“Dick was up to the room last evening just before Larry came in. He hadn’t heard the story then. You couldn’t make _him_ believe that Larry is telling anything but just the plain straight truth.” “Of course he’s telling the truth. Trouble is, it’s going to sound too improbable to be believed. What Larry ought to do is to go right after this Underhill bunch and show it up――prove that it was a frame-up.” “That’s what he said he was going to do, last night,” said Purdick. “All right,” McKnight nodded. “You tell him when he’s ready to start in he can count upon me and all the fellows in our house. We’re for him, even if it takes a round robin to the faculty.” Purdick nursed that little offer of help and held himself in readiness to spring it when Larry should again broach the subject of a just vengeance upon the Underhill plotters. But when another evening had all but passed, and Larry hadn’t once mentioned the “frame-up,” its perpetrators, or the humiliating blow that Coach Brock had dealt him, Purdick could no longer contain himself. “Ollie McKnight says you’re put off the team,” he said, stooping to untie his shoes. “Is that so?” Larry nodded. “Did you tell Brock what you told me?” Larry nodded again, adding: “He didn’t believe what I told him, of course; nobody would.” “Well?” Purdick broke out raspily. “Are you going to take it lying down from this bunch of money-rotten highbinders? You said last night that you were going after them for blood.” Larry sat back in his chair at the study table, and the good gray eyes were a bit gloomy. “I know I did, Purdy, and I meant it――then.” “But you don’t mean it now?” “No.” “Why?” Larry was silent for a moment. “I don’t know as I could make you understand, though I guess maybe Dick Maxwell would. I’ve got a horrible temper, Purdy.” “Yes you have!”――with what was meant to be scathing irony. “You’re just too easy for any common kind of use――chicken-hearted where other people are concerned, _I’d_ call it!” “Don’t you make any such mistake as that,” Larry said quickly, with the gloom in his eyes changing swiftly to the fighting glow that came into them when he was struggling for that extra yard on the foot-ball field. “I could smash every man in that gang and never turn a hair!” “Then why don’t you do it?” “Well, partly because I don’t dare to.” “Afraid?”――incredulously. “Yes; afraid of myself.” “Ump!” said little Purdick; “I wear a six-and-three-quarters hat. I guess you’ll have to make it plainer than that for a head the size of mine.” “I’m just afraid to let go, that’s all. You’ve read in war stories how men, soldiers, who have been decent, sober fellows all their lives get to be brutes and devils when they let the brute-and-devil part of ’em come to the top. I’ve been holding my brute-and-devil down ever since I was a little kid, and I don’t dare to let it get up now. That’s all there is to it, Purdy.”