At nine o'clock that night Stover eluded Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan and the Tennessee Shad and went across the dusky campus, faintly lit by the low-hanging moon. Past him hundreds of gnomelike figures were scurrying, carrying shadowy planks and barrels, while gleeful voices crossed and recrossed.

"There's a whole pile back of Appleby's."

"We've got an oil barrel."

"Burn every fence in the county!"

"Who cares!"

"Where did you get that plank?"

"Up by the Rouse."

"Gee, we'll have a bonfire bigger'n the chapel!"

"More wood, Freshmen!"

"Rotten lot, those Freshmen!"

"Hold up your end, Skinny. Do you think I'm a pack mule?"

Dink pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and slunk away, not to be recognized. He went in a roundabout way past the chapel. He had just one desire, to stand under the goalposts they had defended and to feel again the thrill.

"Who's that?" The voice was Tough McCarty's.

"It's me. It's Dink," said Stover.

"I came down here," said McCarty, appearing from under the goalposts and hesitating a little, "well, just to feel how it felt again."

"So did I."

Dink stood by the posts, taking one affectionately in his hand, and said curiously: "They tell me, Tough, we held 'em four times inside the ten-yard line."

"Four times, old boy."

"Funny I don't remember but two. Guess I was groggy."

"You didn't show it."

"It was you pulled me through, Tough."

"Rats!"

"It was. There at the last, I remember when you gripped me." As this was perilously near sentiment he stopped. "I say, how many of us tackled that fellow the last time?"

"The whole bunch. I say, Dink."

"Yes?"

"Stand out here—that's it, knee to knee. Can't you just feel it behind you?"

"Yes," said Dink, surprised that in the big body there was an imagination akin to his own. Then he said abruptly:

"Tough, I guess there won't be any fight."

"No—not after this."

"What the deuce did we get a grudge for, anyway?"

"I always liked you, Dink, but you wouldn't have it."

"I was a mean little varmint!"

"Rats! I say, Dink, we've got two years more on the old team. There's nothing going to get around our end, is there, old boy?"

"You bet there isn't!"

All at once a flame ran up the towering bonfire and belched toward the sky.

"Are you going to let them get you?" said McCarty.

"Me? Oh, Lord, no—I can't make a speech!"

"Neither can I!" said Tough mendaciously. "I wouldn't go back there for the world!"

The thin posts stood out against the sheet of flame, gaunt, rigid, imbued with a certain grandeur.

"I say, Dink," said McCarty.

"Yes?"

"I say, we're going to have some great old fights together. But, do you know, I sort of feel after all, this will be the best."

Then a chorus of thin shrieks rose about them. They started half-heartedly to run, pretending fury. A swarm of determined boyhood rushed over them and flung them kicking, struggling into the air.

"Tough McCarty and Dink Stover!"

"We've got 'em!"

"On to the bonfire!"

"They're ours!"

"Hurray!"

"Help!"

"Help! We've got McCarty and Stover!"

Boys by the score came tearing out. The little knot under Dink became a thick, black shadow, rushing forward with hilarious, triumphant shouts. Then all at once he landed all-fours on a cart before the flaming stack, greeted by fishhorns and rattles, his name shrieked out in a wild acclaim.

"Three cheers for good old Dink!"

"Three cheers for honest John Stover!"

"Three cheers for the little cuss!"

He drew himself up, fumbling at his cap, terrified at the multiplied faces that danced before his eyes.

"I say, fellows——"

"Hurray!"

"Good boy!"

"Orator!"

"I say, fellows, I don't see why you've got me up here."

"You don't!"

"We'll show you!"

"Dink, you're the finest ever!"

"You're the stuff!"

"Three cheers for good old Rinky Dink!"

"Fellows, I'm no silver-tongued orator——"

"Don't believe it!"

"You are!"

"Fellows, I haven't got anything to say——"

"That's the stuff!"

"Hurray!"

"Keep it up!"

"Oh, you bulldog!"

"Fellows, they were good——"

A derisive shout went up.

"Fellows, they were very good——"

"Yes, they were!"

