not exactly friends, but reconciled. Somehow we could not get on real friendly terms, though I fancy we both wished to be friendly at one time. Of late he has changed, and I am satisfied that he is once more my enemy. I don’t think he will lie about me, but it is possible he might not correct the false statement of another. Miss Arlington, is it possible that, at the present time, there remains in your mind the least doubt concerning my behavior? If there is such a doubt, even though I would dearly love to keep your locket and your picture, I must beg you to take it back.”
He was grim and stern now, and for a single instant she felt a trifle awed. Then pride came to her rescue, and she exclaimed:
“If you wish to get rid of it so much, I’ll take it, sir!”
“I do not wish to get rid of it. Indeed, I wish to keep it always; but I cannot keep it knowing you might suspect me of showing it, laughing over it and boasting that it was a ‘mash.’ Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” she said quietly. “I shall let you keep it, and you may be sure there is no doubt in my mind. I believe you are a gentleman.”
Dick had triumphed. Again he was a winner, and it made him glad indeed. He thanked her earnestly and sincerely, upon which she said:
“Foolish though it may seem, I am certain now that the locket has given you good fortune. I felt sure you would win the game for Fardale to-day after I gave you the locket, and you took it. Then, with the locket still in your possession, you stopped the runaway. Keep it, and may it be the charm to give you luck as long as it remains in your possession.”
“I am sure it will!” he laughed. “As long as it contains that picture it will remain a charm for me.”
“You know I accept you as a friend, Mr. Merriwell; but my brother is angry with me, my mother will be more so, and my father will side with my mother. I tell you this as an explanation of my conduct in the future, should anything happen to make it seem that I am unfriendly.”
“I think I’ll understand you.”
“Then you will do better than most fellows,” smiled June; “for they do not understand girls at all. Hal Darrell – ”
Then she paused suddenly, for Hal himself had ascended the stairs and stopped, staring at them. His face was rather pale, and there was a glitter in his dark eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Darrell!” exclaimed June. “I have been looking for you.”
“Have you?” said Hal, his eyes on Dick.
“Yes. Brother wants to see you. He’s in room 37. Please go right up.”
Hal stood still and stared at Dick a moment longer, after which he mounted the stairs to the second story and disappeared.
CHAPTER VI – A DOUBTFUL MATTER
Chester and June Arlington remained in Hudsonville that night and the next day. On Monday they came back to Fardale, but Chester did not return to the academy. He declined to go to the house where June had been stopping, but ordered the best suite of rooms in the Fardale Hotel, and there he went comfortably to bed.
Perhaps it was a mistake to say he went comfortably to bed, for he was far from comfortable, as his back had been hurt badly, although the Hudsonville doctors consoled him with the assurance that, with rest and proper treatment, he would recover without any permanent injury.
June remained at the hotel to care for him as best she could, and Mrs. Arlington was notified of his misfortune, with the result that she lost no time in hastening to the side of her idolized son.
Dick had called at the hotel to see June a moment, and she showed him the telegram that told her that her mother was coming with all speed.
“I don’t know what will happen when mother gets here,” confessed June, “but there may be trouble. To tell the truth, I am afraid there will be, for Chester is determined to tell her I gave you that locket, unless I get it back.”
Dick’s heart sank a little, but he soon said:
“Then I suppose I shall have to give it up, for I do not wish you to get into trouble on my account.”
But she declined to take it.
“No,” she said firmly. “I gave it to you, and you are to keep it. I want you to promise to keep it, even though my mother demands it of you.”
His heart rose at once.
“You may be sure I will do so,” he said.
He was in very good spirits as he went whistling back to the academy. It was just past midday, but the autumn sun was well over into the southwest. The wind sent a flock of yellow leaves scudding along the roadside like a lot of startled birds. The woods were bare, and there was a haze on the distant hills. In spite of the bright sunshine, in spite of the satisfaction in his heart, he felt vaguely the sadness of autumn, as if the world itself were fading and growing old and feeble, like a man that has passed the prime of life and is hurrying down the hill that leads to decrepit old age and death. Always the autumn impressed Dick thus. True he saw in it much of beauty, but it was a sad beauty that made him long to fly to another clime where fallen leaves and bare woods would not remind him of winter.
Not that Dick disliked the winter, for in it he found those pleasures enjoyed by every healthful lad with a healthy mind; but it was the change from early autumn to winter days that stirred his emotions so keenly and filled him with that unspeakable longing for something that was not his.
A stream ran through the little valley, the sunshine reflected on its surface. Beyond the valley was a little grove, where a red squirrel was barking, the clear air and favorable wind bringing the chatter of the little creature to the lad’s ears. Some one had started a fire on the distant hillside, and the smoke rose till it was hurled away by the sweeping wind.
Dick’s eyes noted much of beauty in the landscape, for he was sensitive to color, and the woods were gray and brown and green, the fields were mottled with brown and green, for there remained a few places where the grass was not quite dead, late though it was; the hills were misty blue in the far distance, and the sky overhead was cloudless.
From a high point of the road he could look out on the open sea, and he heard the breakers roaring on Tiger Tooth Ledge.
The squirrel in the grove seemed calling to him, the woods seemed to beckon, and even the dull, distant roar of the sea struck a responsive chord in his heart. A sudden desire came upon him to stray deep into the woods and hills and seek to renew the old-time friendship and confidence with nature and the wild things he had once been able to call around him. Then he thought of Fardale, of the football-field, of his friends at school, and, lastly, of – June.
“No,” he muttered, “I would not give up my new friends for those I used to know. The birds and squirrels know me no longer, but I have found human friends who are dearer.”
He resumed his whistling and trudged onward with a light heart.
That afternoon Dick worked earnestly with the scrub on the field, for the weakness of the academy’s line in the recent game with Hudsonville had shown him that injury to one or two players simultaneously might cause Fardale’s defeat unless some remarkably good substitutes were ready at hand to go in. And he had come to realize that first-class substitutes were lacking.
The injured ones were improving as swiftly as could be expected, but it was certain
