“Haven’t a doubt of that. We all do. I wouldn’t like to have all my thoughts published in the Lit.”
“That’s it. Besides, he holds me under his thumb.”
“That’s bad,” said Packard, with a sneering laugh. “No man can hold me there.”
“If he could read your thoughts he might. You do not know everything that has happened since Merriwell returned to college.”
“You mean since the Southern trip of the ball-team?”
“No; before that—while the men were training for the team. You know I trained and tried to get on.”
“I ruined my chances one day when I tried to spoil Merriwell for any use this spring. I laid for him out along the road when the men took their run into the country. Had not the devil protected him, I’d fixed him by dropping a stone on his head. He fell down, and the stone missed his head by about an inch. Had he not fallen just at that instant—well, Frank Merriwell would not be running the Yale nine now.”
“He certainly has Satan’s luck! He’s a man who would not fall down once in five years, yet he fell just then.”
“Exactly. I thought I had fixed him all right, for it was rather dark, being in the early part of the evening. I hustled away from that place and got into the road behind him without being seen, coming up to him with others. And there he was, all right and well. But the stone——”
“Ah! the stone,” said Packard. “Did it recognize you and sing out, ‘Hello, Defarge?’”
“It had caused him to stop. He knew somebody had thrown it. He told them.”
“But you had been coming along the road far behind with others. How could it have been you who threw the stone? My dear fellow, you must have given yourself away by your actions.”
“Not at all. But I had been at the tail-end of the party when I dropped off and cut across through a lane to reach the road by which I knew they would return to town. Two of the fellows saw me sit down beside the road as if to fix my shoe. They came up while I was there with the gang around Merriwell, and one of them spoke up and asked me how the dickens I got ahead of them.”
“Bad!” commented Packard. “Dead give away. Put Merriwell on the scent.”
“Just as bad! He went back there that very night with a lantern and found my handkerchief which I had dropped on the spot where I stood when I threw the stone.”