“Had a hot time at your class meeting, I understand,” said Tompkins, who was killing a quarter of an hour in Wolcott’s room. “I wish I’d been there. Which side were you on, the kickers or the kicked?”

“I voted for Butler,” replied Wolcott, with dignity.

“Oh, you belong to that bunch! What’s the matter with Laughlin? Isn’t he good enough for you?”

“He’s all right in his place. I don’t think he ought to be president of the class. He isn’t enough of a gentleman.”

“Oh, isn’t he? Who is, then? Marchmont?”

“Yes, or at least he looks like one and acts like one,” returned Wolcott, warmly.

Tompkins stared. “Laughlin’s no dude, I’ll admit,” he said after some deliberation. “He’s never been able to get money at a bank just by signing a check, and I don’t suppose he’d feel entirely at home in a Fifth Avenue ballroom. But he’s worth as many Marchmonts as you can pile in that bedroom there—and a pile of Marchmonts would settle a good bit; they’d be pretty flabby.”

“Please remember that Marchmont’s a friend of mine,” said Wolcott, haughtily.

“Is he?” said Tompkins, coolly. “I’m not so sure of that.”

This remark Wolcott received with chilling silence.

“There’s one thing Marchmont can do all right,” went on Tompkins.

“What’s that?”

“Play the mandolin. He’s ’most as good as a nigger minstrel.”

“There’s another thing he can do,” replied Wolcott, quickly, “write poetry. You’re mighty glad to get it for the Lit.”

“Yes, there was some verse in the last number over his name,—rather streaky, I called it. Four stanzas were good and one was bum. The fellow who did the four good ones wasn’t a bad fist at writing rhymes.”

“Well, Marchmont wrote them, didn’t he?”

“Have I said he didn’t?” responded Tompkins, with an exasperating grin.

“And he had a prose article in the January number.”

“That horse business? Yes, that wasn’t bad. He wrote it as a theme and had to rewrite it twice afterward before Bain would accept it. By the time it got to us it was fairly readable.”

“It’s better than the stuff you write,” declared the indignant Lindsay.

Tompkins smiled and nodded. “Quite likely; I’m not the only paying mine in the caÑon. Going to Eastham with the band to-morrow night?”

“Yes,” replied Wolcott, sullenly, “the Glee and Mandolin clubs are both going.”

“I should like to go myself if I didn’t have to hear the concert.—Well, there’s the bell. Always be a good boy and stand up for your friends, especially if they have good clothes and nice ladylike manners. So long!”

And Tompkins sauntered forth, not forgetting to keep a sharp lookout for any missile that might follow him, and leaving the middler choking with helpless indignation. When Tommy was in this mood, he was unbearable. Mean, spiteful, envious, fresh—these were adjectives that occurred to Wolcott’s agitated mind; he had feelings which he knew no words to express. He didn’t like Laughlin, and he would not have the fellow crammed down his throat, though he might be the greatest football player who ever handled a ball; he did like Marchmont, and he wouldn’t be bullied out of his opinion if all the cowboys in Montana joined together to deride him.

Wolcott was still of this opinion when the evening mail brought a letter from Aunt Emmeline. He read it, and reread it, and then read a certain portion a third time. It ran as follows:—

“Thank you so much for sending me the copy of the Literary Monthly. I had no idea that the boys could write so well. The poem by your friend Marchmont is extremely good. It reminds me so much of one written by my dear friend, Alice Codman, many years ago. It was published, I think, in the Atlantic. Every one said that she had a great poetic gift, and she certainly wrote some very sweet and beautiful poems. She died in 1870, only twenty-four years old. It was very sad that one so talented and full of promise should be taken away so early.

“How fortunate you were to meet such a nice, refined boy as Marchmont immediately after you arrived; it almost reconciles me to Seaton. Tompkins and Laughlin must be perfectly dreadful. I hope you will associate as little as possible with such underbred persons. Of course one owes it to one’s self to be polite to all classes, but one chooses one’s friends.”

The last part of this extract for some reason stirred Wolcott’s bile, in spite of the fact that he was at that moment feeling inimical to both the underbred fellows against whom his aunt warned him. He gave little attention, however, to this objectionable passage, but the reference to Miss Codman suggested several disquieting questions.

