Until dusk, like Gilliatt in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, waiting for the tide to swallow him up, Stover sat motionless, brooding. There was only one thing to do—to run away. His whole career had been ruined in a twinkling. He knew. There could be no future for him in the school. What he had done was so awful that it could never be forgiven or forgotten. Why had he run? If only he had made a quick dive at the ball as it had trickled off the glove and caught it before it reached the ground, instead of standing there, horrified, hypnotized. Yes, he would escape, run off to sea somewhere—anywhere! But he wouldn't go home; no, never that! He would ship around the Horn, like the hero in that dreadful book, Two Years Before the Mast. He would run away that night, before the story spread over the whole school. He would never face them. He hated the school, he hated the Green, he hated every one connected with it!

A tap came on the door, and the voice of Butsey White said coldly:

"Open up! Fuzzy-Wuzzy's in the House; you're safe. Open up. I've got to get ready for supper."

Stover drew back the bed, unlocked the door and waited with clenched fists for Butsey to spring at him. Butsey White, whose tempestuous rage had long since spent itself in hilarious laughter, as, indeed, had been the case with the rest, thought it best, however, for the purposes of authority, still to preserve a grave face.

"You're a fine specimen!" he said curtly. "You've had a beautiful day of it."

"Yes, I have," said Dink miserably, "a beautiful day!"

Butsey, to whom the tragedy of the century was nothing but an incident, had not the slightest suspicion of Stover's absolute, overwhelming despair. Yet Butsey, too, had suffered, and profited by the suffering.

"You better square up with Tough McCarty," he said, failing to read the anguish in Stover's eyes. "You certainly were the limit."

"I hate him!" said Dink bitterly.

"Why?"

"He's a bully."

"Tough McCarty? Not a bit of it."

"He tried to bully me."

"Why didn't you let them in?" said Butsey, putting the part in the middle of his hair with a dripping comb. "Let them in!"

"Why, what do you think they'd have done to you?"

Stover had never thought of that. After all, what could they have done to him?

"I didn't think——"

"Rats!" said Butsey. "They might have pied you on the bed; but that's nothing if you lie face down and keep your elbows in. That's all you'd have got. Then it would have been over; now you've got to square yourself. Well, brush up and come down to supper, and for the love of Mike smile a little."

Butsey White's sentiments neither consoled nor convinced. Stover was too firmly persuaded of the enormity of his offense and the depth of his ignominy.

In all his life he had never done a more difficult thing than to follow Butsey into the dining-room and face the disdainful glances of those from whom he had so lately fled.

He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate, tasting nothing of what went into his mouth, chewing mechanically.

Mr. Jenkins, to be affable, asked him how he had enjoyed the day. He mumbled some reply, he never knew what, hearing only the dreadful snicker that ran the table. He refused the dessert and left the table. It had been a nightmare.

He stayed in his room, watching from behind the curtains his fellow-beings romping and shrieking over a game of baby-in-the-hat. The bottom had, indeed, dropped out of things—the universe was topsy-turvy. More keenly than in the afternoon he felt the utter hopelessness of his disgrace. If he could only get away—escape from it all. If he only had had five dollars in his pocket he could have reached Trenton and worked his way to some seaport town. He looked at the now ridiculous souvenir toilet set and bitterly thought where the precious dollars had gone—that story, too, would be abroad by the morrow. The whole school would probably rise and jeer at him when he entered chapel the next morning. That night he crept into his bed to the stillness of the black room, to suffer a long hour that first overwhelming anguish that can only be suffered once, that no other suffering can compare to, that is complete, because the knowledge of other suffering has not yet come, and he who suffers suffers alone. Then the imagination came to the rescue. He fell into blissful unconsciousness by a process of consoling half dreams in which he vindicated himself by feats of extraordinary valor, carrying the suffocating Tough McCarty and the Coffee-colored Angel out of burning houses at the risk of his own life, and earning the plaudits of the whole school.

Suddenly a peal of thunder shook the building; he landed all in a heap in the midst of the sunlit floor, rubbing his eyes. Outside, the morning came in with warm embrace; green things stirred against the window-panes; the flash of a robin's wing cut a swift shadow on the floor and was gone. Below, the horrid clanging of the gong rattled the walls and called on the dead to rise.

Dink gazed at the opposite bed. Butsey, with the covers wound around him, with his knees under his chin, was actually asleep. In great alarm he went over and shook him gently. One eye opened and reproachfully fastened on him.

"I say, the gong—the gong's rung, Mr. White," said Dink.

