Kitabı oku: «On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and Athletics», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIII
PETE WRITES HOME

“Of course,” said Allan, “we’re not terribly poor, but it’s going to make a good deal of difference to us.”

The new term was three days old and Allan and Pete were sitting in front of the stove in Pete’s study. The stove was a recent addition to the furnishings, and installed more in deference to his friends’ demands than from any desire of his own. Pete didn’t mind a little cold; just so long as he could find enough water under the ice in the pitcher to wash with, he was satisfied. But Allan and Hal and Tommy made disparaging remarks about his heating arrangements and ostentatiously kept their hats and coats on while visiting him, and so Pete bought a base-burner and a half ton of coal.

“What mine is it?” asked Pete.

“The Gold Beetle. Ever hear of it? It’s out in your State.”

“Is it at Rico?” asked Pete.

“Yes, that’s the place. Didn’t you say you were there last summer?”

“Yes, and I know – something about the mine.” Pete looked thoughtfully at the flames dancing behind the mica. “Fact is,” he continued, “the old man is interested in it.”

“Really? Then don’t you think it will be all right? He wouldn’t have anything to do with a poor mine, would he?”

“Well, the trouble is you can’t always tell whether a mine’s good or bad. The old man’s got stock in all kinds; some of it’s good, some of it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I’ve got a lot of that kind myself. I used to think I was something of an investor. Now, this Gold Beetle; what’s probably happened to that is that the pay ore has given out. It very often does. A mine’ll run thousands to the ton for two or three years, sometimes twenty, and then all of a sudden the lode will just naturally peter out. I guess that’s what’s happened to the Beetle. I remember pretty well how it lies. There are paying properties all around it, and maybe if they went on or opened up new drifts they’d come across fresh lodes; or maybe they wouldn’t; it’s just a gamble. I dare say the stockholders aren’t willing to put any money into it. How much stock do your folks hold?”

“I don’t know exactly. Pretty nearly half of it, I think.”

“Too bad! I’ll ask the old man, when I write, what he thinks about it.”

“I wish you would. Maybe if he owns some of it we could – could kind of get together and – and do something,” said Allan, vaguely but hopefully.

“Maybe,” answered Pete, thoughtfully. “Meanwhile – ”

“Meanwhile I’ve got to find some way of making a little money; enough to pay my board, at any rate. And that’s why I ought to leave the table, Pete, and go back to commons, where I can feed for less.”

“But we can’t let you do that. Now, look here; you don’t eat very much. What’s the sense in your paying as much as I do, who eat twice as much? That’s plumb foolish! I ought to pay at least eight dollars and you oughtn’t to pay a red cent over four; and that’s the way it’s going to be after this.”

“No, it isn’t,” Allan replied. “If I stay, I’ll pay my share, and that’s six dollars, Pete. I went over yesterday to see if I couldn’t get a place in Brown Hall as a waiter, but there aren’t any vacancies; they told me they had two applications for every place.”

“But you wouldn’t like to wait on table, would you?”

“It isn’t a question of liking. I’ve heard tell of lots of ways of earning money in college, but none of them seem very practical for my case.”

“Well, look here; you figure out how much money you’ll need for the rest of the year and let me know.”

Allan looked puzzled.

“What good would that do?”

“I’ll lend it to you. Now, shut up! I haven’t offered to give it to you, have I, you chump? You can pay me back any time you like; there isn’t a bit of a hurry. And I’ve got a whole lot of money in bank from last term. Somehow, it’s mighty hard to get rid of money up here. You needn’t say anything to any one about it; it’ll just be between you and me. That’s all right, ain’t it?”

“No, it isn’t all right, Pete, but it’s awfully good of you, and I won’t forget it in a hurry.”

And although Pete threatened and coaxed and called names, he was at last forced to abandon the proposition. And in the end it was Tommy who, learning of Allan’s quandary, made the suggestion which led to a measure of success.

“I knew a fellow at school who used to go around to the fellows’ rooms at night and sell sandwiches and wienerwursts and made good money,” said Tommy. “Wouldn’t care for that, though, I guess?”

Allan acknowledged that he wouldn’t.

“Then there was a fellow I heard of who was agent for a sporting-goods firm and sold on commission. He worked up quite a trade, but it took him a good while to do it. Then there was a fellow had a rental business: rented rooms and got a commission from the landladies; but he did most of his business in the fall. Then – ” Tommy paused, struck by a brilliant thought. “You might try for a place on the Purple,” he cried. “They elect new men in March. If you got a place, you’d make fair money from March on to the end of the year. That’s what I did last year, and I made enough to pay my board.”

