CHAPTER XXI

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.