They soothed him by changing the subject of their conversation. By the time he was dressed and ready to go out he again seemed in his normal condition.
On their way to a restaurant they met Merriwell, who, with several friends, was coming from the gymnasium.
At sight of Dick, Lynch turned ghastly pale and trembled. Not a word came from his lips, but he turned his head away and walked on with averted eyes.
“Merriwell is looking pretty healthy for a dead man,” observed Wolfe, winking at Ditson.
“Stop!” cried Mike, with a snarl. “Don’t try any more of that! I won’t have it. I know he’s dead, and that ends it.”
His companions looked at each other in wonderment, deciding that, although Lynch seemingly had recovered, he was a subject for the care of a physician.
But even the doctor who attended Lynch could not quite understand the condition of the fellow’s mind. In everything else Mike seemed rational, but the mere mentioning of Merriwell’s name in his hearing threw him into a state of excitement that bordered on frenzy. At sight of Dick, whom he occasionally encountered, he invariably turned pale and averted his eyes. Some of the fellow’s friends insisted that he ought to go home and take a rest, but this caused Lynch to grin and declare that he was in “the finest condition ever.” He simply refused to acknowledge that Dick Merriwell was not dead.
Ditson and Du Boise raised money to settle for Brad Buckhart’s boat and felt that they were getting out of the affair very cheaply. Of course Dick was told of Mike Lynch’s singular mental delusion, but he, like nearly every one else, believed Lynch would get over it in time.
These were busy days for Dick. Baseball absorbed nearly all his spare time. He was not a little surprised when Wilbur Keene came to him and asked to be coached in pitching. At first Dick thought the fellow joshing, but Keene was in sober earnest, and therefore day after day Merriwell spent thirty minutes or more time instructing the varsity pitcher.
When Welch and the rest of the varsity twirlers learned that Keene was being coached by Dick they unbottled their scorn upon Wilbur. He was compelled to endure all sorts of jeers and sneers. Nevertheless, he persisted, for from the very start he was convinced that Dick’s tutoring would be beneficial to him. Within a few days he could see an improvement in his work.