“But I don’t know anything about reporting, Tommy,” Allan objected. “Besides, I’m not a hustler like you.”

Tommy looked disappointed. He thought for a minute in silence. Then —

“I tell you, Allan,” he said, “I’ll see Stearns. He’s track-team captain, you know. I’ll tell him that if you don’t find something to do, you won’t be able to stay here. And he won’t want to lose you, you can bet, because he’s set his heart on winning from Robinson this spring.”

“But I don’t know that that would be quite true,” Allan objected. “Because, even if I don’t find any work, maybe I’ll be able to hang on here somehow to the end of the year.”

“Well, I won’t lie to him,” said Tommy, “but I’ll fix him so he’ll find something; you see if I don’t.”

He lifted Two Spot off his lap and deposited her on the desk, where she subsided contentedly against a pile of books and purred on as though nothing had happened.

“Happy little bunch of fur, isn’t she?” asked Tommy. “If she’s too great an expense to you, I’ll take her off your hands.”

“Indeed, you’ll not!” answered Allan. “While there’s a loaf left in the house, she shall have the crust.”

“Scratch him, Kitty! Say, did Pete tell you he’d gone out for the freshman hockey team? Won’t he be a sight on the ice?”

“He says he can skate,” answered Allan. “All I know is, I don’t want to have the thingamabob – puck – when he’s bearing down on me.”

“Are you going to play?”

“No; I’d like to, but I guess I won’t have time. Besides, I don’t skate very well.”

“Skating isn’t everything in hockey,” said Tommy, wisely. “I can skate myself. I can make the ice look like a picture in a book or a map of China; but last year, when I went out for the freshman team, I was nearly slaughtered. Leroy butted me into the boards and somebody else cracked me over the shins with his stick and another chap tripped me up – accidentally, of course – and I slid thirty-one feet or thereabouts on my head. The hair didn’t grow back for a month. I quit. Life was too precious.”

“Wise youth!” commented Allan. “But we mustn’t miss seeing Pete play. Let’s go over to the rink to-morrow, if there is any ice.”

“All right. And I guess there’ll be ice; it’s cold enough now to freeze a door-knob. Going down to Pete’s this evening? I’ll see you there, then. So long. Good-by, Two Spot, my angel child!”

Tommy’s plan bore fruit. Allan had a visit from Walter Stearns next day, and two days later Allan was giving two hours out of each twenty-four to clerical work in the office of the Erskine College Athletic Association.

The work, which consisted chiefly of answering letters from Professor Nast’s dictation – Professor Nast was chairman of the Athletic Committee – was ridiculously easy, if somewhat uninteresting, and seemed out of all proportion to the remuneration, which was one dollar an hour. There were five working days in the week for Allan, and as a result he was earning ten dollars a week – twice as much as he had hoped for. And all the time he was disturbed by a haunting thought that, when all was said and done, he was not really earning the money. But it seemed absurd to find fault with his good fortune so long as his employers were satisfied, and so he offered no objections. Afterwards he marveled at his blindness.

About this time Pete wrote one of his semi-occasional letters to his father. He wasn’t much of a letter-writer, and the epistle as a whole would not interest us, but a portion of it merits attention.

“I remember (he wrote) that you said in New York you’d been down town to a meeting of the Gold Beetle stockholders, and that they had voted to stop work on the mine. I didn’t know then that Allan’s folks were interested in it. I guess they haven’t dismantled yet, and so it isn’t too late to change your mind. I guess you have enough stock in it to control it; if you haven’t, the Wares’ shares will give you the whip-hand. I want you to have them go ahead with the Gold Beetle and fuss round some. A couple of months’ work won’t break anybody. You can charge your share of it up to me. There must be pay ore somewhere on the property. Look at all the gold that’s coming out all around it. Allan’s folks need the money. It’s about all the income they have. If that stops, his sister will have to give up her college, and so will Allan. Allan’s my side partner, and I’m not going to have him lose what property he has without another try. Let me know right away about this.”

CHAPTER XIV
HOCKEY – WITH VARIATIONS

Allan, Tommy, and Hal stood at the side of the rink, up to their ankles in snow, and watched Pete play hockey. The rink was built at the far end of Erskine Field, and looked, from the locker house, like a brand-new cattle-pen.

