Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he slipped into his coat, slapped a cap on his head, and, gathering in Buckhart, left the house. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV FROM BAD TO WORSE. For the next few days, Bob Hollister saw more of Jarvis Blake than he had in as many weeks before that. The big, blond fellow took to dropping in at his rooms at all hours of the day or night, and, though he usually had some plausible reason for so doing, it might have been observed that he invariably turned the talk into the channel of football matters before he had been there five minutes. This was not difficult to do. More often than not, he did not have to introduce the matter at all, for Bob was always ready to meet him even more than halfway. But the result was that the occasional half-hearted attempts of Hollister to do a little studying were completely frustrated. Bob really meant well. He fully intended to take a brace and follow the advice which had been given him by Merriwell, and by the dean himself, and had it not been for these regular visits of Blake, he might possibly have succeeded in occasionally absorbing a few facts from his textbooks which would have staved off for a little while the inevitable smash; for his roommate, Jim Townsend, though a fellow who took an absorbing interest in all branches of athletics, had long ago seen whither his chum was drifting, and had resolutely refused to discuss anything pertaining to football with him during the evenings. But Blake had no such compunctions. He seemed to take a particular delight in running in about eight o’clock with some idea about the game which had occurred to him, and about which he wanted Bob’s opinion. The natural result was that the entire evening was spent in discussion, and absolutely no studying was done. As an equally natural consequence, Hollister continued to make a fearful showing in the classroom, accumulating zero after zero with a regularity which was appalling. Townsend tried persuasion at first, urging his friend to take a brace before it was too late, and pointing out what the extremely unpleasant result would be if he did not. Each time Bob would acknowledge in a good-natured way that he was in the wrong, and vow that he would turn over a new leaf and do some cramming that very night. But when the evening came and Blake appeared with his insidious questions and arguments on football matters, books would be thrown quickly aside and Hollister would enter joyfully into the discussion which generally lasted until bedtime. Once or twice Townsend tackled Blake himself, showing him clearly how much harm his visits were doing Hollister; but the big, blond chap laughed down his arguments, treated the matter as something which Townsend’s fears had greatly exaggerated, and calmly went on his way.