Chapter 13

The game was to be called at Chancellor's Hill at one-thirty; and at one-thirty the first stragglers appeared in the chilly Archway to take their position at the bulletin board, where the score was to be posted as it came along the wire.

Dick Harrington, in sweater and cap, arrived at one-forty-five. The first score had just been posted:

Chancellor's Hill 5 The Towers 0

The Headmaster's secretary, a studious but otherwise attractive young man, who posted the notice, volunteered the information that the Chancellor's Hill left end had turned the trick with a fifty-five yard run when The Towers eleven had tied itself into a knot through a jumbled signal.

"That's an awful beginning!" said Runt Woods, who was standing next to Dick Harrington. He was a little, flat-faced, brownie sort of boy, whom everybody loved. "Must have been in the first five minutes of play."

"They won't get any more," Dick answered confidently. "It's too bad they scored, but they won't get any more."

His optimism was unwarranted. There was a long wait without news. Then Mr. Tuttle, the secretary, reappeared from the Main Building, wearing a rueful smile. He picked up the eraser under the bulletin board, but he did not disturb the zero which stood to the credit (or debit) of The Towers. He rubbed out the 5 that followed Chancellor's Hill and set down 11.

"Something's happened!" cried Dick.

"Two touchdowns and a goal have happened," said Runt Woods gloomily.

"I don't mean that. I mean that something's happened to the team! Lost their heads, or something."

He wondered whether "The Colonel" had been taken ill. "The Colonel" was so completely the heart and soul of the team. If for some reason he were out of it----

They must be playing the second period by now. There was another long wait. Then at last Mr. Tuttle, looking grave, reappeared.

At the edge of the Archway, he stopped. "Don't mob me, now," he said, trying to grin.

"What's the score? Score!" cried a hundred voices.

"End of the second period," he said, striding toward the board. "Score 11 to 0."

Groans, loud and prolonged.

* * * * *

The wind whistled through the Archway. The boys stuck their hands in their pockets and danced, shivering, but not one deserted the bulletin board. They stared at the dismal figures and a dozen versions of How It Must Have Happened were launched by imaginative spectators, attacked ruthlessly and torpedoed as improbable. The trouble with the whole matter of explaining Chancellor's Hill's two touchdowns was that the very fact of the touchdowns would, an hour ago, have seemed the last word in improbabilities. They talked and shivered and bantered and sang and cheered (just to keep warm) for a solid hour. Mr. Tuttle reappeared at last.

The boys surged out of the Archway into the Quadrangle to meet him.

"Score! What's the score?"

"Get back, you wild Indians!" cried the studious secretary to some importunate First Formers who were tugging at his arms. "There is no news, and I can't get Chancellor's Hill on the telephone."

There were murmurs of bewilderment. The Senior Master, tall, genial, and conspicuous for his good sense, came out of the Main Building, and suggested a run for health's sake. He tagged Runt Woods lightly and was off. With a shout the crowd followed him at a jog-trot past the Music House, past the Cottage out on to the cinder track. They jogged a quarter-mile.

As they reached the Cottage on the return trip, they saw Mr. Tuttle dancing toward them, wildly waving his arms.

The Senior Master halted his band.

"Fifteen to eleven!" shouted Mr. Tuttle ecstatically. "We win!"

The roar that followed was memorable. Eppie, the confectionery man, picking his teeth in his empty shop at the foot of the hill, threw away his toothpick and went to the kitchen to tell his wife that The Towers had won, and business for the rest of the afternoon would be brisk.

Two minutes later the jubilant invasion began. Dick Harrington was not one of the crowd that rushed, cheering down the hill. He was on probation, and Eppie's was out of bounds.

He stood in the Archway, lonely and miserable.

_Why hadn't he lied?_

The team was due back at Hainesburg, the railroad station for The Towers, at eight-thirty. One or two Sixth Formers, flushed and almost incoherent with excitement, had asked the Senior Master for permission to organize a torchlight parade.

"Sure enough! Good idea!" exclaimed the Senior Master. "Go to it! Don't burn yourselves up, don't get lost, don't get in the way of the train and don't all have apoplectic fits as my friend Andrew here is promising to do shortly if some one doesn't put an ice compress on his enthusiasm. But go on. Give 'em a good time."

"Thank you ever so much, sir!" cried Andrew, "and I'll promise to cool off."

"Go 'way!" cried the Senior Master cheerfully. "You don't know how. You're a perpetual human Roman candle."

"I'll hold him down, sir," said the other boy.

"Pshaw!" cried the Senior Master. "You're a Whiz-bang yourself--go 'long! Shoo!"

The boys went.

