THE COASTING RACE
Astonishment, surprise, chagrin and anger are some of the words that
might be used to describe the feelings of Ned, Bob and Jerry as they
looked at the accusing card.
“Who put it there?”
“How did they find it out?”
“Somebody must have seen us!”
Thus spoke the three.
The card was typewritten, so there was no ready clue to its author.
“Which of the fellows have typewriting machines?” asked Ned.
“Oh, a dozen. You can’t tell that way,” answered Bob.
“I’m going to make a try,” declared Ned, vindictively. “I’ve heard that
each typewriting machine has some peculiarity, and I may be able to
trace this one.
“If I do find out the sneak who gave us away what I won’t do to him
won’t be worth doing,” Ned went on. “The idea of spoiling a perfectly
good joke this way! It’s a shame, and I’ll wager a lot it was that
Frank Watson!”
“There you go again!” cried Jerry. “Jumping at conclusions.”
“I’ll jump on his head if I get a chance,” muttered Ned.
Then they lowered the picture and carried it back to the chapel, amid
the grins of their companions and the stern looks of the members of
faculty. Such a sacrilege had rarely, if ever before, been committed.
Each professor seemed grave and angry, save Professor Snodgrass, and
he looked at the boys with sympathy. He would have helped them if he
could, but it was beyond his power.
“You may set the portrait down against the wall where it belongs,”
announced Dr. Cole. “I will have the janitor hang it later.”
In the prayer that followed, Dr. Cole made reference to the “misguided
and rash spirit of youth,” from which he asked that all might be
delivered.
“He means us!” whispered Bob.
“Shut up!” retorted Ned, fiercely. “Don’t I know it!”
It is feared that our heroes--shall I call them that now, I
wonder?--did not fully enter into the devotional spirit that morning.
Nor, for that matter, did many of the others.
When the chapel exercises were over, Dr. Cole again arose.
“Hopkins, Slade and Baker will be excused from classes to-day,” the
president announced, “and they will report at my office in half an
hour.”
He gave the signal of dismissal.
“Say, you fellows sure have nerve all right!” exclaimed George Fitch,
as a group of students gathered about Ned, Bob and Jerry when they came
out of chapel.
“That’s what!” added Tom Bacon.
“But why you wanted to give yourselves away is more than I can figure
out,” came from Harry French.
“Getting the picture was sure some nifty little stunt,” commented Chet
Randell, “but sticking that card on was only inviting trouble. Did you
think they wouldn’t believe it?”
“Say, when you fellows get through talking, I’ll have something to
say!” Ned broke in, rather sarcastically. “We did get the picture, I
may as well admit that, for I suppose we gave ourselves away in chapel
when Proxy made the crack. But we weren’t foolish enough to go and
advertise the fact. Some fellow squealed on us, just as some one did at
the time of our feed. And when I find out who it was I’m going to make
it so hot for him he’ll leave college.”
Frank Watson was passing at the time, but neither by look nor word did
he show that he was concerned, though Ned had gazed in his direction,
and had made his voice purposely loud.
“Do you mean him?” asked Newt Ackerson, nodding toward Frank.
“I’m not saying all I mean,” retorted Ned.
“No, you’d better not,” cautioned Jerry. “Never mind, we’ve got to take
our medicine.”
“More leave-stopping, I suppose,” groaned Bob.
“If you’re not suspended, you’ll be getting off lucky,” commented Ted
Newton.
While the other students hurried, more or less willingly, to their
different lectures and classrooms, Ned, Bob and Jerry strolled over
toward the office of the president.
They were admitted by Dr. Cole’s secretary, a young man studying for
the ministry, who ushered them into the office, and gave them chairs.
The three chums did not feel much like talking, so they sat in glum
silence, waiting for Dr. Cole to come in. They were beginning to think
their offence was graver than they had imagined it. Suspension had not
occurred to them. But, on the other hand, they had not figured on being
found out. Something was wrong.
“Frank might have heard us talking about it from his room,” said Ned in
a low voice. “His transom is right opposite yours, Jerry, and voices
carry easily in that corridor, I’ve noticed. It’s a regular sound-box.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Jerry said. “We’re found out, that’s
sure.”
