第37章 GAIN,OR LOSS?(3)

I had barely enough to get through here at pauper rates this year--but I could n't do it and keep Bug,too.I went into Colorado and played baseball for pay,so I could come here and bring him with me.That's why I can out-bat our team,and could win dead easy for Sunrise tomorrow.

Nobody in Kansas knows it.Now,what shall I do?"The words were shot out like bullets.

"What shall you do?"Lloyd Fenneben's black eyes held Burleigh."There is only one thing to do.When you ranked high in grades with only the trivial matter of excusable absence against you--no broken law--you took Professor Burgess gently by the throat and told him you meant to play anyhow.

You stood your ground like a man,for your own sake and for the honor of Sunrise.Stand like a man for your own sake and the honor of Sunrise,now.Go to Professor Burgess and take him gently--by the hand,this time--and tell him you do not mean to play,and why you cannot."Burleigh sat still as stone,his face white as marble,his wide-open eyes under his black brows seeing nothing.

"But our proud record--the glorious honor of this college,"he said at length,and back of his words was the thought of Victor Burleigh,the idol of Sunrise,dethroned,where he had been adored.

"There is no honor for a college like the honesty of its students.

There is no prouder record than the record of daring to do the right.

You could get into the game once by a brute's strength.

Get out of it now by a gentleman's honor."Behind the speech was Lloyd Fenneben himself,sympathetic,firm,upright,before whom the harshness of Victor Burleigh's face slowly gave place to an expression of sorrow.

"My boy,"Fenneben said gently,"Nature gave us the Walnut Valley with its limestone ledges and fine forest trees.But before our Sunrise could be builded the ledge had to be shapen into the hewn stone,the green tree to the seasoned lumber,quarter-sawed oak--quarter-sawed,mind you.Mill,forge and try-pit,ax and saw and chisel,with cleft and blow and furnace heat,shaped them all for Service.Over our doorway is the Sunrise initial.

It stands also for Strife,part of which you know already;but it stands for Sacrifice as well.You are in the shaping.

God grant you may be turned out a man fitted by Sacrifice for Service when the shaping is done."Burleigh rose,silent still,and the two went out together.

At the doorway,he turned to Fenneben,who grasped his hand without a word.And once again,the firm hand clasp of the Dean of Sunrise seemed to bind the country boy to the finer things of life.

It had done the same on that day after the Thanksgiving game when he sat in Fenneben's study,and understood for the first time what gives the right to pride in brawny arm and steel-spring nerve.

After Burleigh left him,Lloyd Fenneben stood for a long time on his veranda in the light of the doorway watching the steady downpour of the warm May rain.As he turned at length to enter the house a rough-looking man with rain-soaked clothing and slouched hat,sprang out of the shadows.

"Stranger,"he called hastily."There's a little child fell in the river round the bend,and his mother got hold of him,but she can't pull him out,and can't hold on much longer.

Will you come help me,quick?I've only got one arm or I would n't have had to ask for help."An empty sleeve was flapping in the rain,and Fenneben did not notice then that the man kept that side of himself all the time in the shadows.

Fenneben had only one thought as he hurried away in the darkness,to save the woman and child.His companion said little,directing the course toward the bend in the river before the gateway of Pigeon Place.As they pushed on with all speed through rain and mud,Fenneben was hardly conscious that Dennie Saxon's words about the lonely gray-haired hermit woman were recurring curiously to his mind.

"If talking about Sunrise made her cry like that,maybe you might do something for her,"Dennie had said.He had never tried to do anything for her.

Somehow she seemed to be the woman who was in peril now,and he was half-consciously blaming himself that he had never tried to help her,had not even thought of her for months.Women were not in his line,except the kindly impersonal interest he felt for all the Sunrise girls,and his sense of responsibility for Norrie,and the memory of a girl--oh,the hungry haunting memory!

All this in a semi-conscious fleetness swept across his mind,that was bent on reaching the river,and on that woman holding a drowning child.

At the bend in the river,the man halted suddenly.