“‘Indeed! Poor Knollys!’ murmured Allison.

“‘Yes,’ continued the Senior loftily, ignoring the sarcasm; ‘in my opinion Knollys funks.’

“‘It seems to me, Jones,’ retorted Allison, ‘you forget certain incidents that took place when Bert Knollys was a Freshman, and you a Sophomore!”

“‘Oh,’ said the Senior, calmly looking over Allison’s head, ‘the worm will turn! But what I’m thinking about is his refusal to play foot-ball last fall. He’s quick, and sharp, and tough; just the man the team wanted for quarter-back, if only he had the nerve! Said he was too busy to train—indeed!’ and Jones sniffed contemptuously as he turned away to join some members of his own class, leaving Allison in a fume of indignation.

“At this moment Jack Wright, chancing to stroll past the big black dog, gave the animal a careless kick. The dog sprang at his assailant with a ferocious snarl. Much startled, Wright evaded the attack by dodging into a knot of his classmates; and the dog lay down again, growling angrily.

“‘Bran doesn’t seem to be quite himself!’ remarked a Senior, eying him narrowly.

“‘He’d be an ugly customer to handle if he started to run amuck,’ commented another Senior, chuckling at Wright’s discomfiture. ‘I wonder where he got that bite on his leg!’

“This was something which nobody knew; and the incident was promptly forgotten by all but Jack Wright, who thenceforth gave the animal a wide berth.

“As soon as Knollys came out of the laboratory, Will Allison told him his suspicions in regard to Wright, and urged him to put his energies upon the Latin. But Knollys was always slow to believe that a comrade could be guilty of treachery.

“‘I don’t think Wright is really such a bad lot, old man,’ said he; ‘only his manner is unfortunate, and he isn’t popular.’

“Just three days later appeared on the notice-board the announcement that B. Knollys and J. S. Wright were competitors for the Junior Latin scholarship! The examination was to take place on the following morning. Bert Knollys was hurt and indignant; his friends were furious; and Wright looked craftily triumphant over the prospect of so neatly getting ahead of a rival.

“Knollys was by no means prepared for such a contest as he knew Wright was capable of giving him; but his anger nerved him to the utmost effort. Returning in hot haste to his home in the outskirts of the town, he shut himself into his little study. All through the afternoon he toiled mightily over book and lexicon. About tea time he took a short walk, and then settled down for a night of solid “grind.” He was bound that he would win if it was in him.

“Toward two o’clock, however, eyes and brain alike grew dim, and the meanings began to mix themselves most vexatiously. He sprang up, snatched his cap, let himself out of the house noiselessly, and set forth to wake his wits by a brisk run.

“For the sake of the freer air he took a path traversing the hilltop toward the college. The path ran through the open pastures, and reached at length a rocky ridge just back of the cottage of Doctor Adams, the professor of classics. Here Jack Wright was boarding. As Knollys swung past along the ridge he glanced downward to the professor’s study window; and as he did so a light appeared therein. He halted instinctively; and the next moment his lip was curling with astonished contempt as he saw Jack Wright seat himself before the study table, and stealthily search the drawers. The top of the ridge was so near the window that Knollys, where he leaned against the fence, could see all that went on, as if he had been in the room. At last, after going through almost every drawer with frequent guilty, listening pauses, Wright found what he wanted, an examination paper! After making a hurried copy of it, he returned it to its place; and then, with his lamp turned very low, he stole out of the room.

“Bert Knollys’s first thought was to go at once to Doctor Adams, lay his complaint, and have Wright’s room searched before he could have time to destroy the stolen copy. Then it occurred to him that this would lead inevitably to Wright’s expulsion, and not improbably to his ruin. He therefore dismissed the idea. He hastened back home; tried to study, but found the effort vain; went to bed, and fell asleep without having arrived at any solution of the problem. In the morning he was equally undecided. Perhaps his best course would have been to go to the professor, declare a suspicion that the paper had been tampered with, and ask that a new paper be set. But he failed to think of this way out of the difficulty; and, at last, tired of worrying over it, he made up his mind to do nothing. He went in to the examination, wrote an unusually good paper, and came out feeling that there was yet a chance for him in spite of Wright’s previous knowledge of the questions. But on the day following was posted the announcement that Wright was the winner by a lead of three marks on the average for the four examinations.

“The affair was a grievous disappointment to Bert Knollys, and meant the upsetting of all his plans for the summer. He had counted on the scholarship money to enable him to take a long vacation trip with Will Allison. This scheme he had now to abandon; and Allison could not refrain from reproaching him for his misplaced confidence in Jack Wright. Furthermore, he was accused of petty jealousy by many students outside of his own class; and his popularity, undermined by Wright’s skilful insinuations, rapidly dwindled away. Smarting under the injustice, and seeing no satisfactory way to remove the misunderstanding, Knollys grew moody and depressed.

“The days slipped by quickly, and Commencement was close at hand. One warm afternoon, a number of the students were in the baseball field, where a practice match was in progress. The college Nine was strenuously preparing for the great Commencement Day match. Knollys, Allison, Jones, and a few others, were lying under the fence on the farther side of the field, while most of the spectators were grouped as close as possible to the players. Jack Wright was at the bat.