"Fellows, they were re-markably good—but they didn't beat the old school team! That's all."

He dove headlong into the crowd, unaware that he had repeated for the sixth time the stock oration of the evening.

"Good old Dink! Good old Rinky Dink!"

The cry stuck in his memory all through the jubilant night and long after, when in his delicious bed he tossed and worried over the tackles he had missed.

"It's a bully nickname—bully!" he repeated drowsily, again and again. "It sounds as though they liked you! And Tough McCarty, what a bully chap—bully! We're going to be friends—pals—what a bully fellow! Everything is bully—everything!"

With the close of the football season and the advent of December, with its scurries of snow and sleet, what might be termed the open season for masters began.

A school of four hundred fellows is a good deal like a shaky monarchy: the football and baseball seasons akin to foreign wars; so long as they last the tranquillity of the state is secure, but with the return of peace a state of fermentation and unrest is due.

The three weeks that lead to the Christmas vacation are too filled with anticipation to be dangerous. It is the long reaches after January fifth, the period of arctic night that settles down until the passing of the muddy month of March, that tries the souls of the keepers of these caged menageries.

Since those days a humane direction has built a gymnasium to lighten the condition of servitude, preserve the health and prolong the lives of the Faculty. But at this time, with the shutting of the door on the treadmills of exercise, the young assistant master arranged his warm wrapper and slippers at the side of his bed and went to sleep with one ear raised.

Dink Stover entered this season of mischief with all the ardor and intensity of his nature, the more so because, owing to his weeks of strict training and his virtual isolation of the year before, it was all strange to him. And at that period what is forbidden, dangerous and, above all, untried, must be attempted at least once.

Now, owing to the foresight of a wise father, Dink had never been forbidden to smoke. Of a consequence when, at an early age, he practiced upon an old corncob pipe and found it violently disagreed with him, the desire abruptly ceased and, as the athletic ardor came, he consecrated his years to the duty of growing, with not the slightest regret.

But between smoking under permission and squeezing close to a cold-air ventilator, stealthily, in the pin-drop silences of the night, with frightful risks of detection, was all the difference in the world. One was a disagreeable, thoroughly unsympathetic exercise; the other was a romantic, mediÆval adventure.

So when Slops Barnett, who roomed below and was the proprietor of a model air flue with direct, perpendicular draught, said to him with an air of mannish insouciance:

"I say, old man, I've got a fat box of 'Gyptians. Glad to have you drop in to-night if you like the weed."

Dink answered with blasÉ familiarity:

"Why, thankee, I've been aching for just a good old coffin-nail."

He slipped down the creaking, nervous stairs, and found Slops luxuriously reclining before the ventilator, on a mattress re-enforced by yellow and green sofa pillows, that gave the whole somewhat of the devilishly dissipated effect of the scenes from Oriental lands that fascinated him on the covers of cigarette boxes.

Slops made him a sign in the deaf-and-dumb language to extinguish the light and creep to his side.

"Comfy?" said Slops, whispering from the darkness.

"Out of sight!"

"Here's the filthy weed."

"Thanks."

"Always keep the cig in front of the ventilator," said Slops, applying his lips to Dink's ear. "Get a light from mine. Talk in whispers."

Stover filled his cheeks cautiously and blew out after a sufficient period.

"You inhale?"

"Sure."

"Inhale a cigar?"

"Always."

"It's awful the way I inhale," said Slops with a melancholy sigh. "I'm undermining my constitution. Ever see my hand? Shakes worse'n jelly. Can't help it, though; can't live without the weed. I'm a regular cig fiend!"

Stover, holding his cigarette gingerly, keeping the sickly smoke at the end of his tongue, looked over at Slops' stupid little face, flashing out of the darkness at each puff. He was no longer the useless Slops Barnett, good only to fetch and carry the sweaters of the team, but Barnett, man of the world, versed in deadly practices.

"I say, Slops——"

"Hist—lower."

"I say, Slops, what would they do if they caught us?"

"Bounce us."

"For good?"

"Sure! P. D. Q."

