddon players patted him on the back and called him “Good old Larry!” The score was now 13 to 7, and Sheddon could win with another touch-down and goal.

“How much time to play?” Dugald asked, as Sheddon lined up to receive the kick-off—Rockford having chosen to kick.

“Ten minutes!” answered the timekeeper.

“Come on, fellows—we can do it!” Dugald cried; and the team answered him in bellowing unison, Larry’s voice ringing out with a new-found happiness: “Sure we can do it! Let’s go!”

But it was not so easy, this time. Rockford began to watch Larry, and every time he took the ball it seemed as if the whole Rockford team was on top of him. But steadily Sheddon pushed the ball down to Rockford’s fifteen-yard line, only to lose it on a fumble. Rockford kicked out of danger, and Sheddon again started the march to victory. Then the timekeeper announced four minutes to play—and the goal was sixty yards away!

Dugald came out of the line and spoke low to Larry.

“Larry, you’re the only one who can gain. Can you stand to take it every time?”

“Give it to me!” Larry answered, gritting his teeth.

Eight straight times the ball came to him, and eight straight times he carried it toward Rockford’s goal. He followed no signals—merely took the ball and bucked, dodged, fought his way forward. Rockford knew he was coming, but they came to know that they could not stop him. The bleachers were now giving forth a continuous roar; and when, on the eighth try, Larry carried the ball over for Sheddon’s second touch-down, he knew, as every man on the field knew, that he had won for Sheddon—for Dugald made the victory an assured fact by kicking goal, thus making the final score 14–13.

It was from no lack of college spirit that Larry Donovan did not turn out that night to join in the song-singing, cheer-bellowing “snake dance” wherewith Sheddon celebrated its victory. A bruised ankle—that he didn’t know was lamed until the game was over—kept him in his room, and it was here that Dick found him when the long, noisy parade wriggled its way back to the campus after having shouted itself hoarse all over town.

“How’s the old foot-knuckle by now?—hurt much?” inquired the celebrator, peeling off the white night-shirt which was the regalia for the parade.

“Nothing to weep about,” said Larry. “It’ll be all right in a day or so. Parade over?”

“Fellows were just coming across the campus when I skipped out. Going to disband at the gym., I guess,” he added, stepping to the window to look out. Then: “No, by jinks! They’re coming this way: Larry, you old snipe, they’re coming for you!”

Pallid panic leaped into the eyes of the temporarily crippled substitute half-back.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Dick—can’t you stop ’em?” he gasped.

But it was too late to stop them. Already the white-robed mob was filling the street in front of Mrs. Grant’s. “Donovan! Donovan!” it yelled; and Larry, with Dick to help him, had to hobble to the window, which Dick threw open.

They didn’t demand a speech; all they wanted was to see him. When he waved awkwardly to the surging mass, a roar broke forth. Then, with the cheer leader to time it, they gave him the Sheddon series.

When the crowd broke up, Dick led the cripple back to his chair, and for quite some little time Larry sat with his head in his hands, staring down at an open book which might have been printed in Sanskrit for all that the words in it meant to him. Dick waited as long as he thought he ought to. Then he said: “How about that ‘workingman’ class line now, Larry?”

Larry looked up, and the good gray eyes were suspiciously bright.

“They’ve broken it down for me, individually, Dick; but it’s here, just the same—you know it is. I had a bit of good luck this afternoon, and for that they’ve taken me in. But there are lots of others who won’t be taken in; little Purdick, and Jungman, and dozens that I could name.”

“Well?” said Dick, as one who would say, “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Dick,” Larry shot back, much as if he had read Dick’s unspoken question; “I’m going to make it my job to break the combination—or as much of it as can be broken from my side of the fence. Old Sheddon ought to be one and indivisible, all through the year, just as it is on the day of a foot-ball victory. I’m going to do what one fellow can to make it so.”

Dickie Maxwell started to gasp, but caught himself in good time. “That’s the right old stuff!” he chanted heartily. “Go to it, old scout, and when the pinches come, I’ll be there to help.”

Yet, later, it was Larry who was to do the helping—but that does not belong to the story of the Offish Worm.