This Saturday afternoon it was snowing in a half-hearted way, making the ice slushy and hiding the town from view. There were about fifty other fellows looking on, for the Midyears had begun, and anything to take the mind off examinations was welcome. The varsity team had traveled down the river to play Hastings High School, and the freshman team was making the most of its opportunities.

There were only twelve candidates present, and so the opposing teams each lacked a forward. But in spite of this the play was fast and furious, making up in enthusiasm what it lacked in science. Pete was playing cover-point on the first team, and thus far his performance had not lacked of applause. If some of the applause was unmistakably sarcastic, still it was applause.

Pete was a hard skater and very much at home on the ice, but there wasn’t much of grace about him. He hadn’t as yet learned the subtleties of stick-handling, but he usually managed to get the puck by the simple expedient of skating full-tilt against the opponent and knocking him down in a good-natured, inoffensive way. Allan, Tommy, and Hal felt, as they watched, that they were being fully rewarded for tramping out there through the snow.

“Let’s see you skate backward, Pete,” called Allan in a lull of the game. Pete grinned.

“Give us the grape-vine, Pete,” begged Tommy. Pete grinned again.

“How are you on the outer-edge, old man?” asked Hal. Pete continued to grin.

Then the puck came sliding down toward him, dribbled this way and that by the hockey of an opposing forward. Pete drew himself together, grasped his stick in both hands as though it was a bludgeon, and rushed toward the foe. Down went the foe, and the three admirers laughed joyfully. But Pete didn’t get the puck, for the vanquished one had succeeded in passing it across to another forward, exhibiting the first suggestion of team-play of the afternoon, so far as the second team was concerned, and Pete skated wildly in pursuit. The point went out to meet the attack, another clever pass was made, and then – Presto! goal was shaking his head and pulling the disk out from under the netting. The second had scored.

“Ah, that was great work, Pete!” cried Allan, admiringly.

“That was playing!” said Hal. “Oh, it was great!”

“Real science, I call it!” declared Tommy. “How’d you do it, Pete?”

“Don’t you mind their scoring, Pete,” said Allan, encouragingly. “You knocked your man down. Just you kill all you want to.”

Pete skated over and scattered them with his hockey.

“You wait till I get these skates off,” he threatened, “and I’ll roll you three little snipes in the snow!”

“Don’t waste your strength on us, Pete,” begged Tommy from a safe distance. “Slaughter the enemy. Don’t be discouraged; there’s only six left.”

“Eat ’em up, Pete!” cried Hal.

Pete shook his stick at them and turned away. As he skated back to his position a chorus of admiring “A-a-ahs!” followed him. When the second half was almost done the score was 5 to 6, in the first team’s favor, and the captain of the second, a big, round-faced chap who played center, called on his support for a goal.

“Play hard, fellows, and let’s tie this!” he commanded. “Play together now!”

Fortune seemed to be favoring them. They secured the rubber and swept with it down the rink. As usual, Pete put one man out of the play, but by the time he had recovered from the check the advance was past him and was threatening the goal. Both teams were mixed in wild confusion, and the puck was carroming about from goal to attack and from attack to defense. Then it was sped knee-high at the net, was luckily stopped by the goal, and shot out to the side right at Pete’s feet.

Pete started off with it, but was in such a hurry that he overskated, and had to fight for it. When he again secured possession the attack was thick about him. But he started off again, and the forwards of his side skated to their positions. Pete kept close to the boards, fooled the opposing cover-point by carroming the puck against them, and for an instant had a clear shot at goal. But shooting wasn’t Pete’s specialty, and so he charged on until, well past the center of the ice, the second team’s captain charged him fiercely from the side, hurling him against the boards and knocking his stick into the air.

Luckily, the puck struck the adversary’s skate and carromed back to the side, and Pete, thrusting his skate against it, held it there while the other pushed and shoved with his body and tried to work the puck loose with his stick. About them hovered friend and foe, awaiting the instant when the disk should slide out of the mêlée.

The second-team player fought like mad and at last, by a fierce shove, moved Pete’s foot. Pete, fearing loss of the precious prize, swung quickly around, bringing his adversary to the boards, and then, catching him with one hand at the knee, tipped him over the barrier into the soft snow.

