Nibs looked at Billy.
"Do it, do it," the latter urged.
"All right," Nibs agreed, and arm in arm with his backer he issued into the street, clutching his mackintosh about him.
The stranger had, meanwhile, walked back along the course followed by a great throng, anxious to witness what to them promised to be a _fiasco_ of immense proportions. Only three carriages had waited. The occupants perceiving the crowd at the lower end of the street had lingered for developments. In one of the carriages was Nibs Morey"s sister Wilma. She called a youth to the wheel and questioned him concerning the throng which still surged in the street. The freshman explained gaily.
"And will Nibs run that great tall thing?" the girl inquired anxiously.
"Oh, don"t you worry, Miss Morey," the little freshman replied consolingly. "He"ll beat him so far he won"t know he"s running."
"But he"s all tired out," she expostulated.
"Oh, no, he isn"t. Only a little over a hundred yards."
A cry rang out just then, down the course, and Wilma, turning, caught a glimpse of her brother, surrounded by his supporters--and all the crowd supported him now--approaching the start.
She was moved to call him, to demand his instant withdrawal from this silly, useless race; but her voice--this she realized--would not have been heard above the shouting. She sank back upon the seat, her face flushed, her forehead furrowed with little lines, her fingers locking and unlocking.
Some one had stopped just behind the carriage. Afterward she was wont to say she had "felt" the presence; for, looking around and down, her eyes met those of the stranger. His were the first to drop before her unflinching, flashing gaze. Why he had stopped just there, the centre of a little group of the curious, he could never explain. It was only an instant, merely for the exchange of that glance perhaps, for he moved on again almost immediately, up the course, half running, stepping high, gracefully.
The double lines of spectators now were not so long nor so thick as they had been; nor did they manifest those signs of interest that had marked the earlier event.
At the start, the tall stranger removed neither his long overcoat nor his satchel. His cigar had gone out, but he still held it, cold, between his teeth.
Little Thurston, who was to fire the pistol a second time, exclaimed, amazedly: "Aren"t you goin" to take off those things?"
"No, guess not," was the cool reply. "What"s the use!"
Nibsey Morey, Billy Shaw and Jimmy exchanged glances; Billy smiled outright.
"Say," Jimmy snapped somewhat angrily. "Let"s get a hustle on and end this--you willing?" He nodded toward the stranger.
"Quite."
"Then--ready!" cried the starter.
Again two figures, sadly matched, crouched at the start.
Another second and the pistol cracked.
Following the report, there was a little instant of dead silence in the street, then there broke forth pandemonium, for half way down the course, his coat tails flying, his satchel standing out behind, the cold cigar gripped tight between his teeth, the stranger led Nibs Morey by a rod. Twenty-five feet from the string, he turned, and running backward, beckoned with a crooked forefinger to the straining Mercury that he faced.
Not in all undergraduate history is there recorded an event which created more excitement on the campus after its occurrence than this.
Nibs Morey had defeated Billy Shaw; and a stranger who had sprung from the earth had defeated Nibs as no man before had ever been defeated.
They shook hands, honorably, after the event, but those who witnessed the incident forgot it immediately in the overwhelming curiosity regarding the newest risen champion among them.
"Who is he?" was the question on the lips of every youth and every maid--"Who is he?"
His name was Bunette, they said. His home? A tiny town on a west Michigan sand hill.
"What is he, then?" the voice of the campus cried. And it became known that he had entered the department of Medicine and Surgery.
And thus was a new G.o.d raised among men at whose shrine none worshiped with devotion more intense than Billy Shaw, and the erstwhile idol, Nibsey Morey, and to them and their brethren for all time he was given a name, and the name was "Bunny of "85."
THE CASE OF CATHERWOOD
I
"Stop!"
The command from the rostrum brought the cla.s.s up in their seats. Every eye was bent upon Catherwood standing at the end of a bench in the second row.
Some one snickered.
Catherwood stared at the floor, a blush of shame mounting his cheek and melting into his thin, bristly red hair at his freckled temples.
The a.s.sistant professor of history glared through his spectacles.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this is most unseemly! Mr.
Catherwood, you may be seated! I should advise you, ladies and gentlemen, to devote a little more time to this course; and a little less, perhaps, to the Junior Hop. I am sure you do not wish me to make general the mailing of conditions next week. As you know the examination is set for nine o"clock on the morning of February 10th. I trust you will act upon the suggestion I have given you...."
The gong in the corridor clanged just then and the cla.s.s shuffled out of the room.
Shunning his acquaintances in the hall Catherwood disappeared. The blush did not recede from his face until he banged the wide door shut behind him and the cold of the crisp February morning smote him full.
He walked swiftly down Williams Street to his room, not once lifting his eyes from the pavement, which was dirty white from the much trampled snow.
Another flunk! The third in as many weeks! Catherwood with a muttered imprecation reviewed the succession of cla.s.s-room disasters.
"Confound history!" he growled as he strode into his room. He flung his books upon the bed and himself into the deep Morris chair by the window.
A sparrow was hopping on the porch roof without. He rattled the window violently and the sparrow flew away in fright.
"Go it, you imp," he snarled; and again he condemned all history and its study to the deepest depths.
It _was_ bad. The a.s.sistant professor had been lenient, but fate seemed to have composed that particular section of every history hater in the junior cla.s.s.
Catherwood realized this--or thought he did--as he sat staring out of the windows into the skeleton branches of the trees, and from the thought he obtained a modic.u.m of consolation.
He had worked. He had worked hard--but for some unknown reason he couldn"t bite into the course, couldn"t dig his teeth into the subject.
He did not fear; on the contrary he was certain--as certain as a man can be--that his semester"s work in cla.s.s-room was of sufficiently high a grade to a.s.sure him his full credit in the course. And yet, he considered, there was the examination, five days away. In two hours he would be required to write out in a thin "blue book" all he was supposed to have learned in twenty weeks.