The cigarette suddenly had a new delight to Dink. He was even tempted to inhale a small, very small puff, but immediately conquered this enthusiastic impulse.

"Isn't this the gay life, though?" said Slops carelessly.

"You bet," said Dink.

From down the flue came three distinct taps.

"That's the Gutter Pup signaling," said Slops, putting his finger over Dink's mouth. "Bundy is snooping around. Mum's the word."

Presently, as Dink sat there in the darkness, trying desperately to breathe noiselessly, the sound of slipping footsteps was heard in the hall. Slops' hand closed over his. The steps stopped directly outside their door, waited a long moment and went on.

"Bundy?" said Dink in a whisper.

"Yes."

"Why did he stop?"

"He's got me spotted. He's seen the nicotine on my finger," said Slops, showing a finger under a sudden glow of his cigarette.

A half-hour later when Dink crept up the stairs, homeward bound, he swelled with a new sensation. Yesterday was months away; then he was a boy, now that he had smoked up a cold-air ventilator, with Bundy outwitted by the door, he had aged with a jump—he must be at last a man.

The next week he added to his stature by going to P. Lentz's room for a midnight session of the national game, where, after a titanic struggle of three hours, he won the colossal sum of forty-eight cents.

Having sunk to these depths he began to listen to the Sunday sermons with a thrill of personal delight—there being not the slightest doubt that they were directly launched at him. Sometimes he wondered how the Doctor and The Roman could remain ignorant of the extent of his debauches, his transgressions were so daring and so complete. He stood shivering up the Trenton road, under the shadow of an icy trunk, of Sunday mornings, and met Blinky, the one-eyed purveyor of illicit cigarettes and the forbidden Sunday newspapers, which had to be wrapped around his body and smuggled under a sweater.

Secretly he rubbed iodine on his fingers to simulate the vicious stain of nicotine that was such a precious ornament to Slops' squat fingers. Only one thing distressed him, and that was his invincible dislike for the cigarette itself.

Being now a celebrity, many doors were thrown invitingly open to him, invitations that flattered him, without his making a distinction. He went over to the Upper at times and into rooms where he had no business, immensely proud that he was called in to share the delights and liberties of the lords of the school.

At the Kennedy he was in constant rebellion against established precedent, constantly called below to be lectured by The Roman. In revenge for which at night he made the life of Mr. Bundy one of constant insomnia, and, by soaping the stairs or strewing tacks in the hall, seriously interfered with that inexperienced young gentleman's nightly exercises.

The deeper he went the deeper he was determined to go; doggedly imagining that the whole Faculty, led by The Roman, were bending every effort to bring him down and convict him.

The Tennessee Shad had no inclinations toward sporting life—greatly to Stover's surprise. When Dink urged him to join the clandestine parties he only yawned in a bored way.

"Come on now, Shad, be a sport," said Dink, repeating the stock phrase.

"You're not sports," said the Tennessee Shad in languid derision, "you're bluffs. Besides, I've been all through it, two years ago. Hurry up with your dead-game sporting phase, if you've got to, but get through it; 'cause now you're nothing but a nuisance."

Dink felt considerably grieved at his roommate's flippant attitude toward his career of vice. Secretly, he felt that a word of kindly remonstrance, some friendly effort to pull him back from the frightful abyss into which he was sinking, would have been more like a friend and a roommate.

This same callous indifference to the fate of his roommate's soul so incensed Stover that, to bring before the Shad's eyes the really desperate state of his morals, he appointed a Welsh-rabbit party in their room for the following night.

"Don't mind, do you?" he said carelessly.

"Not if I don't have to eat it!"

"It's going to be a real one," said Stover, making a distinction."

"Come off!"

"Fact. It is not going to be flavored with rootbeer, toothwash, condensed milk or russet polish; it is going to be the genuine, satisfaction guaranteed, or you get your money back."

"With beer?"

"Exactly."

"Yes, it is!"

"It is."

"Where'll you get it?"

"I have ways."

"Oh," said the Tennessee Shad sarcastically, "this is one of your real, sporting-life parties, is it?"

