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When the two boys reached the academy, they had some difficulty in locating a loose window, and they had to use caution in getting to their room. The bed felt so good after the rough experiences of the night that Frank soon joined his snoring companion in the land of dreams, leaving action as to the crowd at the cabin for the morrow.
They met their friendly persecutors of the evening before good-naturedly at breakfast. It was easy for Frank to see that Ritchie and his associates were ready to accept them as gritty comrades who could take a joke as a matter of course.
"You've paid your initiation fee in pluck and endurance, Jordan," said Mark Prescott, the able lieutenant of Dean Ritchie in his rounds of mischief. "You and Upton can consider yourselves full-fledged members of the Twilight Club."
"Good!" laughed Frank as he started for the campus. Before he was out of the building, however, Frank got thinking of his adventures of the evening before. And instead of immediately joining his fellows he strolled around to the side of the academy.
There was a walk, not much used by the students, leading past the kitchen and laundry quarters of the school. As Frank got nearly to the end of this a baseball whizzed by him and he saw Banbury and a crony named Durkin making for it.
Just at that moment, too, Frank noticed a boy wearing a long apron sitting on a stone step just outside the kitchen door.
He was peeling potatoes, and he was peeling them right, fully engrossed in his labors, as though it were some artistic and agreeable occupation.
"Well! well! well!" irresistibly ejaculated Frank. "If it isn't Ned Foreman!"
Chapter XIV
The Row On The Campus
"Shake!" cried Frank, rushing forward and extending a warm hand.
The boy peeling potatoes looked up in some surprise. For a minute he was puzzled. Then his face broke into a genial smile.
"It's the fellow I met at Tipton -- -- " he began.
"That's who -- Frank Jordan."
"Who saved me from getting robbed."
"Put it that way, if you like," answered Frank. "How did you ever come here?"
"Walked, coaxed freight hands, and got some passenger lifts," explained Ned. "You know I told you I was going out of the scissors grinding and into school?"
"I know you did."
"Well, I've landed. I've saved up twenty dollars. That don't go far in tuition, so I'm working my way through school."
"Good for you," cheered Frank. "You're the kind that makes a mark in the world. Say, come up to my room. I want to have a real chummy chat with you."
"I couldn't do that just now," demurred Ned. "You see, I help in the kitchen here from six to eight in the morning, eleven to one at noon and five to seven in the evening."
"I haven't seen you in any of the classes."
"No; one of the professors is coaching me. You see, I need training to get into even the lowest class. As I said, I can't leave my work here now, but I may meet you occasionally after dark."
"Come at four this afternoon."
"Think I'd better?" inquired Ned dubiously.
"Why not?"
"Well, to be candid," answered Ned manfully, "my clothes aren't very good, as you see, and some of the fellows here have pretty well snubbed me, and maybe it would be wiser for me to keep my place."
"Your place?" fired up Frank. "Except among the stuck-up cads, your place is to be welcome to all the privileges of any well-behaved student, and I'll see to it that you get them, too."
"Hi, Jordan; on the domestic list?" broke in Banbury just then. He had regained the baseball and with his companion stood staring at Frank and Ned.
"Hum! I should say so," sniggered Durkin with a chuckle. "Pah! How it smells of onions and dishwater!"
"Take your friend and introduce him to Ritchie," sneered Banbury. "He needs a new catcher for his measly team that we're going to wallop to-morrow."
"Say," spoke Frank steadily, though with a flashing eye, "I'll bet you that my friend here -- understand, my friend, Ned Foreman -- would prove as good a catcher as he has to my knowledge run a business where he was trusted and did his duty well. I'll make another bet -- you'll be the second-rate scholar you are now two years further on, when my friend is the boss of some surveying camp, where the smartest fellow is the one who has learned the cooking and science both -- not a smattering -- but from the ground up."
"Yah!" yawped Banbury, but he saw something in Frank's eye that warned him to sheer off promptly.
"You'll run up against a few cads like that fellow," explained Frank to Ned. "Use 'em up in one chapter, and stick to the real friends I'll introduce you to."
"Jordan, you're a true-blue brick," declared Ned heartily, "but I know from experience how these things go -- -- "
"There's the rally whistle for our crowd, so I've got to go," interrupted Frank; "but four o'clock at my room. You come, or I'll come and fetch you."
Frank bolted off for the campus. As he neared his group of friends he observed the Banbury crowd, just rejoined by their leader and Durkin. Banbury was pointing at Frank and saying something, derisively hailed by his companions. Then Frank saw his stanch champion, Bob Upton, spring forward with clenched fists. Frank hurried his steps, guessing out the situation, and anxious to rescue his impetuous friend from an outbreak.
"Hi, chef!" howled out Durkin, as Frank approached, and Frank knew that the mean-spirited cads had been spreading the story of his meeting with Ned Foreman.
"What have you got to say about it, huh? Who are you?" Frank heard Bob cry out angrily, as he came nearer to the crowd.
Frank could not repress a start as he observed the boy whom Bob was facing. He was a newcomer -- he was Gill Mace. It appeared that the nephew of the Tipton jeweler had been sent to the same school as Frank.
Gill Mace looked as mean as ever. There was a sneer on his face. He was loudly dressed, or rather overdressed. His uncle had probably provided him with plenty of spending money, for he was jingling some coins in his pocket. His money and his natural cheek had evidently made him "solid" with Banbury and the others, for they seemed to be upholding his braggart insolence.
"Don't get hot, sonny," advised Gill. "I said that Jordan needed to make friends, for he never had any where he came from," and then, staring meanly at Frank, he whispered something to Banbury.
"Hello!" broke out the latter. "That so? Jordan, how's the diamond market this morning?"
Frank started as if he had been struck by a whiplash. A bright red spot showed on either cheek. His eyes flashed, his finger nails dug into the palms of his hands.
He advanced straight up to where Gill Mace stood, brushing aside heedlessly all who were in his way. The jeweler's nephew tried to hide behind his cohorts in a craven way, but Frank fixed him with his eye.
"Gill Mace," he spoke in a firm, stern tone, "you have been telling that bully friend of yours some more of the falsehoods you peddled out at Tipton."
"I told him how you stood in that old burg," admitted Gill.
"What do you mean?"
"I said that you robbed my uncle's jewelry shop."