DAN WONDERS
By ten o’clock the news was all over school. Loring and Dyer were on
probation!
Consternation reigned. Without Loring at quarter against Broadwood the
game was already as good as lost! Dyer would be missed, too, for he was
first substitute at right half, but his loss was nothing to that of Alf
Loring. Consternation had given place to indignation by dinner time,
and commons hummed and buzzed like a mammoth bee-hive.
“I don’t believe Loring ever did it!” That was the general sentiment.
Loring himself had denied it up and down, and so had Dyer. Each
declared to Mr. Collins that he had never set eyes on the paint can
until he had seen it in Dr. Hewitt’s hand. Unfortunately, however,
neither was able to prove his innocence. No one could say for certain
that they had been in their room from ten o’clock until morning, and it
would have been a simple matter for them to have walked boldly out of
the front door, daubed on the letters and walked boldly in again. Mr.
Austin, whose room on the first floor in the second well was near the
entrance, was well known to be a heavy sleeper, and it is likely that
a herd of elephants could have entered and departed without disturbing
his slumbers. Neither Dyer nor Loring could prove an alibi even for
the hours between daylight and ten o’clock, for, as it happened, they
had visited various rooms in different dormitories during the evening
and were very uncertain as to when they had left one fellow’s room or
reached another’s. And so, much as Mr. Collins disliked doing it, the
penalty of probation was inflicted. Probation at Yardley was no joke.
It meant that a fellow must remain on school grounds, stay in his room
from after supper until time for Chapel the next morning, must have all
lessons perfect and, worse yet, must abstain from all sports.
“You declare that you know nothing about this affair,” said Mr.
Collins, “and I am inclined to believe you. Your records are of the
best, and the trick was such a silly, unnecessary thing that I can’t
imagine you doing it. But the Doctor is very much put out and there is
only one duty before me, and that is to put you both on probation. I am
sorry, for in your case the punishment is a very heavy one, since it
will disbar you from further football; unless--” Mr. Collins paused
and looked intently at Loring--“unless you can prove your innocence by
discovering the guilty ones. Somebody must have done it; you say you
did not; therefore, it is possible that between you you may be able to
discover the person or persons who are guilty. I will do all that I can
to clear the matter up, fellows.”
“Thank you, sir,” muttered Loring.
“Now, tell me, can you think of anyone who could have done it?” Both
shook their heads.
“You say you returned to your room shortly before ten. Therefore if
someone else placed that can of paint under your bed, Loring, they must
have done it before ten o’clock.”
“Yes, sir, unless they sneaked into the room after we were asleep.”
“Hm; not likely,” pondered Mr. Collins. “Still, possible, since your
door was unlocked. Have either of you purchased any paint lately?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll see if I can find where it came from. Perhaps the man who sold it
will recall the purchaser. I’ll do what I can, fellows. Meanwhile you
had better see if you can’t find out something yourselves.”
Payson learned of the affair at noon and went at once to see the Doctor
and Mr. Collins. He pleaded and argued, declared that to suspect
Loring was utter nonsense and that under the circumstances to deprive
him of playing in the Broadwood game was utterly unjust. But the Doctor
was firm and Mr. Collins could only shrug his shoulders and protest
his helplessness. Payson became bitter and threatened to throw up his
work there and then. Mr. Collins reminded him that he couldn’t do that,
since he was under contract, and Payson went to some trouble to explain
just how little he cared about that contract. In fact he quite lost his
temper, and as there was a good deal of it to lose, Mr. Collins spent
an unpleasant half-hour. But in the end Payson had to retire defeated,
having said a good many things he was afterward sorry for.
At seven o’clock there was an indignation meeting in the Assembly Hall
which was attended by the whole school. Speeches were made and all
sorts of resolutions offered. In the end it was decided to draw up
an appeal to the Faculty. The drawback was that the Faculty did not
hold its next meeting until Thursday evening and that meanwhile the
Principal’s word was law. The meeting broke up with cheers for Loring
and Dyer, which were called for, and groans for Doctor Hewitt, which
were spontaneous. They heard the news at Broadwood the next day and
Colton got a telephone message from the Broadwood captain in which
the latter politely expressed his regrets. Colton thanked him and
courteously declared that Yardley expected to win just the same. Then
he hung up the receiver with a _bang_ and strode off muttering unkind
things about Broadwood, for no matter how many regrets they expressed
Colton knew well enough that they were secretly mighty glad to have
Loring off the Yardley team.