“And I’ll find out who squealed,” declared Ned, taking the card out of
his pocket to gaze at it. Then Dr. Cole came in, and Ned quickly put
away the bit of evidence.
“Young gentlemen, before I say what I intend to, I wish to be perfectly
fair and just to you,” began the president. “Did you, or did you not
put the picture on the flagpole. Answer me on your honor as gentlemen
and students at Boxwood Hall.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Jerry spoke in a low voice.
“We did it, Dr. Cole,” he said.
“So I was informed.”
Ned just ached to ask who had been the informant, but he knew he did
not dare.
Dr. Cole seemed to be thinking deeply, and then he began to speak.
He gave the boys a straight-from-the-shoulder talk--a good, manly
lecture, in which he explained to them why he regarded their offense
seriously. They might have played other pranks that would not have
had such a possible effect as the irreparable damage of the founder’s
picture. If that had been torn it would have been a grave loss.
And from that Dr. Cole went into a general exposition of boyish pranks
in general. It was a talk along the same lines as had been given to the
boys by their parents before they were sent to Boxwood Hall. They were
reminded that they were now growing up, and should give some evidences
of it.
Ned, Bob and Jerry, rather angry at first that they had been caught,
and filled with perhaps righteous indignation against the informer,
began to see matters in a different light. They were rather ashamed of
themselves, and Jerry frankly admitted that the entire idea was his,
and that he had persuaded Bob and Ned to join him. In view of that fact
he asked that he alone be punished.
“No,” said Dr. Cole. “I can’t do that. But I will make yours the
heaviest, for I think you deserve it. You are older than your chums,
not much it is true, but a little, and they look to you as to a natural
leader. You should lead them along different lines.”
And then came the punishment. It was heavy, but justly so. There was
to be a period of confinement to the college grounds, longest in the
case of Jerry, and there was also prohibition to take part in any games
or amusements, or to attend their fraternity meetings for a certain
period.
“Whew!” exclaimed Ned as they emerged from the president’s office,
“that was bitter medicine all right.”
“Well, I guess we deserve it,” observed Jerry.
“But we _did_ stir things up,” Bob said, with a smile.
“Yes, we stirred up a hornet’s nest,” remarked Ned. “And I’d like to
get it around the ears of the fellow who told--Frank it was, to my way
of thinking.”
“You’ll have your own troubles proving it,” remarked Jerry.
The three chums spent a miserable time when they were on probation, so
to speak, unable to join in the fun the others had. And though the time
of Bob and Ned was up before that of Jerry, the two refused to accept
their restored privileges, and stuck to their chum, not going anywhere
he could not go.
Perhaps it was this that led Dr. Cole to shorten Jerry’s term of
punishment, for on the night following a big snow storm, when half the
college was out on the hill on big bobsleds, coasting, word was sent to
Jerry that he was given back his full privileges.
Just outside the college grounds was a long hill, most excellent for
coasting, and it was the custom at Boxwood Hall to have impromptu
bobsled races for class and school championships. Ned, Bob and Jerry
had bought a big bobsled from a former student, and they had done some
coasting earlier in the season.
“But this is the best yet!” cried Ned. “The hill is in prime shape.
We’ll get up a race.”
Laughing, shouting, calling to one another, the three chums, now
restored to full rights of collegeship, hastened out with their
companions to the coasting place.
It was a bright moonlight night, and many of the boys and girls from
Fordham were on the hill.
“Get up a party and we’ll see if we can’t have a race,” suggested Jerry
to his chums.
Getting up a party for the fine, big bobsled was easy. There were soon
more than enough to fill it. As the three chums were getting the sled
to the top of the hill ready for a start, Frank Watson came along
dragging his bobsled, which was slightly larger than that Jerry was
going to steer. Frank had his party made up, in it being Bart Haley and
Bill Hamilton.
“Want a race, Jerry?” asked Bart, good-naturedly.
Without thinking, for the minute, of the feeling against Frank, Jerry
answered:
“Yes!”
“Come on then!” cried Bart. “The losers buy the hot chocolates!”
Frank nodded his assent.