"The rising gong?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, when the breakfast gong explodes wake me up."

The eyes shut, but presently reopened and a muffled voice added:

"Pour out water—washbasin—stick my shoes over here."

Dink obeyed, mystified. Then, going to the window, he drank in all the zest and glory of green fields and blue skies with woolly clouds drifting over the tingling air. Joyfully he turned for a plunge in cold water and the unspeakable crockery set met his eye. Then he remembered. A shadow fell across the room; the day went into eclipse. Mechanically, heavily, he dressed, and the fever of yesterday sprang up anew.

Meanwhile, not a sound in the House except down the hall a snore—a glorious, triumphant note. A second time the gong took up its discordant march. Then from the cocoon on the bed a flash of legs and arms sprang out and into the waiting garments. There was a splash in the basin that spattered the water far and near, and Butsey, enveloped in a towel, rushed into his upper garments, flung back his hair with a masterful swooping stroke of the comb, and bolted out of the door, buckling his belt and struggling into a sweater. Down the stairs they went in the midst of floating coats, collars to be buttoned and neckties to be tied; and when the last note of the gong had ended not a place was vacant, though every eye still drooped with drowsiness.

Breakfast over, Dink followed Butsey to their room and, after the more permanent preparations had been attended to, they left for chapel.

The much-dreaded breakfast had passed with but one incident; the Coffee-colored Angel, in passing him the sugar, had said in a terrific whisper:

"I'll get you to-day. I'll tame you!"

But, being still in a nodding state, his anger was contented with this slight expression. Tough McCarty had given him just one look, but somehow he remembered nothing else. The instinctive hostility he had felt at the first meeting of their eyes rose anew. The Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary were but incidents; the enemy, le sacrÉ Albion, was Tough McCarty.

He went in the current of boyhood past Foundation House and around the circle toward chapel. For the first time the immensity of the school was before him in the hundreds that, streaming across the campus in thin, dotted lines, swelled into a compact, moving mass at the chapel steps. It was more than an institution; it was a world, the complex, marvelously ordered World of Youth.

Somehow, he did not attract the attention he had expected. His entrance into the pew was attended by no hilarious uprising en masse. He found his place in the gallery, between Pebble Stone and Duke Straus, who sleepily asked his name and went off for a supplementary nap on the shoulder of D. Tanner. Stone evidently had heard nothing of his disgrace, or else was too absorbed in a hurried conning of the Latin lesson to make remarks.

Dink lifted his head a little and stole a glance—strange, no one seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. Somewhat astonished and unutterably relieved he gazed down at the body of the school marshaled below, at the enormous fifth-formers who seemed—and never was that illusion to fade—the most terrifically immense and awesome representatives of manhood he had ever seen. The benches were hard, decidedly so; but he lost himself pleasantly in the vaulted roof, and gazed with respect at the distant pulpit.

The Doctor ascended and swept the school with that glance peculiar to head masters which convinces each separate boy it is directed at him. Stover felt the impact on his own forehead and dropped his eyes uneasily. When the hymn began he looked curiously among his classmates, located Doc Macnooder and caught the eye of the Tennessee Shad, who winked at him to show him he was still his friend.

Somehow, his awful disgrace seemed to slip from him—the Green House was but a grain in the sand. There were friends, undiscovered friends, in the mass before him, to be won and held. An easier feeling came to him. When the school shuffled out he sought the Tennessee Shad and, holding out his hand said:

"Say, you are wonders; and I'm the only living sucker!"

"Dink, you're a real sport," said the Tennessee Shad, pleased; "but we did come it pretty strong. Now, if you want to turn in those shoes——"

"Not on your life!" said Dink. "I deserved it, but—but look out for next year!"

"All right," said the Tennessee Shad with an approving look. "If you do us we'll take you into the firm. Tack on to me, and I'll pilot you to The Roman's."

Following his lanky guide Stover went in the churning, lagging mass across to Memorial Hall, rubbing elbows with the heroes, who stalked majestically in their voluminous bulk, with the coveted 'Varsity caps riding on the backs of their cropped heads, or being jostled by the freckled imps who ran zigzag, shrieking chases past him.

At the steps they divided, some surging upward and others crowding into the lower corridor.

"Below for us," said the Tennessee Shad, pushing his way forward.

Dink found himself outside of one of the dozen classrooms in a throng that waited hopefully, as other classes waited hopefully every hour of every day in the hopes of an improbable cut.