At eight, Dick Harrington made his way to the Study to ask the Senior Master whether boys "on probe" could join the triumphal procession. The Senior Master was kindly, but firm.

"Sorry, old man," he said. "Probe rules hold."

That was all. But Dick Harrington without a word went to his room on the third floor of the East Wing, stumbling on the stairs, because of the tears.

_Why_, he asked himself bitterly again and again--_why hadn't he lied?_

He crept out of his room an hour later, hearing the cheers of the returning revelers. His hallway was utterly deserted, the school was deserted. If he needed any further evidence that virtue did not pay, here it was. "_Be good and you'll be lonesome._" There was one aphorism proved, at least.

* * * * *

Suddenly, standing in the Quadrangle, he heard singing. Then through the bare branches he saw the glow of many torches. It was all magical and mysterious, for the wild cheering which had brought him down from his room had given way to a solemn exaltation of triumph. If he had had a hat on his head, he would have pulled it off, hearing the school song sung that way. He felt a tug at his heart and again the dimness covered his eyes because he should be fated to have no active part in that thrilling chorus of victory.

He stood quite still, swallowing hard. At the end of the first stanza, there was a "regular yell" for The Towers, as the procession turned sharply, with torches flaring, up the steep drive. He could see now that they were dragging a hay-wagon with ropes. The team was on the hay-wagon. The second stanza of the school song floated up to him, it seemed a chant drifting over from fairyland.

The procession came nearer now. The hill and the hay-wagon together proved too much for the singers and the song died off in breathless laughter and another cheer. Then somebody started to call off the score: "One--two--three--four--" to a climactic burst--"Fifteen!" The procession disappeared behind the Main Building only to reappear a minute or two later around the corner of the Office, on the other side of the Archway. Dick Harrington wished that he had enough manly pride to scorn it all and go back to his room. But he didn't, so he rushed to where the crowd was gathered and listened in rapture to the cheers and the speeches and the songs and all the wonderful stories of a wonderful game.

"Colonel" Burton was there, smiling embarrassed appreciation. _He_ had won the game for The Towers, when it seemed hopelessly lost. Every one agreed to that. He made a speech, thanking everybody for everything.

_Why, oh, why_, Dick cried to himself, as he climbed three flights after "creams" a half-hour later--_Why hadn't he had the sense to lie?_

* * * * *

Dick Harrington crept into bed, and his roommate crept into bed. The roommate slept and Dick Harrington tried to sleep, but sleep eluded him--it seemed for hours. Perhaps it was only for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then he too slept, dreaming of torchlit chariots.

He woke and gave a low cry. Some one was sitting on his bed. He started to jump up, scared through; but a strong hand touched his shoulder and a friendly voice whispered--"It's all right, Harrie; don't be scared."

Dick was still half asleep and dazed. "Who are you?" he cried in an unnatural voice.

"It's Bill Burton."

"Who?" he asked, amazed.

"Bill Burton."

"You're somebody trying to fool me," Dick whispered after a pause.

"No, I'm not, Harrie," said the other's deep, rich voice. "I wanted to talk to you. I couldn't wait until to-morrow, so I got permission from Prof, and here I am."

"What makes you want to see me?" asked Dick softly. "I guess I don't understand at all. I didn't think you knew me."

"You remember yesterday in the Algebra class?"

"You bet I remember," whispered Dick emphatically.

There was a moment's utter quiet. From away over in the direction of Chicken Hill came the sound of a rumpus in the Black Belt of Hainesburg. Then again quiet.

Burton spoke at last, slowly and rather more softly than before. "Beaver asked you and me the same question, you remember?"

"Yes," murmured Dick, breathlessly.

"You told him the truth."

"I just blurted out a lot of----"

"Well, I _lied_."

* * * * *

Somehow the shock of those words was to Dick Harrington like the impact of a terrible fist. He literally saw stars. The idea that "The Colonel" should tell a lie was inconceivable. Sneaks and cowards lied. His reeling standards straightened suddenly. His bitter regret that _he_ hadn't had the sense to lie evaporated in the glow of an overwhelming gratitude. He could not speak.

"Harrie," Burton went on with a quiet depth of feeling which was not lost on Dick (for Dick had deep capabilities of sympathy himself if any one bothered to find it out). "You told the truth and I know what it cost you. I lied. And it took all the stuffin's out of me, Harrie. As soon as the lie was out, I felt I'd have given my head to have it back. You see, Harrie, quite apart from the right or wrong of it, it wouldn't have mattered if I had told the truth."

"It wouldn't?"

"No, I've had a fairly good record in class lately. But----"

"Why did you do it?"