Those were hard times for Colton and for Payson. Discouragement
threatened to disrupt the season’s work. Everyone was convinced that
without Loring at quarter-back to lead the team, defeat was certain.
Colton worked like a Trojan, trying to act as though the mishap was a
matter of small moment and striving to bring back confidence to his
team-mates. Payson worked hard, too, but he was grim and silent; he
couldn’t pretend, or didn’t want to. King’s nose was put against the
grindstone with a vengeance. He was drilled in signals, drilled in
offense, drilled in defense and lectured between-whiles on generalship.
By Wednesday the first despair had worn off and the team was buckling
down to work again. Three new plays were learned, among them Dan’s
double forward pass. The latter went beautifully against the second
and there seemed no reason why it should not work as well against
Broadwood. Kapenhysen spent hours practicing goals from placement, the
ends were drilled in catching passes and that last week was the busiest
of the whole season. Luckily the weather had relented and day after day
of ideal football conditions followed each other. A certain degree of
cheerfulness returned to the team and its supporters. Without Loring it
was idle to look for victory, but they could put up a good game, and if
they succeeded in holding Broadwood down to a single score it would be
a triumph.
Meanwhile Mr. Collins, assisted enthusiastically by Stevie, ran down
all clues without results. Several of the hardware stores kept the
brand of paint which had been used to decorate the front of Dudley
and almost all of them had sold cans of blue pigment during the last
fortnight. But no one could recall having sold to a purchaser who might
have been a Yardley student. That appeared to exhaust the clues.
“There’s one thing I regret,” said Mr. Collins. “And that is that we
allowed the finger prints on the door to be washed off. We might have
been able to discover something through them.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Austin, “you’d have had to have dipped the fingers
of half the school in blue paint, and even then you couldn’t have told
for certain.”
“But we might have determined that neither Loring nor Dyer were the
ones.”
“We know that already, don’t we?” demanded Mr. Austin, a trifle
impatiently. Mr. Collins nodded.
“Yes, I guess we do,” he answered. “I wish we could convince the
Doctor, though.”
“We’ll try to-morrow night at Faculty meeting,” was the answer. “I, for
one, am opposed to holding those boys guilty under the circumstances.
And McIntyre and Bendix are with me.”
“So am I,” said Mr. Collins. “But we are only four out of ten; and the
Doctor is as--hum--determined as a mule in this affair.”
“Well, it’s a blessed shame, that’s what I call it,” said Mr. Austin
warmly. “Think of keeping Loring out of the game Saturday! And we’ll
lose it as sure as shooting!”
“I wouldn’t mention that phase of it, though,” said the other with a
smile. “The Doctor might think we were letting our desire to win the
Broadwood game prejudice us.”
“Pshaw!” said Stevie.
Next to Loring and Dyer I doubt if anyone felt much worse about their
misfortune than did Dan. But it was Loring that he was especially sorry
for. He had grown to like the latter immensely. Loring had been kind
to him in a dozen ways, at a dozen times, and mainly when kindnesses
meant much. Doubtless Dan over-valued those kindnesses. True it is that
by this time his attitude toward Alfred Loring had become similar to
Gerald’s attitude toward him. It was a case of healthy hero-worship in
each instance. And of late Dan and Loring had been seeing a good deal
of each other and the friendship had been ripening on each side.
At first Dan hesitated to call on Loring, fearing that the latter might
resent intrusion. But a chance word on Tuesday settled that matter and
on Tuesday night Dan went over to Dudley and spent an hour with the
room-mates. Of course the blue paint episode was the main subject of
conversation, and between them they went over it time and again seeking
to discover some clue which might lead them to the identity of the real
culprit. But always they met with failure. Loring’s spirits were pretty
low, but Dyer’s were lower, and for a quite unselfish reason.
“I don’t care so much about myself,” he said, “for I’d only have got
into the game for a few minutes, maybe. But it makes me mad about Alf.
Why the dickens couldn’t it have been someone else, Vinton? Almost any
other fellow on the team would have been better! Why, thunder, I’d fess
up to doing the whole thing alone; only they wouldn’t believe me!”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” said Loring smilingly. “Especially as I’d
swear you were lying, Tom.”
