“Hello, Dick, may I use your French dictionary?”

Without waiting for a reply, Tompkins pounced upon the book. It was the fourth time in the last ten days that he had demanded the use of this particular book, while on two other occasions during the same period he had found it convenient to prepare his English versions at Melvin’s desk. If this had been all, Melvin would not have thought of objecting. To some boys ownership in books is but a continued series of lendings and borrowings, mislayings, losings, and findings. In Tompkins, however, this borrowing habit was of sudden and violent development. Similar tales of him had come during the past fortnight from other rooms.

“Haven’t you any books at all?” demanded the senior.

“A few,” replied Tompkins, with his nose in the dictionary.

“Well, haven’t you a French dictionary?”

“If I had, do you suppose I’d want to use yours?”

“You certainly had one once. What’s become of it?”

“Gone,” replied Tompkins, resignedly, turning back to the B’s to find the meaning of a word which he had looked up only a moment before,—“like the meaning of that long adjective I just looked up.”

“Can’t you find it?”

“Maybe.”

“When did you use it last?”

“Don’t know.”

“Well, where did you see it last?”

“At the second-hand bookstore.”

Dick stared. “Did some one steal it, or did you lose it?”

“Neither,” replied the laconic Tompkins.

“Then you must have sold it.”

“Yes, I suppose I must have sold it,” sighed Tompkins. “Any more questions?” he asked after an interval, as Melvin gazed and wondered. “I really ought to do this reading, you know. I rather flunked on it yesterday, and I don’t like to repeat the performance to-day.”

There was a half hour of silence in the room. Then Melvin, squinting furtively out of the corner of his eyes, caught Tompkins gazing out of the window.

“You ought to have borrowed of me,” said Dick, quietly. “You could have saved the books, anyway.”

Tompkins shook his head. “I don’t like to borrow, though I may have to do it yet.”

“What’s become of your term allowance?”

“Gone to those confounded little lambs that Bosworth sheared,” said Tompkins, angrily, throwing off his pretense of indifference. “Eddy wasn’t the only fool, by any means. First one would come to me and then another, and every one of them would put up a mournful whine, and promise never, never to do such a thing again, and hold out his hand for his money. They seemed to think that Bosworth was having the games just to give them experience and teach them profitable lessons, and that I was his agent to pay them back when they promised not to do it again. I wasn’t very careful about the money, I suppose, and when I finally shut down on the thing, a good part of my own was gone. Then Dinsmore took the rest for a baseball subscription which I’d promised to pay early. He left me just seventy-five cents. Since then the books have been going, and it’s a month yet to pay-day. I have been a fool.”

With this last statement Melvin mentally concurred. He had maintained from the beginning that the only proper way of dealing with Bosworth was to maul him until he disgorged, and his first impulse was to tell Tompkins that it served him right for having recourse to questionable methods. But wholesome respect for the generosity of the boy and sympathy with him in his present predicament, effectually prevented any such retort, and turned the whole force of his disapproval against the original offender.

“For straight meanness, that Bosworth is the limit!” he exclaimed, with eyes aflame with indignation. “He ought to be fired this very minute!”

“He isn’t much of a fellow, I think myself,” answered Tompkins, more calmly, “but we can’t do anything about it. The firing isn’t in our hands, or he’d go, and a good many fellows would stay who now have to say good-by pretty abruptly. It isn’t Bosworth that I’m thinking of, but how I’m going to get through the next month.”

“Why don’t you write the whole story home to your father?” said Dick, to whom the straightforward way always appealed.

Tompkins smiled wisely. “And have him write back hot foot to Grim, and want to know what kind of a school it is in which such ‘scandalous performances’ go on under the teachers’ eyes. And Grim would hunt it to the ground like a setter after a rabbit! No, I thank you,—not that!”

A pause.—Then the inexorable recitation bell broke in upon them. “How mournful that bell sounds when you haven’t your lesson,” groaned Tommy, as he picked up his book and started for the French recitation. “It’s like the thing they ring at funerals. Another flunk for me to-day! I’ll be dropped by the end of the term, if I don’t get this business off my nerves.”

“Come in after supper, Tommy,” shouted Dick at the door, “and we’ll talk it over with Varrell. His head is longer than mine, and he may have something to suggest.”

That evening the three gathered before the depleted bookshelves in Tompkins’s room in solemn conclave. All agreed that to write to Mr. Tompkins would be equivalent to carrying the facts to the Principal.

“Can’t you write to your mother?” suggested Melvin.

“That would be more dangerous still,” answered Tompkins, dolefully. “She’d be sure I’d gone to the bad.”

“Haven’t you a brother or an uncle or a cousin that you could try?” asked Wrenn. “I’ve money enough myself. I could furnish you what you want as easily as can be, but I have to give an account of all I spend, and of course I can’t lie about it.”

“There’s Uncle George in Chicago,” said Tompkins, brightening. “I’d thought of him, but he’s a bit risky, too. He’d help me quick enough, but I don’t know what else he might do.”

“That’s the way out,” said Varrell, authoritatively. “You’ve got to take some risk. Just tell him the whole story frankly, and explain why you don’t want to write to your father, and I think he’ll be square with you; uncles usually are pretty generously disposed. In the meantime don’t sell any more books. I’ll lend you all you need.”

To this course the council agreed. Tompkins wrote the letter and waited six miserable days for a reply, which arrived by the last mail of a certain Saturday early in March. The date was important to Tompkins, for it was the day which brought relief from anxiety to a very worried and unhappy boy. There was a check in the letter, drawn for a larger amount than he had requested; there was also some strong, sensible advice; and finally there was a pledge to be signed and returned before the check was cashed, binding Master Tompkins not to play again during the course of his education. This the boy signed with eagerness, having already of his own accord made up his mind to this very course. With the pledge deposited in the post-office, and the check safe in his pocket-book ready to be cashed on Monday morning, with a feeling of relief warming his heart as the bright hearth-fire drives the chill from weary bones, Tommy went to bed that night as nearly serious and grateful as he had ever been in his life.

For another reason the date was important. On the night of this Saturday, or somewhere between the hours of six P.M. on Saturday and two P.M. on Sunday, the registrar’s safe in the basement of Sibley was broken into and plundered.