Part 29

"He ought to be lynched!"

"The booby!"

"Wait till to-morrow!"

Tough McCarty reappeared for a brief second.

"I'll get you yet," he said, pointing a finger at the embattled Stover. "You're a muff, a low-down muff, in every sense of the word!"

Then succeeded the Coffee-colored Angel:

"Wait till I catch you, you Rinky Dink!"

Followed the White Mountain Canary:

"You'll reckon with me for this!"

Down to Beekstein Hall, with his black-rimmed spectacles, each member of the outraged nine climbed to the transom and expressed his unflattering opinion.

Stover sat down, his chin in his hands, his eyes on the great, lumbering mitt that lay dishonored on the floor.

"I'm disgraced," he said slowly, "disgraced. It's all over--all over. I'm queered--queered forever!"

VII

Until dusk, like Gilliatt in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, waiting for the tide to swallow him up, Stover sat motionless, brooding. There was only one thing to do--to run away. His whole career had been ruined in a twinkling. He knew. There could be no future for him in the school. What he had done was so awful that it could never be forgiven or forgotten. Why had he run? If only he had made a quick dive at the ball as it had trickled off the glove and caught it before it reached the ground, instead of standing there, horrified, hypnotized. Yes, he would escape, run off to sea somewhere--anywhere! But he wouldn't go home; no, never that! He would ship around the Horn, like the hero in that dreadful book, Two Years Before the Mast. He would run away that night, before the story spread over the whole school. He would never face them. He hated the school, he hated the Green, he hated every one connected with it!

A tap came on the door, and the voice of Butsey White said coldly:

"Open up! Fuzzy-Wuzzy's in the House; you're safe. Open up. I've got to get ready for supper."

Stover drew back the bed, unlocked the door and waited with clenched fists for Butsey to spring at him. Butsey White, whose tempestuous rage had long since spent itself in hilarious laughter, as, indeed, had been the case with the rest, thought it best, however, for the purposes of authority, still to preserve a grave face.

"You're a fine specimen!" he said curtly. "You've had a beautiful day of it."

"Yes, I have," said Dink miserably, "a beautiful day!"

Butsey, to whom the tragedy of the century was nothing but an incident, had not the slightest suspicion of Stover's absolute, overwhelming despair. Yet Butsey, too, had suffered, and profited by the suffering.

"You better square up with Tough McCarty," he said, failing to read the anguish in Stover's eyes. "You certainly were the limit."

"I hate him!" said Dink bitterly.

"Why?"

"He's a bully."

"Tough McCarty? Not a bit of it."

"He tried to bully me."

"Why didn't you let them in?" said Butsey, putting the part in the middle of his hair with a dripping comb.

"Let them in!"