"About half a bottle of horse liniment," said the Tennessee Shad, crawling back into bed. "Only, don't tell the others if you want to see how much dead game sportiness there is in them by to-morrow morning." The affair made a great noise and, as Stover suppressed the transformation worked by the Tennessee Shad, Slops Barnett and his companions did not exactly show those qualities of Stoic resignation which might be expected from brazen characters with their view of life. Meanwhile, the skies cleared and the earth hardened, and the air resounded with the cries of baseball candidates. Much to his surprise, Dink found at the end of the strenuous day no impelling desire to plunge into fast life. Still the conviction remained for a long time that his soul had been surrendered, that not only was he destined for the gallows in this world, but that only the prayers of his mother might save him from being irrevocably damned in the next. It was a terrific thought, and yet it brought a certain pleasure. He was different from the rest. He was a man of the world. He had known--LIFE! The episode ended as episodes in the young days end--in a laugh. "I say, Dink," said the Tennessee Shad one afternoon in April, as, gloriously reveling on the warm turf, they watched the 'Varsity nine. "Say it." "In your dead-game sporting days did you ever, by chance, paint your nicotine fingers with iodine?" "How in blazes did you know?" "Used to do it myself," said the Shad reminiscently. Then he added: "Thought yourself a lost soul?" Stover began to laugh. "All alone in a cold, cold world--wicked, very wicked?" "Perhaps." "And it was rather a nice feeling, too, wasn't it?" "I didn't know, you----" said Dink, blushing to find himself back in the common herd. "Me, too," said the Tennessee Shad, sucking a straw. "Good old sporting days!" Presently he began mischievously: "_Then stand by your glasses steady, This world is a----_" But here Dink, rising up, tumbled him over. XX With the complete arrival of the spring came also a lessening of Dink's requested appearances at Faculty meetings, his little evening chats in The Roman's study on matters of disciplinary interpretation and the occasional summons through the gates of Avernus to quail before the all-seeing eye. It was not that the spirit of Spartacus was faint, or that his enmity had weakened toward The Roman--who, of course, without the slightest doubt, was always the persecutor responsible for his summons before the courts of injustice. The truth was, Stover had suddenly begun to age and to desire to put from himself youthful things. This extraordinary phenomenon that somehow does happen was in some measure a reflex action.