Then the tension broke, and the nervous force that had girt him about when he was on the gridiron gave way, and he sobbed brokenly. Tom instantly began rearranging the books on the table, where they were piled in artistic confusion, and raised such a dust that Sid sneezed. The latter was in the old armchair, which had been mended, after a fashion, following the throwing of it from the window in the fire scare. As Sid tried to get up from the depths of it, there came a crash, and the antique piece of furniture settled heavily on one side, like a ship with a bad list to port. "There you go!" cried Tom, glad to have a chance to speak sharply. "What are you trying to do--smash it all to pieces? Can't you get out of a chair without busting it?" "I--I didn't mean to," spoke Sid so gently, and in such a contrast to Tom's fiery words, that Phil could not restrain an exclamatory chuckle. It was just the thing needed to change the current that was setting too strongly toward sadness, and a moment later the three were carefully examining the chair. "It's only a leg broken," said Phil at length, and during the inspection he kept his face in the shadow. "I can fix it to-morrow," he went on, and when he arose he was himself again. "Better put an iron brace on, if Sid is going to do double back somersaults in it," went on Tom with simulated indignity. "This isn't a barn, Sid. It's a gentlemen's room." "Oh, you shut up!" cried Sid, and then the chums were more natural. Phil arranged that night to leave college at once, in case further bad news was received, and he also communicated with Ruth, planning to take her with him. But there was no need, for in the morning another message was received, saying that Mrs. Clinton had somewhat recovered from the relapse that threatened. Phil said little, but there was a different air about him all that day, and when he went into practice he actually seemed to carry the team along on his shoulders, so that they crumbled the scrub opposition into nothingness, and made five touch-downs in the two short halves they played. Since the episode of the freshman dance the first-year students had "sung small" whenever the sophomores were about. It was the most humiliating trick that had been "pulled off in so many years that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," as Holly Cross put it in one of his favorite quotations. Gerhart was much downcast at first, for, as he was in charge of the affair, it was considered a sort of reflection on his ability. And he laid it all to Tom, Sid, Phil and Dutch Housenlager. "You wait; I'll get even with you some day," he had said to Tom. "We're perfectly willing," answered Tom good-naturedly. "If you think you can put anything over our home plate, why go ahead, and more power to ye, as Bricktop Molloy would say." "You just wait," was all Gerhart answered.