“That’s so,” said Dan thoughtfully, “almost any other fellow on the
team would have been better.”
Somehow that remark of Tom Dyer’s stuck with him the rest of the
evening and recurred to him throughout the next day. That was
Wednesday, and the school was excited and impatient to learn what
action the Faculty would take. The meeting was held in Oxford A at
eight o’clock. At half-past nine Mr. Austin brought news of it to
Dudley Hall. The verdict stood. The Doctor had been implacable and a
majority of the Faculty had stood with him. The verdict had gone forth
that until the culprit had publicly erased the obnoxious letters from
the front of Dudley, Loring’s and Dyer’s probation was to continue.
The news spread fast and in a few minutes a hundred and more students
were assembled in the Yard making night hideous with their expressions
of disapproval. There were cheers for Mr. Collins, for Mr. Austin,
for Mr. Bendix and for Professor McIntyre, especially for Kilts, for
since the school had learned of his attempt to eradicate the paint and
save the culprits there had been a reversal of opinion regarding him.
Kilts was now on the topmost wave of popularity, but I don’t think he
ever knew it. Finally the school leaders and a few of the instructors
persuaded the fellows to abandon their meeting and return to their
rooms.
The final practice was held secretly on Thursday afternoon, and the
whole school marched cheering to Yardley Field and witnessed the ten
minutes of scrimmaging which terminated it. The songs were sung and
each member of the team was cheered to the echo. Payson was cheered,
and Andy Ryan, and Paddy Forbes. And then “nine long ones” were given
for the Second Team. And after that the First trotted back to the
gymnasium and the Second got together in the middle of the big, bare
field and, led by Ridge, cheered them heartily. And the last practice
was over and Yardley faced the final conflict.
The enthusiasm continued all that evening and all the next day
when fresh fuel was added to it by the deciding game in the class
championship series. This was between the First Class and the Second
and was played on the varsity gridiron and witnessed by every fellow
who could get to it. It was a good contest and First Class won by a
single score, 16 to 12. First Class celebrated mightily and all the
rest of the evening and far into the night sporadic cheers for “First,
First, First!” echoed on the frosty air.
Dan paid a visit to Payson that evening after supper. The coach was
in his room looking rather glumly at an evening paper which compared
the chances of Broadwood and Yardley in Saturday’s contest and which
awarded the game to Broadwood in advance. Payson was too experienced
to believe all that he read in the newspapers, but the writer’s views
chimed in with his own and he was much inclined to credit the paper
with the gift of prophecy. He appeared very glad to see Dan, as
doubtless he was. For a time they spoke of the double forward pass.
“It’s a good play, Vinton,” declared Payson almost cheerfully, “and
we’ll make it work. We’ve got you to thank for that. If we had Loring
I’d bet a carload of hats that we’d win. As it is--” He shrugged his
shoulders disconsolately--“we’re in for a licking of some sort. I
wouldn’t say this to everyone, but you’re a sensible chap, Vinton, and
will play as well if not better with defeat staring at you.”
“I’ll do the best I can, sir,” answered Dan rather listlessly. “How
about Williams, Mr. Payson? Won’t he be able to play?”
“Yes, he’s in good shape, again, and we may need him before we’re
through.”
“Don’t you think he can play end as well as I can, sir?”
Payson looked puzzled.
“What are you after, Vinton?” he asked. “Compliments?”
“No, sir, I was just wondering whether if I wasn’t on the team Williams
wouldn’t do just as well.”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked the coach anxiously.
“Nothing, sir. I’m feeling fine. I just wondered.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you. Williams is about as good an end as you
are to-day, but you’ll have him beat in another year if you keep on
improving as you have lately. He’s a little surer on tackling than you
are, and he stops his man better. But you handle forward passes in
better shape and seem to be quicker at sizing-up plays. There’s a fair
criticism, Vinton. How do you like it?”
“I guess you’ve let me off pretty easy, sir,” Dan replied with a smile.
“But I’m much obliged. If I couldn’t play, then, Williams would do just
as well, wouldn’t he?”
“Look here, Vinton,” said Payson with a frown, “you go and see Ryan and
do as he tells you; understand?”
“Oh, I’m all right, sir; honest!” Dan assured him. “I--I just sort of
wondered--” Payson smiled.
“You stop wondering and go to bed,” he said kindly.