Dick shook his head. “I can’t understand it any better than you can, Larry. But there’s a reason, if you could find it. You’re not worrying about anything, are you?” “Home matters, you mean? There’s nothing to worry about at home. No; my grief is right here, with myself.” Then, with a look of wretchedness that was pretty foreign to the good, wide-set eyes: “It’ll break my heart, Dick, if I have to flunk out. And I’m headed straight for it now, sure as a gun!” Dickie Maxwell got up and began to walk the floor with his hands in his pockets. Finally he said: “Say, Larry; how much do you know about Psychology?” Larry grunted. “Nothing; except that I don’t take much stock in it. Why?” “I’ve been messing in it a little lately. There’s a lot of the stuff that I don’t understand, but there are some things that I do. For instance, if you get off on the wrong foot in a sprint, the wrongness is likely to stick to you through the whole race.” “Everybody knows that much,” Larry admitted. “But what has that got to do with my ‘busting’?” “I was just coming to that. If you blow up in something in the morning, you’re likely to go on blowing up all day.” “All right; that’s exactly what I do.” “Your section has shop work in the mornings, doesn’t it?” “Yes.” “And it’s in the shops that you begin to go bad, isn’t it?” “For two solid weeks I’ve been breaking or spoiling everything I’ve touched.” “There you are. With such a send-off, old Doctor Psychology would say that, unless you should fetch yourself up with a round turn, you’d be likely to go on foozling all day. And that’s what you do.” “You’ve said it. But that doesn’t get me anywhere.” “Wait: we’ve chased it back to the shop work. Now let’s take another tack. Have you got any ‘lame dogs’ in the shops――fellows that follow you around and try to get helped?” “Yes, one; fellow named Crawford. He is sticking to me yet, though goodness knows there isn’t any reason why he should.” “Hah!” said Dick, dropping into a chair. “Snitty Crawford, eh? I don’t much like that big fumbler, Larry.” “I don’t either. But he’s such a miserable dub in Prac. Mechan., that I felt as though somebody ought to give him a boost.” “Know him any, outside of the class work?” Larry shook his head, and Dick went on: “It just so happens that I do. He’s the worst sort that ever gets into college; a fawner on some fellow with more money than brains. Off the campus he’s Bry Underhill’s shadow.” Larry jumped as if some one had slapped him. In a flash little Purdick’s warning, long since forgotten, came back to him――“a spender always gets a crowd around him――of the kind that’ll do his dirty work for him.” Could it be possible―――― “Say, Dick,” he broke out savagely; “do you suppose anybody could have been framing me up to ‘bust’ on this shop work, right along?”