II

There was just time to dump his trunk into the baggage-car, and bundle

him and his bundles on to the platform, before the train steamed away;

and the eleven Lakerimmers were so busy waving farewell to the waving

and farewelling crowd at the station that it was some minutes before

they could find time to learn how Sawed-Off came to be among them.

When he explained that he had made arrangements to work his way

through the Academy, they took no thought for the hard struggle in

front of him, they were so glad to have him along. Jumbo and he sat

with their arms around each other all the way to Kingston, their

hearts too full for anything but an occasional "Hooray!"

The journey to Kingston brought no adventures with it--except that

History, of course, had lost his spectacles and his ticket, and had to

borrow money of Pretty to keep from being put off the train, and that

when they reached Kingston they came near forgetting Sleepy entirely,

for he had curled up in a seat, and was reeling off slumber at a

faster rate than the train reeled off miles.

The first few days at Kingston were so busily filled with entrance

examinations and selection of rooms and the harder selection of

room-mates and other furniture that the Dozen saw little of each

other, except as they crunched by along the gravel walks of the campus

or met for a hasty meal in the dining-hall. This dining-hall, by the

way, was managed by an estimable widow named Mrs. Slaughter, and of

course the boys called it the "Slaughter-house," a name not so far

from the truth, when one considers the way large, tough roasts of beef

and tons of soggy corned beef were massacred by the students.

It might be a good idea to insert here a little snap shot of Kingston

Academy. The town itself was a moth-eaten old village that claimed

a thousand inhabitants, but could never have mustered that number

without counting in all the sleepy horses, mules, cows, and pet dogs

that roamed the streets like the rest of the inhabitants. The chief

industry of the people of Kingston seemed to be that of selling

school-books, mince-pies, and other necessaries of life to the boys at

the Academy. The grown young men of the town spent their lives trying

to get away to some other cities. The younger youth of the town spent

their lives trying to interfere with the pleasures of the Kingston

academicians. So there were many of the old-time "town-and-gown"

squabbles; and it was well for the health of the Kingston Academy boys

that they rarely went around town except in groups of two or three;

and it was very bad for the health of any of the town fellows if they

happened to be caught within the Academy grounds.

The result of being situated in a half-dead village, which was neither

loved nor loving, did not make life at the Academy tame, but quite the

opposite; for the boys were forced to find their whole entertainment

in the Academy life, and in one another, and the campus was therefore

a little republic in itself--a Utopia. Like every other republic, it

had its cliques and its struggles, its victories and its defeats, its

friendships and its enmities, and everything else that makes life

lively and lifelike.

The campus was beautiful enough and large enough to accommodate its

citizens handsomely. Its trees were many and tall, venerable old

monarchs with foliage like tents for shade and comfort to any little

groups that cared to lounge upon the mossy divans beneath. The grounds

were spacious enough to furnish not only football and baseball fields

and tennis-courts, but meadows where wild flowers grew in the spring,

and a little lake where the ice grew in the winter. Miles away--just

enough to make a good "Sabbath day's journey"--was a wonderful region

called the "Ledges," where glaciers had once resided, and left huge

boulders, scratched and scarred. As Jumbo put it, it seemed, from

the chasms and caves and curious distortions of stone and soil, that

"nature must have once had a fit there.".

Most of the buildings of the Academy looked nearly old enough to have

been also deposited there by the primeval glaciers, but they were huge

and comfortable, and so many colonies of boys had romped and ruminated

there, and so much laughter and so much lore had soaked into the old

walls, that they were pleasanter than any newer and more gorgeous

architecture could possibly be. They were homely in the better as well

as the worse sense.

But this is more than enough description, and you must imagine for

yourselves how the Lakerim eleven, often as they thought of home, and

homesick as they were in spite of themselves now and then, rejoiced

in being thrown on their own resources, and made somewhat independent

citizens in a little country of their own. Unwilling to make

selections among themselves, more unwilling to select room-mates from

the other students (the "foreigners," as the Lakerimmers called them),

they drew lots for one another, and the lots decided that they should

room together thus: Tug and Punk were on the ground floor of the

building known as South College, in room No. 2; in the room just over

them were Quiz and Pretty; and on the same floor, at the back of

the building, were Bobbles and Reddy (Reddy insisted upon this room

because it had a third bedroom off its study-room; while, of course,

he never expected to see Heady there, and didn't much care, of course,

whether he came or not, still, a fellow never can tell, you know); on

the same floor were B.J. and Jumbo. Jumbo did not stoop to flatter

B.J. by pretending that he would not have preferred Sawed-Off for

his room-mate; but Sawed-Off was working his way through, and the

principal of the Academy had offered to help him out, not only with a

free scholarship, but with a free room, as well, in Middle College, an

old building which had the gymnasium on the first floor, the chapel on

the second, and in the loft a single store-room fixed up as a bedroom.

The lots the fellows drew seemed to be in a joking mood when they

selected History and Sleepy for room-mates--the hardest student and

the softest, not only of the Dozen, but of the whole Academy. Sleepy

had been too lazy to pay much heed when the diplomatic History had

suggested their choosing room No. 13 for theirs, and he assented

languidly. History had said that it was the brightest and sunniest

room in the building, and if there was one thing that Sleepy loved

almost better than baseball, it was a good snooze in the sun after he

had worked hard stowing away any of the three meals. His heart was

broken, however, when he learned that the room chosen by the wily

History was on the top floor, with three long flights to climb. After

that you could never convince him that thirteen was not an unlucky

number.