"That's just it, old man. It was habit, I guess. It was just the line of least resistance. It was the quickest way out of a box--I didn't think, and bang!--first thing I knew I'd gone and done it! I'm a good deal older than you, Harrie, I'm twenty-one. I was a pretty bad kid until Prof. and Mrs. Brewster got hold of me. I've managed to get most of the worst devils under. And I thought I had the lie-devil under. I haven't told a lie for two years. But I didn't have him under, Harrie. When I least expected him, there he was. I guess I haven't been as unhappy for a good many years as I was yesterday and to-day."

Dick Harrington floundered helplessly for words--"I never thought----"

"I was getting pretty cocky about my own goodness, I guess," Burton went on quietly. "That's why I got it in the neck this way. But it took the sand right out of me. It seemed that all the years of tussle were in vain and I wasn't worth a little yaller dog's respect, and here the school was looking to me to do big things. It took it right out of me, Harrie. Do you know what was the trouble with the first two periods of the game to-day?"

"The team lost their heads, and then you bucked 'em up and won the game. The fellows told me."

"That sounds good, old man. But the trouble was that I couldn't get my mind down on the game. I was all the time thinking of that algebra class and that lie. I thought of it out on the field and mixed up the plays. That was the reason for those two first periods."

Dick Harrington sat bolt upright. "Really? Really?" he exclaimed.

"Instead of trying to win the game, I was all the time trying to puzzle out what I could do to wipe out that Lie. It wasn't square to the team, it wasn't square to the school, but there it was. There was that Lie. I tried to laugh at myself, but that didn't do any good. There was that Lie. I tried to curse myself out, but that didn't do any good. There was that _Lie_, sitting in my heart."

Dick stared at him through the darkness with burning eyes. "Then what happened?" he cried in a low voice.

"I dunno exactly, Harrie," Burton answered, speaking very slowly. "Suddenly I just found that I was thinking of you."

"Of me?" There was awe in the exclamation.

"And then it was all clear. I had to square myself with you. Suddenly I knew that that was what would wipe out that Lie and give me a fresh start. It was like a sort of revelation. You see, Harrie, I knew that you thought I was pretty fine, and you just had to be set straight."

"I--I haven't changed my mind at all about you," said Dick Harrington timidly. "And you won the game after all."

Bill Burton leaned over the younger boy. His hand groped for Dick's shoulder and clutched it.

"I didn't win the game," he whispered tensely. "The game wasn't really played at Chancellor's Hill at all. It was played in the algebra class. It was lost when I lied, and it was won a minute later when you told the truth. And I guess I'm pretty glad you told the truth."

"So am I," murmured Dick very softly.

They both breathed deeply. It had been a notable victory.

* * * * *

Next morning, between breakfast and Sunday service, Dick Harrington surreptitiously borrowed his roommate's safety razor, and shaved with shining eyes.

FOOTNOTE:

[K] Reprinted from "The Boy Scouts' Year Book." Copyright, 1918, by D. Appleton and Company.

XII.--Story of the Bandbox

_By Robert Louis Stevenson_

UP to the age of sixteen, at a private school and afterward at one of those great institutions for which England is justly famous, Mr. Harry Hartley had received the ordinary education of a gentleman. At that period he manifested a remarkable distaste for study; and his only surviving parent being both weak and ignorant, he was permitted thenceforward to spend his time in the attainment of petty and purely elegant accomplishments. Two years later, he was left an orphan and almost a beggar. For all active and industrious pursuits, Harry was unfitted alike by nature and training. He could sing romantic ditties, and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging exteriors than can well be fancied.

A fortunate chance and some influence obtained for Harry, at the time of his bereavement, the position of private secretary to Major-General Sir Thomas Vandeleur, C. B. Sir Thomas was a man of sixty, loud-spoken, boisterous, and domineering. For some reason, some service, the nature of which had been often whispered and repeatedly denied, the Rajah of Kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth largest known diamond of the world. The gift transformed General Vandeleur from a poor into a wealthy man, from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of the lions of London society; the possessor of the Rajah's Diamond was welcome in the most exclusive circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful, and well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the price of marriage with Sir Thomas Vandeleur. It was commonly said at the time that, as like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another; certainly Lady Vandeleur was not only a gem of the finest water in her own person, but she showed herself to the world in a very costly setting; and she was considered by many respectable authorities as one among the three or four best-dressed women in England.

Harry's duty as secretary was not particularly onerous; but he had a dislike for all prolonged work; it gave him pain to ink his fingers; and the charms of Lady Vandeleur and her toilets drew him often from the library to the boudoir. He had the prettiest ways among women, could talk fashions with enjoyment, and was never more happy than when criticizing a shade of ribbon, or running on an errand to the milliner's. In short, Sir Thomas' correspondence fell into pitiful arrears, and my lady had another lady's maid.