Without waiting to see him safely landed, Pete rescued the puck from an interloping enemy and went straight down the rink with it, scorning friend and foe alike, and drove it furiously into goal. When he swung around and looked back, it seemed that a devastating gale had swept over the rink, for along his route first-team men and second-team men were picking themselves up from the ice. But what surprised him more was the appearance of the second’s captain, who, snow-covered, black of face and scowling, was swaggering up to him.

“What did you do that for?” he growled.

From the sides of the rink came shouts of laughter. Allan, Hal, and Tommy were hanging feebly over the barrier, beating the planks with their hands in gasping impotence.

“Do what?” asked Pete, plainly at a loss.

“Throw me over the boards,” answered the other, belligerently.

“Oh, that?” asked Pete. “Why, you were in my way, you see.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Burley,” said the first team’s captain. “But you needn’t try and scrap here on the ice,” he continued, turning to the other. “Play the game!”

“Look here,” said Pete, “wasn’t that all right? Mustn’t I do that?”

“Of course you can’t. You ought to know the rules. The puck goes back there again.” The first’s captain turned away impatiently.

“It’s on me, partner,” said Pete. “Sorry, and hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“All right,” muttered the other, as graciously as he could. The knowledge that he had served as a source of intense amusement prevented him from putting much cordiality into his tones. The puck was taken back to where Pete had transgressed the rules, and again faced off by him and the second’s captain. The latter got possession and the play went on, but to the onlookers it was very dull, and none cared when, after a minute or two, the game came to an end.

Allan, Hal, and Tommy, still very red of face and still grinning, awaited Pete and escorted him back to the college in triumph, Hal marching ahead and chanting an improvised pæan of praise until Pete seized him and rolled him over in the snow. Thereupon Hal retired to a safe distance and threw snowballs at Pete. He was not, however, a very good shot and, as a result, Tommy and Allan were hit more often than their companion. It ended with the three joining forces against the obnoxious Hal and chasing him all the way down Poplar Street.

When he reached Mrs. Purdy’s, in his retreat, he withdrew into Allan’s room, locked the door, and sent Two Spot, a white handkerchief tied around her neck, out by way of a window, to treat with the besiegers. The flag of truce was respected. Hal opened the window and agreed to surrender if allowed to march forth from the citadel with colors flying, and his terms were accepted. He retired from view and presently reappeared in Allan’s plaid dressing-gown, and holding aloft a Hillton flag. Silently and proudly he marched forth and twice paraded the piazza. Then the enemy, violating the rules of warfare, fell upon him as one man, and he was borne, struggling and kicking, back into the citadel and deposited on the couch.

Allan returned to the front yard and rescued his handkerchief, which was trailing in the snow as Two Spot chased an imaginary mouse around the bare and solitary rose-bush. Tommy had meanwhile poked the fire into a blaze, and victors and vanquished drew up to it, while Pete smoked the pipe of peace and the others ate sweet chocolate, which, as Tommy pointed out, represented the fruits of victory.

Two Spot sat on Pete’s broad knee and purred and blinked at the flames and occasionally stuck her claws tentatively through Pete’s trousers as a proof of her affection. And everybody felt very jolly and comfortable until the six-o’clock bell sent them to prepare for dinner.

CHAPTER XV
IN THE “CORRAL”

While the snow kept piling itself up and the Midyears were still racking fellows’ brains, the call came for candidates for the relay team to run against Robinson at the Boston indoor meeting. And simultaneously the outdoor track was shoveled free of snow and fellows whose ambitions pointed toward the winning of pewter mugs trotted out in the afternoons, when the mercury was down to zero, and sped around the track with their bare legs looking very pink and cold. Kernahan had induced Allan to enter for both the mile and the two mile, and the latter was one of the most indefatigable of those who daily risked death by freezing.

He was glad to be able to stretch his legs again, was Allan. He had begun to wonder whether the muscles hadn’t forgotten how to work. He had his first mile trial a week after the beginning of practise and a fortnight before the date of the meeting.

The result wasn’t especially satisfactory; 4:56 was not anywhere near record time for that track, while it was more than twenty seconds slower than what it must be to give him a chance at winning a place. But Kernahan seemed in nowise discouraged. Instead, he told Allan he had done well enough for a starter, and promised to give him a trial at the two miles a week later.

Meanwhile the relay candidates were tested and sifted, the candidates for the field events practised daily in the gymnasium, and athletic activity seized upon the college. The baseball cage resounded with the thump of the balls and the cries of the players, the rowing-room gave forth strange sounds of an afternoon, and the basket-ball team, undisputed lords of the gymnasium floor for two months, were hustled into a corner and given scant attention.

