WHEN the Westcott boys gathered Monday morning at the corner outside the school building, every third comer bore a newspaper in his hand and hot indignation in his heart. Only those who did not read the papers, and had not learned the news which Mike and Dickie brought to the quarters, wore the complacent smile which they had carried from the field on Saturday. President John’s friends, the reporters, had done their work thoroughly. While most of the Sunday journals merely announced the result of the game, or gave a few inches of space to a more or less inaccurate description, the _Trumpeter_ and the _Mail_ each sacrificed to it the best part of a column on the page devoted to sports, introduced by heavy headlines such as: WESTCOTT’S KNEW THE SIGNALS. SENSATIONAL CHARGES AGAINST BACK BAY BOYS. GAME PROTESTED. INTERVIEW WITH PRES. SMITH! From the interview it appeared that President John saw the affair in a very serious light; that the league stood for the highest ideals in sport,—a familiar phrase in the mouth of its president,—and would certainly deal sternly with dishonorable practices of any kind. A special meeting of the managing committee of the league was to be called immediately to consider the protest. If the charge should be sustained, clearly the only fair course would be to declare the game forfeited to Newbury, the score to stand on the record as one to nothing. To say that the Westcott lads felt indignant at being thus advertised as unscrupulous cheats when they knew themselves absolutely innocent, is like describing a raving maniac as the victim of hallucination. They boiled and bubbled with rage. If President John had shown himself at the corner of Otway Street at that moment, they would have flown to mob him, though every bell in the Westcott school were clanging in their ears. But as the exalted official did not present himself to be mobbed, and the school gong did ring, they filed obediently in, and taking their seats, brooded in sullen bitterness on the outrage. A boy’s sense of justice—or, as some one has better expressed it, sense of injustice—is always morbidly keen. The boys at Westcott’s were used to a life in which the good things flowed in on them naturally, with few questions as to whether they were deserved or undeserved. Good behavior, fair work, regard for their parents’ wishes, constituted the price they were expected to pay; even on this discounts were sometimes allowed. Flat over-riding of just rights had entered into their experience as little as physical hardship. They reared against the blow like a young, high-spirited horse which feels for the first time the sting of a cruel whip.