"The Roman," said the Tennessee Shad wisely, "is the one master you want to stand in with. Study like the devil the first two weeks; and say, get up on the gerund and the gerundive—they're his pets."

"I will," said Dink.

"You can't bluff him and you can't beat his system," continued the Tennessee Shad. "If you guess don't hesitate; jump at it. The only thing you can do is to wait for his jokes, and then grab the desk and weep for salvation—it's his one weak spot."

"I will," said Dink.

A cry of dismay went up from the sentinels at the window.

"Oh, rats! Here he comes."

"Oh, peanuts!"

"Oh, melancholy!"

"All in!"

Dink modestly took a seat in the back, at the end of the row of S's where he must sit. On four sides, like prison walls that no convict might hope to scale, the slippery blackboards rose up and bound them in. On a raised stand was the master's pulpit where presently The Roman would come and sit, like the watcher of the galley slaves in Ben Hur, with his eagle glance sweeping the desks that, in regimental file, ran back from him.

Outside, through two open windows, was the warm, forbidden month of April, and the gateway to syntax-defying dreams. At this moment Dink's copy of CÆsar's Gallic Wars slid on to the floor. He bent down, laboriously collecting the scattered pages and straightened up. Then he glanced at the pulpit. Directly in front of him, his eyes on his eyes, sat the big consular frame of his stage companion of the day before.

Dink gasped in horror; twice his hand went instinctively toward his lip, stopped half-way and dropped. Then his mouth opened, set, and galvanically he rose to his feet, while the room seemed to tip up.

He grasped the desk to keep from slipping, never taking his eyes from the Ciceronian countenance and the twinkling orbits above the slightly twitching lips.

"Dear me," said a low, mocking voice with a curious rising and falling infection, "who's here? Another delegate to this congress of scintillating intelligences?"

"Yes, sir," said Dink in a whisper.

"Quite a valuable addition, I hope. Yes? What is the name?"

"John."

"Well—well?"

"John Humperdink Stover," said Dink with difficulty.

"Ah, yes, Stover: the name is familiar—very familiar," said The Roman, with a twitch to his lip and a sudden jump of the eyebrow. "Haven't we met before?"

Dink, suffocating, nodded. The class, at a loss, turned from one to the other, watching for the cue.

"Well, Stover, come a little nearer. Take the seat between Stone and Straus. Straus will be better able to take his little morning nap. A little embarrassed, Stover? Dear me! I shouldn't have thought that of you. Sit down now and—try to put a little ginger into the class, Stover."

Dink looked down and blushed until it seemed as though his hair would catch on fire. The class, perceiving only that there was a point for laughter, burst into roars.

"There—there," said The Roman, stilling the storm with one finger. "Just a little joke between us two; just a little confidential joke. Now for a bee-ootiful recitation. Splendid spring weather—yesterday was a cut; of course you all took the hour to study conscientiously—eager for knowledge. Fifth and sixth rows go to the board."

While The Roman's modulated accents doled out conjugations and declensions Stover sat, without a thought in his head, his hands locked, staring out at the green and yellow necktie that rose on Pebble Stone's collar.

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" he said at last. "Dished! Spinked! He'll flunk me every day. I certainly am in wrong!"

He raised his eyes at the enthroned Natural Enemy and mentally threw down the gage of battle with a hopeless, despairing feeling of the three years' daily conflict that was to come. For, of course, now there could be no question of The Roman's mortal and unsparing enmity. But after the first paralyzing shock Dink recovered himself. It was war, but the war he loved—the war of wits.

The Roman, having flunked a dozen by this time, had Channing, the Coffee-colored Angel, on his feet, on delicate matters of syntax.

"Top of page, third word, Channing—gerund or gerundive?" said The Roman.

"Gerund, sir."

"Too bad!" said The Roman musically, and on a lower octave repeated: "Too bad! Third line, fifth word—gerund or gerundive?"

"Gerund, sir," said the Coffee-colored Angel with more conviction.

"No luck, Channing, no luck. Tenth line, last word—gerund, Channing, or gerundive?"

"Gerund-ive," said the Coffee-colored Angel hesitatingly.

"Poor Channing, he didn't stick to his system. The laws of probability, Channing——"

"I meant gerund," said the Coffee-colored Angel hastily.

"Dear me! Really, Channing?"

"Yes, sir."

"Positive?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"It was the gerundive, Channing."

The Coffee-colored Angel abruptly sat down.

"Don't want to speculate any more, Channing?"

"No, sir."

"No feeling of confidence—no luck to-day? Try the gerundive to-morrow."