Could anything be wrong with Marchmont’s poem? Did Tompkins mean to hint that the verses published under Marchmont’s name were really not Marchmont’s? He had not said so in so many words, and his remarks, as Wolcott reviewed them, did not necessarily imply such a meaning; but the tone of contempt and blind hostility which Tompkins used in reference to Marchmont proved him capable of any mean suspicion. Could it be possible that Marchmont had used some lines of Miss Codman’s as a model for his own work? Absurd! The poem was suggested by something that he himself had seen. And then, what could he have known of Miss Codman or anything she ever wrote? He read French novels—in translations—by the dozen; but old Atlantics never! And though he might not always be fussy about the authorship of his Latin composition exercises, or the perfect accuracy of his reports, it was only because he drew a line between school authorities and the rest of the world, not because he lacked the sense of honor which a gentleman should possess. Marchmont would never steal a poem and call it his own. It was an outrage to suggest such a thing!

With four horses and a big barge on runners, the Glee and Mandolin clubs set out on their ten-mile drive to Eastham. It had required some effort on the part of the chorus master, Mr. Leighton, to obtain permission for the clubs to leave town. Such permissions were not lightly granted, and Mr. Leighton, to win his cause, had both to show that the boys deserved the favor, and to assume responsibility for them on the trip. It was a bitter cold afternoon. Monotonous leaden clouds covered the sky, and occasional flakes fell deliberately, like dilatory messengers from the storm king. But old Jim, who sat on the box muffled in his dogskin coat, opined that it would “prob’ly be about like this for a day or two,” while the boys, crowded hilarious into the long, parallel seats, had little concern for the weather that was to be. It was enough that the wind was not blowing, that the snow was not falling, and that they were slipping easily over the hard-beaten road to a lark and a show.

Two hours later, as the hungry travellers gathered round the two long tables at the Eastham inn and with united voice demanded the whole bill of fare, whatever discomfort the journey had involved was forgotten. Marchmont turned with a chuckle to Wolcott and called his attention to Laughlin, who was sitting at the opposite side of the second table, complacently waiting for his order, with napkin spread wide across his chest and tucked carefully down over his collar.

“The style at Liberty, Maine, I suppose,” he whispered.

“Waiting for a shave,” returned Wolcott, in the same vein.

Just then Laughlin looked across to the other table and caught the mocking gaze of the two fixed upon him. For an instant he stared back in unconcern, but presently, instinctively following the direction of their looks, he seemed to guess the cause of their amusement. An unmistakable flush overspread his big features as he turned with a pretence of interest to his neighbor. Wolcott also blushed and looked away in embarrassment. His mother had explained to him more than once that to notice an error of etiquette was a greater fault than to make the error. What his father would say if he were present,—in fact, had said on a similar occasion when displeased by the son’s superior airs,—he did not like to dwell upon. Marchmont, who felt no such embarrassment, enjoyed the spectacle hugely.

“Just look!” he whispered again, “the lobster has taken off his bib.”

But Lindsay would not look. He had never enjoyed Marchmont’s society less than at that very moment.

The details of the Eastham concert do not concern this narrative. The Eastham Relief Society for which the entertainment was given had sold tickets in blocks to the charitably inclined, so a good audience was assured in spite of the weather; and fewer people left the hall before the end of the performance than might perhaps have been expected. The Glee Club had the last number, and while they were struggling to keep on the key, and leave a parting impression of harmony rather than of discord on the ears of their patient hearers, the mandolinists were packing up their instruments and making ready for departure. Dearborn pressed his forehead against the window pane, and, sheltering his eyes with his hands, peered out into the darkness.

“It’s snowing again, by George! and the wind is howling to beat the band. I see where we’re going to get it in the neck on the way home.”

“That’s the Glee Club’s pianissimo you hear,” remarked Poole. “If it’s snowing, the chances are that it will be warmer.”

“It’s dirty mean to make us go back to-night in weather like this,” said Marchmont, taking a turn at the window. “We shall be frozen to death. We ought to stay over and go back in the morning. If Leighton weren’t such a dub, he’d let us do it.”

“I’d rather go back to-night,” said Poole. “And I can tell you one thing: if anything goes wrong on this trip, it will be the last permission the Glee and Mandolin clubs will get while you’re in school.”

“The way to make it go wrong is to drive down there with this load to-night,” retorted Marchmont. “Old Jim will be half full, and won’t know whether he’s in the road or on the fences.”

“Oh, shut up with your croaking!” called Planter, impatiently. “If you’re afraid of the cold, beg off, but don’t speak for the rest of us.”

The singers came pouring into the dressing room, excited and noisy. Mr. Leighton, who was detained a few minutes to receive the thanks of the Relief Society, appeared at the door to urge haste. “The barge will be here in ten minutes,” he said, “and we must not keep the horses waiting in the wind. Don’t forget anything.”