And yet, in spite of all these hints, Winter was strangely dense. Instead of folding up his blanket of snow and taking himself off, he showed no sign of contemplated departure, but on the contrary tightened his icy grip on the world, and almost every day sent a new snow-storm to emphasize the fact that he still reigned.

Afternoon practise on the track took place in every sort of weather. Sometimes it snowed so hard that the runners, as they swept around the far end of the track, were only indistinct blurs in the white mist. Sometimes the track was sheeted with a rough skim of ice, through which the men’s spikes broke imperfectly, and on such days the spills were numerous and the turns were things to be carefully negotiated. Sometimes the sun shone and the wind blew, straight and cold, out of the northeast; and such times were best, deluding one for a while, as they did, into thinking that winter’s sway was drawing to its end. But they were deceitful moments, and one could fancy old Winter shaking his lean sides with laughter as he drew the clouds together again and emptied a new shower of flakes upon the bleak world.

But matters progressed. The relay team of six runners was formed, the sprinters and distance men worked themselves into condition, and the hurdlers, jumpers, vaulters, and weight men limbered up their muscles.

A week before the meeting Allan was given a speed trial for the two miles. The track was in fairly good condition, and Rindgely and Thatcher made the pace. With Allan was another two-mile candidate, named Conroy. Allan took the lead at the start and held it for the first half mile. Rindgely went in then and made the pace for the next three-quarters, and then gave place to Thatcher, a half-miler. Conroy was a lap behind at the half distance, and at the finish was entirely out of it. Allan found his sprinting ability sorely tried in the last two laps when Thatcher let himself out and Allan tried to keep up with him. But he finished fairly strong, and Kernahan slipped his watch into his pocket with a nod of approval.

“Ten, one and an eighth,” he said.

But that seemed slow time to Allan, who had entertained visions of doing the distance in something like 9:50, and he said so to Billy.

“Well, that’s good enough to give you a chance of a place,” he answered. “You’ve got three months yet before the dual meet, and Robinson’s best two-miler could only do – 9:46, I think it was. You’ll get some experience at the Boston meet, if you don’t bring home a mug, and experience is what you need. You’ll have to get into your pace sooner down there or you’ll get crowded off the track. You try half a dozen starts Monday and try getting your pace in the first six or eight strides. You’d better run along now, and don’t be scarey of the cold water, my boy.”

During that next week the class hockey championship was decided. The freshmen won handily from the sophomores by the score of seven goals to three in the first of the contests, and to Pete went the credit for four of the seven goals. He played magnificently.

To be sure, as has been said already, he knew little of the science of the game, but what he lacked there he made up in vigor and enthusiasm. Thrice he was put off the ice for short periods, but this only caused him to work harder when he was allowed to re-enter the game. In the second half – the first period having ended with the score three to four in favor of ’07 – he was played up into the forward line, and when he secured the puck and once got away with it, it was his until he had shot at the sophomores’ goal. If Pete had been able to shoot as well as he skated and dodged the enemy, the score would have been overwhelming.

But Pete’s Waterloo came when the deciding game was contested with ’04. Pete’s playing was just as hard and fast as before, but the seniors had two or three players who, in the language of Tommy, “made rings around him.” Every time Pete tried one of his sensational rushes, some one or other of the discourteous enemy, carefully avoiding his body, stole the puck from under his nose. Pete endured it for a while untroubled, then he began to break hockeys. But the supply seemed unlimited, and the remedy wasn’t successful. Defeat fell to ’07’s share.

They tried to tease Pete on the afternoon’s performance that evening, but Pete was invulnerable to gibes. The four had congregated in the “corral” and were hugging the stove closely, Pete sitting astride the stock saddle which, for want of a chair, he had lugged from its corner.

“Must have cost you something for sticks,” Tommy suggested.

“Must have cost the other fellows something,” laughed Hal. “I saw Rindgely lose three. You were a destructive chap, Pete.”

“Rindgely was plumb crazy,” answered Pete, with a broad smile. “Every time he got a new stick, I bust it for him. I don’t just know whether that’s good hockey, but I know it worked mighty well. But Rindgely’s got it in for me, all right.”

“He seems to have it in for me too,” said Allan, thoughtfully. “The other day he didn’t want to make pace for me when I tried the two miles, and acted nasty as you like afterward in the locker house.”

