ON THE GRILL
"Well, what's up?" asked Sid as Tom came in. "You're going the pace,
aren't you, old man?" and he looked anxiously at his chum, whose face
was flushed from the experience through which he had just gone.
"I got in late," admitted Tom.
"Get caught?" asked Sid, as if that was all that mattered.
"Yep, but that's not the worst of it."
"What? You don't mean to say you've been caught? Well, of all things.
You, one of the 'grinds,' falling a victim."
"It wasn't altogether my fault."
"How's that?"
Tom considered for a moment. Would it be violating the ethical honor of
a college boy if he told his chum? Would it be contrary to the spirit of
Randall? Tom thought not, merely to let Sid know what had happened. For
it would go no further, and, as a matter of fact, several students had
seen Tom and Langridge leave town together. Besides, Tom wanted advice.
So he told his chum everything from the time of meeting with the sporty
students until the sensational retreat of Langridge to his room.
"Now, what would you do?" asked Tom. "Keep still and take what's coming
or tell the proctor and use that as an excuse for coming in late? It
really wasn't my fault."
Sid scratched his head. It was a new problem for him. He saw the point
Tom made, that by informing on a fellow student, Tom would be held
blameless, as indeed he had a right to be. Why should Tom suffer for
another's fault? That came plainly to Sid. Yet he only hesitated a
moment before answering.
"Of course you can't squeal," he said simply.
"That's what I thought," agreed Tom, as if that was all there was to it.
"I'll have to take what's coming, I s'pose."
"Maybe proc. won't be hard on you. You've got a good record."
"Fairly. Anyhow, I hope he doesn't cut me out from baseball. Well, I'm
going to bed. I wonder if they'll find out about Langridge? If the
watchman thought to make a tour of the rooms, he'd discover that he just
got in."
"He'll not do that. Too many of 'em. Besides, trust Langridge for
knowing how to take care of himself. He's getting reckless, though."
"Of course you won't say anything to any of the fellows about him
playing cards and smoking," went on Tom, but he did not mention the
drinking episode, though probably Sid guessed.
"Of course not," came the prompt answer, "but it's not fair to the rest
of the team. However, I'm not going to make a holler. Hope you come out
of it all right. By-by."
"Um," grunted Tom, for he was rubbing some of the liniment on his arm
and the pungent fumes made him keep his eyes and mouth shut.
Sid tumbled into bed, leaving Tom to put out the light, and there was no
further talk. Tom undressed slowly. He was in no mood for sleep, for he
was much upset over the incident of the night, and he was not a little
anxious about the next day and his prospective visit to the proctor. For
the first time that he noticed it, the ticking of the alarm clock
annoyed him, the fussy, quick strokes making him say over and over again
the words of a silly little rhyme as one sometimes, riding in a railroad
train, fits to the click of the wheels over the rail joints some bit of
doggerel that will not be ousted.
"I must be getting nervous," thought Tom. "Wonder if I'm over-training?"
This idea gave him such an alarm that it served to change the current
of his thoughts, and before he knew it he had fallen asleep over a
half-formed resolution to undertake a different sort of gymnasium
exercise for a few days.
Tom's first visit the next morning after chapel was, as the rules
required in such cases, to Proctor Zane.
"Well?" inquired that functionary in no pleasant voice as Tom stood
before him, for there had been some skylarking in the college the
previous night and the proctor had been unable to catch the offenders.
"What is it now, Parsons?"
He spoke as though Tom was an habitual offender when, as a matter of
fact, though the lad had taken his part in pranks, it was only the
second time he had been "on the grill," as the process was termed.
"I got in after hours last night, sir," reported Tom quietly, though he
resented the man's manner.
"Ha! So I was informed by the watchman." He looked at Tom
antagonistically. "Well," he snapped, "why don't you continue? There's
more, isn't there?"
"Not that I know of," replied Tom calmly. "I had permission to go to
town, but I got in late, that's all."
"Oh, is it? What about the student who was with you? Wasn't there some
one with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"And didn't he engage in a fight with the watchman, and, taking
advantage of a mean trick, sneak to his room? Didn't he, I ask you?"
"I presume the watchman has correctly informed you of what happened."
Tom's voice was coldly indifferent now, and the proctor recognized that
fact.
"He did," he snapped. "And you know of it, too. I expected you to tell
me that."
"Since when has it been a college rule," asked Tom, "to confess to the
doings of another student? I thought that all that was required of me
was to report my own infraction of the rules."
Tom knew that he was right and that the proctor had no authority to ask
him concerning the doings of Langridge, and the proctor knew that he
himself was in the wrong, which knowledge, shared as it was by a student,
did not add to his good temper.
"Then you refuse to say who was with you?" he snapped, his eyes fixed on
Tom's face.
"I certainly refuse to inform on a fellow student, Mr. Zane," was Tom's
answer, "and I don't think you have any right to ask me to do so."
If he had stopped with his first half of the reply all might have been
well, for certainly the proctor did not expect Tom or any other student
to be a tale-bearer, though he always asked them to speak in order to
make more easy his own task. But to be practically defied, and by a
freshman, was too much for the official, who had a certain dignity of
which he was proud.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "you are impertinent, Parsons."
"I didn't so intend, sir."
"Ha! I don't have to be informed of my rights by you. I know them. You
will write me out two hundred lines of Virgil by to-morrow afternoon and
you will stand suspended for two weeks, with absolutely no privileges
regarding athletics or going away from college!"
It was a hard sentence under any circumstances. It was an unjust one in
Tom's case, and he knew it. Yet what could he do?
"Very well, sir," he replied, trying to overcome a certain trembling
feeling in his throat, and he turned to go.
"If," went on the proctor in a slightly more conciliatory voice, "you
think better of your resolution and let me know the name of the student
who so outrageously assaulted the watchman, I may find it possible to
mitigate your punishment. Mind, I am not asking you to inform me in an
ordinary case of breaking the rules, but for an extraordinary infraction.
The watchman has a badly injured leg. So, if you wish to inform me later,
I will be glad to hear from you."
"I shall not change my mind," said Tom simply.
"Nor I mine," added the proctor, jerking out the words quickly.
Tom turned on his heel and left the room.