Stone and Marchmont drew him aside. “It’s a terrible night, Mr. Leighton,” said Marchmont. “Don’t you think we’d better stay over? We should only lose one recitation.”

“Nonsense!” replied the teacher, curtly. “I’ve promised to deliver the whole party safe in Seaton at twelve o’clock, and I shall try to keep my word.”

“I don’t feel very well,” said Marchmont. “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I stayed over. Stone has offered to stay with me.”

Dearborn, who stood near, snickered violently. Mr. Leighton looked sharply into Marchmont’s face.

“What is the matter?”

“Headache. I often have very bad ones, when I have to go to bed.”

“If you really think it necessary, I’ll send for a doctor, and if he decides that you are unable to go home, I will stay over with you myself, and send the barge back in charge of some one else. There is no other way.”

“I couldn’t think of putting you to that trouble,” replied the invalid, with ill-concealed chagrin. Turning abruptly away, he picked up his bag and mandolin and left the room.

As the barge drew up a few minutes later, Marchmont, who stood with a little group inside the door of the building, whispered to Wolcott, “Make a dash when it stops: the first in have the warmest places.”

The next moment Wolcott was thoughtlessly skurrying in the van of the crowd for the entrance of the barge. Stone and Marchmont got the seats immediately behind the elevated driver’s box, one on either side. Wolcott sat next to Marchmont. The others flocked in behind them; the two long benches filled rapidly.

Laughlin appeared on Wolcott’s side. “Move down and let Ware in there, can’t you?” he called to the heads of the lines. “He’s been sick, you know, and ought to have as sheltered a place as he can get.”

“We’re all packed in here so tight we can’t move,” replied Marchmont.

“He can have my seat,” cried Wolcott.

“Don’t be a fool!” muttered Marchmont in his ear; but Wolcott paid no heed. The thought that the despised Laughlin should be lingering outside finding places for others, while his high-bred self had greedily scrambled for the best, shamed and angered him. He descended over the side and helped Laughlin boost the protesting Ware into the vacant seat. Then Wolcott and Laughlin crowded into the two last places, Jim tucked himself up on the box, and the barge moved off into the teeth of the wind.

For a time the occupants kept one another lively with songs and jokes. Then the two ends lapsed into silence, the middle gradually succumbed to the example of the ends, and soon the sound of a voice was scarcely to be heard in the barge except from Jenkyns and Wood, two chatterboxes whose lips were never silent. Old Jim evidently kept the whip steadily going, for the horses plunged recklessly down the short inclines, and the long, narrow barge slewed sometimes the width of the roadbed, like a double-runner on a steep bend.

“I hope these sled runners are strong,” said Laughlin to Mr. Leighton, who was beside him. “Jim seems to think they’re all right.”

“He’s taken several drops too much to-night, I am afraid,” returned Mr. Leighton. “But he knows the road and he knows the horses, and ought to get us home safely. I will never go on such an expedition again without a driver who can be trusted.”

The barge dipped suddenly over another crest; the leaders dashed blindly forward, out of the road at the curve and into it again with a sudden jerk, snapping the back sled like a whiplash far to the left, where the runner crashed violently against a rock. While the boys on the right were extricating themselves from the arms of those on the left, while the whole barge load was shouting and pushing and scrambling and demanding what had happened, Laughlin freed himself from the mÊlÉe and ran to the horses’ heads. Jim, sobered by the calamity, soon had them in hand, and Laughlin, with the driver’s lantern, hastened back to the injured sled. The runner was broken completely off.

“I was afraid of that,” he said to Mr. Leighton, who stood in the midst of a knot of boys about the sleigh, examining the damage.

“I see where we get a long walk,” said Wood, to whom belonged one of the heads projecting over the edge of the barge. “It’s five miles in, if it’s an inch!”

“I speak for the little bay leader,” said Jenkyns.

“Shut up, won’t you, fellows!” called Planter from below. “This isn’t a time for nonsense.”

“May as well laugh as cry,” returned Webster. “There’s Marchmont whimpering in the corner.”

“It’s a bad job,” concluded Mr. Leighton, after his inspection—a conclusion which every one else had drawn at first sight.

Jim was brought around to give his opinion.

“That sled’s done for,” he pronounced with solemnity.

“Can it be cobbled up so that we can get home?” asked the teacher.

Jim shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ to do to it; I ain’t no wheelwright.”

