“The way they’re telling it, they had been to the Sock and Buskin show, and after it was out they stopped in the Rookery to get an ice-cream soda. As they were passing Pat’s on their way over, some fellow out in front told them that there was one of their college bunkies drunk in a back room. They say they went in and found you lying spread out on a table and so far gone that they thought it would be too much of a job to get you home. So, with the help of the barkeeper and the fellow who had told them, they lugged you out to an old barn in a vacant lot and left you to sleep it off. I didn’t believe ’em, of course. If I had, I’d’ve gone to hunt you up. It’s all a pack of lies, isn’t it? You didn’t drink anything in that miserable dog-hole, did you?” “Nothing but a glass of cold water.” “Tell me,” Purdick commanded; and Larry told the whole story, or so much of it as was clear enough to be recalled. Purdick heard him through without interrupting, and then, out of an experience that was wider――and sadder――than any his big-bodied room-mate had ever gone through, he grappled with the mysteries. “You say the card-room smelled of alcohol and the smell grew stronger: I guess it was meant to. Don’t you know that a person can get drunk just breathing the fumes of the stuff?” “I didn’t know it,” Larry admitted. “Well, it’s so. The sawdust on the floor was probably soaked for you before you went in. Then, with the door shut, you’d soon go off your head.” “But, listen――Markley and Dugger say they carried me out, and that couldn’t have been very long after I went off the handle. Just smelling the stuff wouldn’t make a fellow sleep eighteen hours, would it?” “No; but the glass of water, or what was in it, probably did the rest. You were doped.” For some little time Larry didn’t speak. When he broke the silence, it was to say: “That brings on a lot more talk, doesn’t it, Purdy? Why should those plug-uglies at ‘Pat’s Place’ want to fill me up with lies and then drug me?” “Easy,” said little Purdick. “They were paid to do it.” “What! You mean the Underhill push?” “It’s beating its way into your head at last, is it? Bry Underhill’s been telling it around again, as he did a month or so ago, that you’d never play anything but practice games on the ’Varsity――never come back to Sheddon after this year. He’s cooked up the proper scheme, this time, to knock you out. The story will get around to Brock――Undy will see to it that it does get around to him――and you know how strict he is about the booze.” Again there was a little silence in the big room, and at the end of it Larry started to his feet with his fists clenched.