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Toward morning, the fire died, leaving the huge frame, like an ice-covered palace, looming darkly against the college hill. In another fraternity house, Shorts was in bed, face and hands swathed in bandages. Swipes and Spuddy, tear-stained and pale, stood by the door, waiting. "If only they would come and tell us something!" moaned Spuddy. "Boys, if the Captain goes, I'm done for."
"I'd give my very life to have heard the Captain say he had forgiven me." "I was more to blame than you were," replied Spuddy. "My mother.... God! look at that sun!" Bright rays slanted golden through the window upon the three woful little freshmen who had ruined the "Cranium" Society. One day in the following July, Tessibel was going to Mrs.
"Lordy," groaned Spuddy, "Swipes is always wanting something to happen. I bet it will before long. What you wish for you'll get, old horse! Don't forget that." Spuddy went on tapping the window, staring out into the gloom. "We'd better go down town and look for Graves and see that he is all right," said Dan. "That will be enough for you kids to do now. It's your evening anyway to guard him."
"Stay there, and be ready, if you don't want to die," he commanded curtly. Shorts saw the ladder rear upward, and a form dart from the shadows. Dan Jordan was coming, hand over hand, toward him, the long ladder creaking under his weight. Jordan's face appeared at the opening. "Come out here," he commanded Shorts. Shorts pushed Spuddy forward.
Shorts, now thoroughly sober, followed the big freshman into the drawing-room, where a dozen or more downcast-looking boys were curled up on divans. Swipes was being urged up the broad oak stairs, Spuddy now and then giving him a severe poke in the ribs. Preston perched the hapless boy against his chamber door with the injunction to get to bed the best he could.
"Gentlemen," he began, "I first christen you all in the name of the 'Cranium' Fraternity. I give you, Dillon, the name of 'Swipes. You, Brown, shall be dubbed 'Shorts' here he hesitated an instant, perusing a slip of paper which lay on the table beside him Preston, you may add another 'S' to make a trio your name shall be 'Spuddy." Hall allowed his eyes to gaze reflectively upon Dan Jordan.
Swipes turned helplessly to his room-mate. "Look here, Spuddy, help a fellow, will you? Just give me my pyjamas." "Get them yourself!" retorted Preston, shoving Dillon into his bed-chamber. "It's a nice mess we're in with the 'Parson' gone." With a disgusted kick at Swipes he left him reeling desperately once more. Dillon swayed forward from the center of the room toward the doorway.
The other was a short spuddy fellow, with a broad ugly face and with spectacles on his nose, who talked very consequentially about "the service" and all that, but whose tone of voice was coarse and his manner that of an under-bred person; then there was an old fellow about sixty-five, a civilian, with a red carbuncled face; he was father of the spuddy military puppy, on whom he occasionally cast eyes of pride and almost adoration, and whose sayings he much applauded, especially certain DOUBLES ENTENDRES, to call them by no harsher term, directed to a fat girl, weighing some fifteen stone, who officiated in the coffee-room as waiter.
He thrust his head through the lurid gleam to attract attention, and saw the men and boys in the yard bringing ladders to rescue them. Now they were splicing them together, to make it possible to reach the great height. Shorts made quick resolves.... If he lived.... He turned with a groan, and dragged Spuddy from the bed to the open window.
"Plagued fire! 'Course the house had to burn down on a night like this!" Screams and cries from the crazed mob below came up to the boys through the broken pane. The water ceased its flow, and Shorts, the most sober of the three, crept to the opening. Spuddy had crawled back to bed.
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