“He’s a queer customer,” said Tommy. “A pretty good fellow to keep away from. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with him, you know, but he’s awfully uncertain. You never can tell how he’s going to take a thing. Just after recess I met him one day, and asked him if he’d taken in the St. Thomas Club Indoor Meet – he lives in Brooklyn, you know – and he nearly took my head off; said he wasn’t home Christmas, and implied that it was none of my business. I told him I didn’t care a rap where he was.”

“That’s right, Tommy; don’t you let them monkey with you,” laughed Allan.

“Well, what did he want to jump on me for?” asked Tommy, warmly. “I didn’t care whether he went to the old meet or not; I just wanted to be polite. The reason I mentioned the meet was that he’d told about going the year before while he was at home, and I just happened to remember seeing something about it before Christmas. It’s an open meeting, you know, and they have a big card – weights, team races, boxing, and all sorts of stunts.”

“What is he, a miler?” asked Hal.

Tommy nodded.

“Guess that explains his cutting up with you, Allan; you beat him in the fall, didn’t you?”

“Yes, with a good big handicap.”

“Well, he’s afraid you’re going to cut him out of a place in the dual meet.”

“There’s no good reason why he should think so. He can beat me, I’m pretty sure. Besides, if Billy Kernahan has his way, I’ll be down only for the two miles at the dual.”

“We’re going to have a dandy article on the indoor meeting this week,” said Tommy.

“Wrote it yourself, eh?” suggested Hal.

“I suppose it will be like last year’s, though,” Tommy continued, ruefully. “We had two columns, with everything figured out finely: who was going to do what, and which fellows would win places. And then it came out all wrong.”

“Say, Thomas,” said Pete, when the laughter had subsided, “I don’t want to hurry you, but I’m getting the powerful hungers.”

“Yes, Tommy, how about that dinner at the Elm Tree?” chimed in Hal.

“He’s making money to pay for it,” said Allan.

“No, I’m not,” answered Tommy, sadly. “That’s the trouble. You’ll have to wait a bit, Pete; I’m dead broke, honest Injun!”

“All right; just so long as I get that feed. Better not put it off too long, though; I’m nicely conditioned, you know, since the Midyears, and there’s no telling what may happen to me.”

“That’s so,” Allan said. “A fellow that’s been drowned, suspended, and put on probation, all in two short months, is a pretty slippery customer.”

“Say, Allan,” said Tommy, reminiscently, “do you remember the night we waited up here for that duffer to come home?”

“The night he was drowned?” asked Allan. “Never’ll forget it. The way the wind howled and cut up was a caution; made me think of graveyards and – and corpses.”

“Me, too,” said Tommy. “I went back to the room and dreamed of Pete floating in my bath-tub, with his old smelly pipe in his mouth and his face all white and horrid. Every time he puffed on the pipe he winked his eye at me, and I woke up yelling like a good one.” Tommy arose from his seat and stood gazing into the flames. “It was a beast of a dream.”

“Must have been,” Hal responded, sympathetically. Pete puffed silently at the afore-mentioned pipe and grinned heartlessly. Tommy glanced over at him and commenced an aimless ramble about the room.

“I said then,” he went on, “that if Pete – Say, it’s getting beastly hot in here. Let’s have the door open.”

In spite of the protests, he opened the portal into the narrow hallway, and continued his rambling and his talk.

“I made up my mind then that if Pete wasn’t drowned, that if I ever saw his dear, foolish, homely face again, I’d – I’d – ”

“Be a better man,” Hal suggested.

“Learn to write English,” offered Allan.

“Pay your debts,” muttered Pete over his pipe-stem.

“I’d take a fall out of him!” concluded Tommy, savagely. At the same instant he put a hand under Pete’s chin, tipped him heels over head backward onto the floor, smothered his outcries by banging the saddle down over his face, punched him twice in the ribs – and flew! His forethought in opening the door saved him. As he dived through he slammed it behind him in Pete’s face, and the others heard four wild leaps on the staircase. Then all was still save for Pete’s chuckles. But stay! What sound was that from beneath the window; what doleful wailings broke upon the night air? They hearkened.

“Cowardy, cowardy, cowardy cat!” shrilled Tommy. “Dare you to come down, Pete Burley!”

Pete threw up a front window. There was a sound of hasty footfalls and an exclamation as Tommy collided with an ash-barrel. Then from far up the street came a last defiant challenge: “O Fresh!”