The discouraged began to return from the boards, having writ in water. The Roman, without malice, passed over the rows and, from flunking them individually, mowed them down in sections.

"Anything from the Davis House to-day? No, no? Anything from the Rouse House combination? Nothing at all? Anything from the Jackson twins? Alas! How about the D's this morning? Davis, Dark, Denton, Deer, Dickson, nothing from the D's. Let's try the F's. Farr, Fenton, Foster, Francis, Finch? Nothing from the F's—nothing from the D F's! Nothing at all?"

Dink burst into laughter, and laughed alone. The Roman stopped. Every one looked surprised.

"Ah, Stover has been coached—well coached," said The Roman. "But, Stover, this is not the place to laugh. The D F's are not a joke; they are painful, every day facts. Well, well, it has been a beautiful recitation in the review—not exceptional, not exceptional at all. Has any one the advance? Don't all rise at once. Strange what trying weather it is—too sunny, not enough rain—every one rises exhausted. Will Macnooder kindly lead the massacre?"

Macnooder disdained to rise; one or two faltered and tripped along for brief spaces, and then sat down. The Roman, counting his dead, hesitated and called:

"Stover."

"Me, sir?" said Dink, too astonished to rise. "Why, I'm unprepared, sir."

"Unprepared?" said The Roman with a wicked smile. "I never thought you would be unprepared, Stover."

The smile decided Stover.

"I'll try, sir," he said.

"Very kind of you, Stover."

Dink rose slowly, put the book on his desk, tightened his belt, buttoned his coat and took up the prosy records of CÆsar. Pebble Stone showed him the place. He straightened up and, glancing at the first line, saw:

"Ubi eo ventum est, CÆsar initio orationis ..."

"CÆsar," began Dink in a firm voice.

"Excellent!" said The Roman.

"CÆsar, wherever the wind blew him, initiated the orators ..." Dink continued smoothly, after a rapid glance.

The Roman, from a listless attitude, gripped the desk, pivoted clear on one leg of his chair, staring at the familiar text as though it had suddenly taken on life and begun to crawl about the page.

Dink, resolved not to be bested, gravely and fluently continued to glide on, without pause or hitch, turning syllables into words, building sentences wherever he met an acquaintance. On and on he went, glib and eloquent, weaving out of the tangled text a picture that gradually, freeing itself from the early restraints, painted in vivid detail a spirited conference between CÆsar and the German envoys. The class, amazed, resorted to their books; many of the unprepared, quite convinced, stared at him as though a new rival to the high markers had suddenly appeared.

The Roman, fascinated, never quitted the text, marveling as the tale ran on, leaping adverbs and conjunctions, avoiding whole phrases, undismayed by the rise of sudden, hostile nouns, impressing into service whatever suited it, corrupting or beating down all obstacles.

Once or twice he twitched spasmodically, twice he switched the leg of his chair, murmuring all the while to himself. Finally he rose and, slowly approaching to where Stover stood, glanced incredulously at his book.

"Shall I stop, sir?" said Stover.

"Heaven forbid!"

Stover completed the page with a graphic, rushing account of the athletic exercises of the ancient Germans, and sat down without a smile.

The Roman, back at his post, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and spoke:

"Very well run, indeed, Stover; excellently well run. Take your breath. Very fluent, very vivid, very persuasive—a trifle free, a trifle—but, on the whole, a very creditable performance. Very! I was sure, whatever you did, Stover, you wouldn't bore us. Now, let us see how the same passage will appeal to a more prosaic, less richly-endowed mind."

Then Red Dog rose and, unfeelingly, brought the scene back to Rome and the deliberations of the Senate.

But this was a detail that did not interest Dink in the least. He had clashed with The Roman and not retreated. He had his first moment of triumph, attested by the admiring glances of the class and the muffled whisper of Straus, saying:

"Gee, you're a peach!"

The session ended with a solemn warning from The Roman.

"One word," he said in his deepest tones, "just one word to the wise. We have journeyed together for two whole terms; there is only one more between you and reassignment. Candor compels me to say that you have acquired not even a flunking knowledge." He turned and raked the awed ranks with the sweep of a pivot gun, and then took up again in cutting, chilling, spaced syllables: "I have, in the course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You may go."

And Stover, who had brazenly planned to remain and converse, went swiftly out with the rest, little imagining that he whom he had ranked as a deadly, unforgiving foe sat a long while chuckling over the marvelous route Dink had gone, murmuring gratefully to himself:

"Wherever the wind blew him, CÆsar initiated the orators."