In the meantime Gerald’s campaign went forward and bore results. Kendall made friends. Nowadays to walk from his room in Clarke to a recitation room in Oxford entailed more greetings than last year he would have been called on to accord in a month. He was really surprised to find how many fellows he knew well enough to stop and talk to, how many others demanded recognition, a word, a nod or a wave of the hand. Of course, among the younger boys he was a hero second only to Captain Merriwell himself, and the Preparatory Class youth who won a word from Kendall hurried off to tell the rest of the inhabitants of Merle of the talk he had had with Burtis, describing just how Kendall had looked and just what he had said, and, I’m afraid, enlarging a little on the incident. But that’s a weakness not confined to Preparatory Class boys. Had you asked some of Kendall’s fellow members of the team why they had taken a liking to him it is probable that they would each have said about the same thing――had they deigned to answer such a question at all! “Burtis?” they would have said. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s a good sort, don’t you think? Awfully quiet, of course, but has a lot of horse sense. Doesn’t butt in, either. Not much on the handsome, but sort of nice looking, too, somehow. Doesn’t have much to say about what he has done or is going to do or can do; just goes ahead and does it. Awfully square sort, I’d say. Besides, he certainly can play football!” Gerald was pretty busy nowadays with the Cross-Country Team. He was captain of it and about the best performer. And so Kendall saw less of him than during the first of the term. But they usually spent the evenings together. Harry Merrow, also a member of the Cross-Country squad, was very likely to turn up at Number 28 after supper, and Kendall had grown to like him very much. There had been another jaunt on _The Dart_ since the day they had been lost in the fog, but the second voyage had been an affair without incident. Kendall had not yet become a proficient swimmer, principally because he had had but three lessons in the art. It was very hard to find time for anything just now. But he had managed thirty strokes on the last occasion and had swallowed only about three quarts of the Wissining River. Gerald and Harry had assured him that he had done excellently, and Kendall promised himself that when Spring came he would complete his education. Another fairly frequent visitor to Number 28 was The Duke. The Duke had a way of knocking subduedly and entering on tiptoe, throwing fearful glances behind him and subsiding into a chair with a long sigh of relief.