Mr. Leighton was visibly excited. “We must do something. We can’t stay here all night, and we can’t walk home.”

“I think I can fix it up so that we can get home in it,” said Laughlin. “I’ve got out of worse holes than this down in the Maine woods.”

Mr. Leighton turned eagerly toward him: “Can you? How?”

“By rigging a temporary runner. We passed a house a little way back, where the dog barked at us. If some one will go back with me, we can probably get something to block the sled up with. The rest of you had better get into the barge and keep warm.”

It was a despairing man indeed who could fail to gain courage from this sturdy giant, with his honest face and quiet, confident voice.

“I’ll go with you,” cried half a dozen at once.

Laughlin glanced at the half dozen, and took Lindsay. Why he did this, of course he did not explain, and it did not occur to Wolcott even to ask himself the question. He strode along at Laughlin’s side, silent and curious, but having no doubt as to the outcome.

With the assistance of the barking dog they woke the farmer, who put his head out the window and demanded what was wanted.

“We’ve broken a sled runner, and want a couple of poles to patch up with,” said Laughlin. “Can you lend us an axe?”

“There’s an axe at the woodpile by the shed,” answered the farmer, as he hurriedly closed the window.

Laughlin pulled out the axe from a log, gave the lantern to Wolcott, and selected two sticks from the pile of sled-length wood. One of these, a smooth hardwood pole, was perhaps ten feet long and two or three inches in diameter at its larger end. The other was much shorter and thicker. He cut out a notch a few inches from the end of the short piece and another near the middle of the longer one. By this time the farmer appeared at the shed door, shivering in overcoat and top-boots.

“Have you an auger handy?” asked Laughlin.

While this was being found, Laughlin laid the short piece on the ground, placed the pole across it at right angles, fitting notch to notch; and from a short piece of dry wood chipped out a pin. In the meantime the farmer had produced the auger, and Laughlin now bored through both pieces at their intersection and drove in his pin, joining them firmly together.

“Got any fence wire?” was the next question.

“There’s a piece somewhere round, left from the fence, but I can’t just lay my hand on it now.”

“Let us take a couple of yards from the fence, then,” urged Laughlin; “we’ll pay for it.”

The farmer hesitated, blinking at the pair in perplexity.

“Well, ’tain’t quite the right thing to do, but I guess I can make out to fix it up again. I don’t want no pay for it. Hope you’ll get home all right.”

The boys thanked the good man with all the fervor of which they were capable, said good night, selected from the woodpile a pole for a lever, and with their booty tramped back to the barge.

They arrived none too soon, for the impatient musicians, left in utter darkness and biting cold, were already breathing maledictions against Laughlin, whom they fancied warming himself in the farmer’s kitchen. While Wolcott was hacking off a piece of wire from the fence and breaking it into proper lengths, Laughlin cleared the boys out of the barge, lifted the side of the sled with his lever manned by sceptical but willing volunteers, and shoved the pole into the place of the broken runner so that the end of the crosspiece rested on the top of the opposite runner, where a piece of wire soon secured it. Other pieces of wire served to fasten the pole to the framework of the broken sled. It remained to tie the forward end of the pole to the body of the sleigh with hitching ropes, and to stay the whole after sled with all available straps.

“All aboard!” cried Laughlin at last, and the weary boys, raising a feeble shout of joy, settled again into their places.

Laughlin did not get in. “I’m going on the seat with Jim,” he said quietly to Mr. Leighton. “I want to see that my work is given a fair show.”

“But you’re not dressed for driving,” protested the teacher. “You will freeze stiff.”

Laughlin gave a sniff of contempt. “I’m not a baby,” he said. “It’s only my hands that will trouble me, and I guess they’ll stand it for an hour.”

Wolcott pulled off the thick fur gloves that he had brought with him from Hamburg. “Take these,” he said. “They’re big enough even for your hands. Take them, I say,” he insisted, as Laughlin hesitated. “I’ll wear yours instead. If my gloves are working, I shall feel as if I were doing something myself.”

Laughlin obeyed, and Wolcott, drawing on the thin woollen gloves, plunged his hands into his pockets and wondered how the fellow could think of facing the wind with hands so poorly protected. Long before the carefully driven sleigh reached the edge of the town Wolcott’s fingers were numb.

Laughlin’s sled came safely, though belated, to the home stable. The next morning the musicians turned out at an early hour to see what kind of a vehicle it was that had brought them home. And when they had examined it, they brought their friends and explained to them the marvel. Only Marchmont showed no interest; he had had quite enough of sleds the night before.