Stover disdained to answer.

"Is that bunch of slums going to be here?"

"Are you referring to my friends?" said Stover.

"I am," said the Tennessee Shad, "and all I ask while this feast of bacchanalian orgies is going on, is that I be allowed to sleep."

At eleven o'clock Stover, holding his shoes in his hand, went down the stairs to meet Slops in Fatty Harris' room and thence into the outlawed night. They stole over the crinkling snow, burying their noses in their sweaters, until, having climbed several fences, they arrived behind a shed of particularly cavernous appearance.

"Make the signal," said Slops, sheltering himself behind Stover.

Blinky appeared like a monster of the night.

"Hist, Blinky, O. K.?" said Slops, who, having his shoulder to Dink's recovered his sporting manner. "Got the booze?"

"I got it," said Blinky in husky accents, with his hand behind his back. "What's youse got?"

"The cash is here all right. How many bots did you bring?"

Blinky slowly brought forward one bottle.

"What, only one?" said Slops the bacchanalian, in dismay.

"All's left," said Blinky, with a double meaning.

"How much?"

"One dollar."

"What! You robber!"

"Take it or leave it—don't care," said Blinky, who sat down and hugged the bottle to him like a baby.

They paid the extortion and slunk back.

"We'll have to cook up a story," said Dink.

"Sure!"

"Still, it's beer."

"It certainly is!"

"It's expulsion if we're caught."

"And a penal offense, don't forget that!"

Somewhat consoled by this delightful thought they cautiously tapped on Fatty Harris' window and, removing their boots, tiptoed upstairs like anarchists with a price on their heads.

In Stover's room three more desperate characters were waiting about the chafing dish, Fatty Harris, Slush Randolph and Pee-wee Norris, all determined on a life of crime—but all slightly nervous.

The Tennessee Shad, rolled into a ball on his bed, was venting his scorn with an occasional snore.

Stover held up the lonely bottle.

"Is that all?" exclaimed the three in indignant whispers.

"All, and mighty lucky to get that," said Dink valiantly. "We were chased by the constable, terrific time, pounced on us, desperate struggle, just got away with our skins."

At this a distinct snort was heard from the direction of the Tennessee Shad's bed.

"I say, isn't it rather—rather dangerous?" said Pee-wee Norris, with his ears horribly strained.

"What of it?"

"Suppose he goes to the Doctor?"

"We'll have to take the risk."

"I say, though, let's be quick about it."

An uncongenial chill began to pervade the room. Fatty Harris, as master cook, visibly hastened the operations.

The Tennessee Shad was now heard to say in a mumbled jumble:

"Hurrah for crime! Never say die, boys—dead game sports—give us a drink, bartender!"

The revelers stood at the bed looking wrathfully down at the cynic, who snored heavily and said drowsily:

"Talks in his sleep, he talks in his sleep, poor old Pol!"

"Don't pay any attention to him," said Stover angrily. "He's a cheap wit. What are you doing at the door, Pee-wee?"

"I'm listening," said Norris, turning guiltily.

"You're afraid!"

"I'm not; only let's hurry it up."

Fatty Harris, watching the swirling yellow depths of the rabbit with evident anxiety, emptied a third of the beer into it and held out the bottle, saying:

"Here, sports, fill up the glasses with the good old liquor."

When the three glasses and two toothmugs had received their exact portion of the bitter stuff, which had been allowed to foam copiously in order to eke out, the five desperadoes solemnly touched glasses and Slops Barnett, who had visited in Princeton, led them in that whispered toast that is the acme of devilment:

"Then stand by your glasses steady,
This world is a world full of lies.
Then here's to the dead already dead,
And here's to the next man who dies!"

It was terrific. Stover, quite moved, looked about the circle, thought that Pee-wee looked the nearest to the earthworm and repeated solemnly:

"To the next man who dies."

At this moment the Tennessee Shad was heard derisively intoning:

"Ring around a rosie,
Pocket full of posie.
Oats, peas, beans and barley grows.
Open the ring and take her in
And kiss her when you get her in!"

