As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he lived.... CHAPTER XIV THE SPECTACLE Games and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in before the Christmas holidays. The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring. And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books. As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters, but as the keen-eyed mistress at Betty’s school soon detected the nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between. At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But, it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or opportunity for love affairs.