At last the general, who was one of the least patient of military commanders, arose from his place in a violent excess of passion, and indicated to his secretary that he had no further use for his services, with one of those explanatory gestures which are most rarely employed between gentlemen. The door being unfortunately open, Mr. Hartley fell down-stairs head foremost.

He arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved. The life in the general's house precisely suited him; he moved, on a more or less doubtful footing, in very genteel company, he did little, he ate of the best, and he had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of Lady Vandeleur.

Immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he hurried to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows.

"You know very well, my dear Harry," replied Lady Vandeleur, for she called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, "that you never by any chance do what the general tells you. I shall be sorry to lose you, but since you cannot stay longer in a house where you have been insulted, I shall wish you good-bye, and I promise you to make the general smart for his behavior."

"My lady," said he, "what is an insult? I should think little indeed of any one who could not forgive them by the score. But to leave one's friends; to tear up the bonds of affection----"

He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began to weep.

Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression.

"This little fool," she thought, "why should he not become my servant instead of the general's? He is good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides, it will keep him out of mischief."

That night she talked over the general, who was already somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry.

One fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange some music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation and very lame of one foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of their conversation.

"To-day or never," said the lady. "Once and for all, it shall be done to-day."

"To-day, it must be," replied the brother, with a sigh. "But it is a false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall live to repent it dismally."

Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely in the face.

"You forget," she said; "the man must die at last."

"Upon my word, Clara," said Pendragon, "I believe you are the most heartless rascal in England."

"You men," she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find in us."

"You are very likely right," replied her brother; "you were always cleverer than I. And, anyway, you know my motto: the family before all."

"Yes, Charlie," she returned, taking his hand in hers. "I know your motto better than you know it yourself. And 'Clara before the family!' Is not that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the best of brothers, and I love you dearly."

Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family endearments.

"I had better not be seen," said he. "I understand my part to a miracle, and I'll keep an eye on the Tame Cat."

"Do," she replied. "He is an abject creature, and might ruin all."

She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother withdrew by the boudoir and the back-stair.

"Harry," said Lady Vandeleur, turning toward the secretary as soon as they were alone. "I have a commission for you this morning. But you shall take a cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled."

She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half-motherly pride that caused great contentment to poor Harry; and he professed himself charmed to find an opportunity of serving her.

"It is another of our great secrets," she went on archly, "and no one must know of it but my secretary and me. Sir Thomas would make the saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am with these scenes! Oh, Harry, Harry, can you explain to me what makes you men so violent and unjust? But, indeed, I know you cannot; you are the only man in the world who knows nothing of these shameful passions; you are so good, Harry, and so kind; you, at least, can be a woman's friend; and do you know? I think you make the others more ugly by comparison."

"It is you," said Harry, gallantly, "who are so kind to me. You treat me like----"

"Like a mother," interposed Lady Vandeleur. "I try to be a mother to you. Or, at least," she corrected herself with a smile, "almost a mother. I am afraid I am too young to be your mother really. Let us say a friend--a dear friend."

"But all this is beside our purpose," she resumed. "You will find a bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is underneath the pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin. You will take it immediately to this address," and she gave him a slip of paper, "but do not, on any account, let it out of your hands until you have received a receipt written by myself. Do you understand? Answer, if you please--answer! This is extremely important, and I must ask you to pay some attention."

Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she was just going to tell him more when General Vandeleur flung into the apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate milliner's bill in his hand.

"Will you look at this, madam?" cried he. "Will you have the goodness to look at this document? I know well enough you married me for my money, and I hope I can make as great allowance as any other man in the service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to put a period to this disreputable prodigality."

"Mr. Hartley," said Lady Vandeleur, "I think you understand what you have to do. May I ask you to see to it at once?"

"Stop," said the general, addressing Harry, "one word before you go." And then, turning again to Lady Vandeleur, "What is this precious fellow's errand?" he demanded. "I trust him no further than I do yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as the rudiments of honesty, he would scorn to stay in this house; and what he does for his wages is a mystery to all the world. What is his errand, madam? and why are you hurrying him away?"

"I supposed you had something to say to me in private," replied the lady.

"You spoke about an errand," insisted the general. "Do not attempt to deceive me in my present state of temper. You certainly spoke about an errand."

"If you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating dissensions," replied Lady Vandeleur, "perhaps I had better ask Mr. Hartley to sit down. No?" she continued; "then you may go, Mr. Hartley. I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this room; it may be useful to you."