Kendall wrote the letter to his father that afternoon, about the time he was accustomed to chase the pigskin. He felt rather better after the letter was finished, and he took it down and dropped it into the letter box in front of Oxford Hall with a sigh of relief. At least, his parents would know that his conscience was clear. He wondered if his father would be very angry with Mr. Collins! To anticipate a little, however, Mr. Burtis’s reply when it reached his son was not entirely satisfactory to that youth. In the first place, asked that worthy Puritan, why had Kendall been sitting around in a drug store? Had he joined the town loafers? Satan, reminded Farmer Burtis, was still finding mischief for idle hands to engage in. Bluntly he suggested that Kendall remain at school and study his lessons and not go gallivanting into the city. As for the punishment, he guessed it wouldn’t do Kendall any harm to have to stay around the school and keep away from the football field; he had heard of boys getting their arms and legs broken playing football! Kendall’s mother, however, wrote a letter full of sympathy for Kendall and indignation at Mr. Collins. That letter was like a pat on the back. The only unsatisfactory part of it was where Mrs. Burtis said she didn’t see why Kendall needed to have shielded those bad boys who really merited the punishment. Kendall was for a moment disappointed in his mother. But he presently “guessed that a woman doesn’t look at those things in quite the way a man does,” and viewed her more leniently. When he replied he explained at great length that it would have been a most dishonorable action to have revealed the identity of the Broadwood fellows, and hinted that nothing short of boiling oil or melted lead would ever induce him to speak. Then he struck the pose of a martyr for a page or so and inscribed himself “Your loving son, Kendall.” But these letters and replies came later, and we are getting ahead of our story.