“Suddenly in the gate of the college barnyard, above the ball-field, appeared Bran, the dog. The hair lifted along his back-bone and on his neck, and a light froth showed about his half-bared teeth. He was a sinister and menacing figure as he stood there, a strange trouble in his wild, red eyes. After glaring uneasily from side to side for several minutes, he gave utterance to a yelping snarl, and darted down the hillside toward the field. The group under the fence observed him at once.

“‘What’s the matter with the dog?’ exclaimed Jones, in a tone of apprehension; and ‘Look at Bran!’ shouted some one else. The pitcher stopped in the very act of delivering the ball, and every eye went in the one direction. The dread truth was evident at once. On all sides arose the appalling cry, ‘He’s mad! Mad dog! Mad dog!’ and players and spectators scattered in sickening panic. As it were in the twinkling of an eye, the field was empty.

“But no! It was not quite empty! Turning in wild terror, and starting to run as he turned, Jack Wright tripped, fell, and snapped his ankle. He got up, and saw himself alone in the wide, sunny field. The dog had just entered the gate, and was making straight for him with foaming, snapping jaws. He strove to flee, but the shattered ankle gave way beneath him; and, with a piercing cry of horror, he dropped in a heap, burying his face in his hands.

“Knollys, like all the rest, had sprung over the fence at the first alarm; but at that despairing cry he sprang back again. There was no hesitation, no waiting to see what the others would do. Swift as a deer he sped out across the shining and deadly expanse. As he ran, he stooped to snatch up a bat which lay in his path. It was a question which would win in the awful race; and the crowd of fugitives, checking their flight, watched in spellbound silence.

“The dog arrived first, but only by a foot or two. As it sprang at Wright’s prostrate body Knollys reached out with a fierce lunge, and caught it between the jaws with the end of the bat. Biting madly at the wood, the animal rose on its hind legs, and in a flash Knollys had both hands clenched in a grip of steel about its throat.

“For a few seconds the struggle was a desperate one. The animal’s strength was great, and Knollys had all he could do to hold him at arm’s length. Then Will Allison arrived, panting, and conscience-stricken for his tardiness. He was followed by two or three others who had broken the spell of their panic. A couple of well-directed blows from the bat in Allison’s hands stunned the dog, and it was then speedily despatched.

“Breathing somewhat quickly, but otherwise quite cool, Knollys looked down upon Jack Wright’s gastly face.

“‘Glad I was in time, Wright!’ said he.

“‘Bert,’ cried Wright, in a shaking voice, ‘you won that scholarship! I just cribbed the whole paper!’

“To thank his rescuer, he felt, was not within the power of words; but reparation was in part possible, and his one thought was to make it.

“‘We won’t talk of that now,’ answered Knollys. ‘I know all about it, Jack! I saw the whole thing; and we just won’t say anything more about it, old fellow!’

“But Wright had fainted from the pain and the shock, and did not hear the forgiveness in Bert’s voice.

“The next day a letter went from Wright’s sick-bed to the president of the college. Wright wanted to tell everything; but on Bert’s advice he merely confessed that he had cribbed, without saying how, and resigned his claim to the scholarship. At Commencement, therefore, it was announced by the president that the Latin scholarship had been won by B. Knollys. Many conflicting rumors, of course, went abroad among the students; but to no one except Will Allison was the whole truth told. As for Wright, a new point of view seemed all at once to have opened before his eyes. The loftier standard which he now learned to set himself, he adhered to throughout the rest of his course, and then carried forth with him into what have proved very creditable and successful relations with the world.”

“Queerman has grown didactic,” said I. “That is surely not the tone for a canoe trip. Ranolf, it’s your turn to take the platform. Let us have something that is simple, unmedicated adventure!”

“I’ll tell you a bicycle story,” said Ranolf; “an unromantic tale of a romantic land. It is all about a bull and a bicycle in the land of Evangeline.”

A BULL AND A BICYCLE.

“It was in the autumn of 1889, while the old, high wheels were still in use, that I rode through the Evangeline land with a fellow-wheelman from Halifax. We rolled lazily along a well-kept road, and sang the praises of Nova Scotia’s scenery and air.

“Ahead of us, across a wide, flashing water, the storied expanse of Minas, towered the blue-black bastion of Cape Blomidon, capped with rolling vapors. To our left, and behind us, rose fair, rounded hills, some thickly wooded, others with orchards and meadows on their slopes; while to our right lay far unrolled those rich diked lands which the vanished Acadian farmers of old won back from the sea.

“Though another race now held these lovely regions, we felt that the landscape, through whatever vicissitudes, must lie changelessly under the spell of one enchantment,—the touch of the well-loved poet. We felt that something more than mere beauty of scene, however wonderful, was needed to explain the exalted mood which had taken possession of two hungry wheelmen like ourselves; and we acknowledged that additional something in the romance of history and song.

“Presently we came to a stretch of road which had been treated to a generous top-dressing of loose sand. Such ignorance of the principles of good road-making soon brought us down both from our lofty mood and from our laboring wheels. We trudged toilsomely for nearly half a mile, saying unkind things now of the Nova Scotian road-makers, and quite forgetting the melodious sorrows of the Acadian exiles.