“It was a ‘frame-up,’ just as you say, Purdy,” he said, speaking slowly as he always did when his temper was threatening to get out of control. “I’ve tried, all along, not to be vindictive toward Underhill and his crowd, but this thing hits the limit. I’m going after that fellow now, and he’ll be the one who won’t come back to Sheddon next year instead of me! “Now, I want you to do me a little favor. I’m as hungry as a wolf, but I don’t want to face the bunch at the supper-table to-night. Slip down and see Mother Grant and ask her if you can’t bring my supper up to me. You can tell her I’ve got a bad headache, and you won’t miss the truth by a sixty-fourth of an inch. Skip for it while I go to the bath-room and hold my head under the cold-water faucet. I want to be able to think straight after I get a few calories inside of me.” XII FRIENDS IN NEED After little Purdick had seen Larry put away a trayful of supper, which had to do duty for itself and two other missed meals, with an appetite that seemed to make no account of the left-over headache, he hoped Larry would tell him what plan he had in mind for getting square with Bryant Underhill and his unprincipled accomplices. But there proved to be nothing doing in that line. With the supper despatched, Larry hurled himself upon his books after the manner of a fellow who has lost a whole day out of his calendar and is determined to make it up in the shortest possible interval of time. And when Purdick went to bed at half-past ten, his room-mate was still digging away, and nothing more had been said about the Underhill square-up. The next day it was just the same. How Larry explained things to his professors, made up the lost day’s class-cuts, and contrived to get credit for the tests he had missed, were matters upon which Purdick was left uninformed. But Ollie McKnight, between whom and little Purdick there had grown up an intimacy which was as odd as it was comradely, brought in a bit of news that was calculated to key any friend of Larry’s up to the fighting pitch. It was to the effect that Brock, the head coach, had taken Larry off the foot-ball team; had either suspended or fired him, McKnight didn’t know which. “That’s simply an outrage!” Purdick burst out, adding: “I suppose you know what it comes from?” “Sure,” said the son of Consolidated Steel; “Brock’s heard the story that’s going around about Larry’s being off on a bat. How much do you know about it, Purdy? Is any part of it true?” Purdick told what he knew, and McKnight gave a low whistle. “Larry can’t deny it, eh?――or, at least, can’t deny anything but the intention? And his explanation, which you and I take at its face value, of course, won’t look very good to people who don’t know Larry; in fact, I shouldn’t wonder if a good many of the fellows wouldn’t call it a rather clumsy lie. What does Dickie Maxwell say about it?”