The Lakerimmers had thus managed quietly to ensconce themselves, all

except Sawed-Off, in one building; and it was just as well, perhaps,

that they did so establish themselves in a stronghold of their own,

for they clung together so steadfastly that there was soon a deal of

jealousy among the other students toward them, and all the factions

combined together to try to keep the Lakerimmers from cabbaging any of

the good things of academy life.

There was a craze of skylarking the first few weeks after the school

opened. Almost every day one of the Lakerimmers would come back from

his classes to find his room "stacked"--a word that exactly expresses

its meaning. There is something particularly discouraging in going to

your room late in the evening, your mind made up to a comfortable hour

of reading on a divan covered with cushions made by your best girls,

only to find the divan placed in the middle of the bed, with a bureau

and a bookcase stuck on top of it, a few chairs and a pet bulldog tied

in the middle of the mix-up, and a mirror and a well-filled bowl of

water so fixed on the top of the heap that it is well-nigh impossible

to move any one of the articles without cracking the looking-glass or

dousing yourself with the water. The Lakerimmers tried retaliation for

a time; but the pleasure of stacking another man's room was not half

so great as the misery of unstacking one's own room, and they finally

decided to keep two or three of the men always on guard in the

building.

There was a rage for hazing, too, the first few weeks; and as the

Lakerimmers were all new men in the Academy, they were considered

particularly good candidates for various degrees of torment. Hazing

was strictly against the rules of the Academy, but the teachers could

not be everywhere at once, and had something to do besides prowl

around the dark corners of the campus at all hours of the night. Some

of the men furiously resisted the efforts to haze them; but when they

once learned that their efforts were vain, and had perforce to submit,

none of them were mean enough to peach on their tormentors after the

damage was done. The Lakerimmers, however, decided to resist force

with force, and stuck by each other so closely, and barricaded their

doors so firmly at night, when they must necessarily separate,

that time went on without any of them being subjected to any other

indignities than the guying of the other Kingstonians.

Sawed-Off had so much and such hard work to do after school hours

that the whole Academy respected him too much to attempt to haze him,

though he roomed alone in the old Middle College. Besides, his size

was such that nobody cared to be the first one to lay hand on him.

* * * * *

There was just one blot on the happiness of the Dozen at Kingston.

Tug and Punk and Jumbo had started the whole migration from Lakerim

because they had been invited by the Kingston Athletic Association to

join forces with the Academy. The magnificent game of football these

three men had played in the last two years had been the cause of this

invitation, and they had come with glowing dreams of new worlds to

conquer. What was their pain and disgust to find that the captain of

the Kingston team, elected before they came, had decided that he had

good cause for jealousy of Tug, and had decided that, since Tug would

probably win all his old laurels away from him if he once admitted him

to the eleven, the only way to retain those laurels was to keep Tug

off the team. When the Lakerim three, therefore, appeared on the field

as candidates for the eleven, they were assigned to the second or

scrub team. (The first team was generally called the "varsity," though

of course it only represented an academy.)

The Lakerim three, though disappointed at first, determined to show

their respect for discipline, and to earn their way; so they submitted

meekly, and played the best game they could on the scrub. When the

varsity captain, Clayton by name, criticized their playing in a

way that was brutal,--not because it was frank, but because it was

unjust,--they swallowed the poison as quietly as they could, and went

back into the game determined not to repeat the slip that had brought

upon them such a deluge of abuse.

It soon became evident, however, from the way Clayton neglected the

mistakes of the pets of his own eleven, and his constant and petty

fault-finding with the three Lakerimmers, that he was determined to

keep them from the varsity, even if he had to keep second-rate players

on the team, and even if he imperiled the Academy's chances against

rival elevens.

When this unpleasant truth had finally soaked into their minds, the

Lakerimmers grew very solemn; and one evening, when the whole eleven

happened to be in room No. 2, and when the hosts, Tug and Punk, were

particularly sore from the outrageous language used against them

in the practice of the afternoon, Punk, who was rather easily

discouraged, spoke up:

"I guess the only thing for us to do, fellows, is to pack up our duds

and go back home. There's no chance for us here."

Tug, who was feeling rather muggy, only growled:

"Not on your life! I had rather be a yellow dog than a quitter."

Then he relapsed into a silence that reminded History of Achilles in

his tent, though he was ungently told to keep still when he tried to

suggest the similarity. Reddy was fairly sizzling with rage at the

Clayton faction, and sang out:

"I move that we go round and throw a few rocks through Clayton's

windows, and then if he says anything, punch his head for him."

This idea seemed to please the majority of the men, and they were

instantly on their feet and rushing out of the door to execute their

vengeance on the tyrant, when Tug thundered out for them to come back.

"I've got a better idea," he said, "and one that will do us more

credit. I'll tell you what I am going to do: I am going to take this

matter into my own hands, and drill that scrub team myself, and see

if we can't teach the varsity a thing or two. I believe that, with

a little practice and a little good sense, we can shove 'em off the

earth."

This struck the fellows as the proper and the Lakerim method of doing

things, and they responded with a cheer.