They paid no heed. They felt too acutely the solemnity of life and the fleeting hour of pleasure to be deterred by even the lathery aspect of their own faces, which emerged from the suds of the beer ready for the barber.

"Dish out the bunny," said Slops, putting down his mug with a reckless look.

Suddenly there came an impressive knock and the voice of Mr. Bundy saying:

"Open the door, Stover!"

In a thrice the revelry broke up, the telltale bottle and glasses were stowed under the window-seat, the visiting sporting gentlemen precipitately groveled to places of concealment, while Stover extinguished the lights and softly stole into bed.

"Open the door at once!"

"Who's there?" said Dink with a start.

"Open the door!"

All sleepy innocence Dink opened the door, rubbing his eyes at the sudden glow.

"Up after lights?" said Mr. Bundy, marching in.

"I, sir?" said Dink, astounded.

All at once Mr. Bundy perceived the chafing-dish and descended upon it. Stover's heart sank—if he tasted it they were lost; no power could save them. Mr. Bundy turned and surveyed the room; one by one the terrified rouÉs were dragged forth and recognized, while the Tennessee Shad sat on the edge of his bed, reflectively sharpening his fingers on the pointed knee-caps.

Then, to the horror of all, Mr. Bundy, sniffing the chafing-dish, inserted a spoon and tasted it. Immediately he set the spoon down with a crash, gave a furious glance at Stover and departed, after ordering them to their rooms.

The dead game sports, white and shaky, went without stopping.

"They're a fine sample of vicious bounders, they are!" said the Tennessee Shad. "Bet that Slops Barnett is weeping to his pillow now!"

"I'm sorry I got you into this," said Stover gloomily.

"You've brought my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave!" said the Tennessee Shad solemnly.

"Don't jest," said Dink in a still voice. "It's all up with me, but I'll square you."

"Don't worry," said the Tennessee Shad, smiling. "I may not be a tin sport, but I keep my thinker going all the time."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"I mean you'll get twigged for a midnight spread, that's all."

"But the beer. Bundy tasted the beer."

"Taste it yourself," said the Tennessee Shad, with a wave of his hand.

Stover hurriedly dipped in a spoon, tasted it and uttered an execration.

"Murder, what did you put in it?"

"About half a bottle of horse liniment," said the Tennessee Shad, crawling back into bed. "Only, don't tell the others if you want to see how much dead game sportiness there is in them by to-morrow morning."

The affair made a great noise and, as Stover suppressed the transformation worked by the Tennessee Shad, Slops Barnett and his companions did not exactly show those qualities of Stoic resignation which might be expected from brazen characters with their view of life.

Meanwhile, the skies cleared and the earth hardened, and the air resounded with the cries of baseball candidates.

Much to his surprise, Dink found at the end of the strenuous day no impelling desire to plunge into fast life. Still the conviction remained for a long time that his soul had been surrendered, that not only was he destined for the gallows in this world, but that only the prayers of his mother might save him from being irrevocably damned in the next. It was a terrific thought, and yet it brought a certain pleasure. He was different from the rest. He was a man of the world. He had known—Life!

The episode ended as episodes in the young days end—in a laugh.

"I say, Dink," said the Tennessee Shad one afternoon in April, as, gloriously reveling on the warm turf, they watched the 'Varsity nine.

"Say it."

"In your dead-game sporting days did you ever, by chance, paint your nicotine fingers with iodine?"

"How in blazes did you know?"

"Used to do it myself," said the Shad reminiscently. Then he added: "Thought yourself a lost soul?"

Stover began to laugh.

"All alone in a cold, cold world—wicked, very wicked?"

"Perhaps."

"And it was rather a nice feeling, too, wasn't it?"

"I didn't know, you——" said Dink, blushing to find himself back in the common herd.

"Me, too," said the Tennessee Shad, sucking a straw. "Good old sporting days!" Presently he began mischievously:

"Then stand by your glasses steady,
This world is a——"

But here Dink, rising up, tumbled him over.