Chapter XXIII. Clint Has Stage-Fright

The instructor and the physical director had approached without a sound of warning, and Penny, Clint and Dreer, the latter exhibiting an evident desire to efface himself, stared in surprise for a moment. And at the same time Beaufort, raising himself weakly on one elbow, gazed bewilderedly from Penny to the faces of the newcomers.

"I'm not through," he muttered thickly. "Wait--a minute!"

"I think you are through, Beaufort," said Mr. Daley coldly. "Pick up your coat, please, and put it on. Durkin, do the same."

Silently they obeyed, Mr. Conklin helping the dazed Beaufort to his unsteady feet. He had a bleeding nose and one eye looked far from its best. For his part, Penny, although evidently distressed, showed only a bruised cheek.

"Don't go, Dreer," said Mr. Daley. Dreer halted in his elaborately uninterested departure. "Now, then, boys, what does this mean? Don't you know that fighting is barred here? And don't you think that, if you had to try to kill each other like two wild animals, you might--er--have chosen some day other than the Sabbath?"

No one had any reply to make. "Well," continued the instructor in his careful way, "why don't you--er--say something? Who began this and what was it about?"

"Durkin shied a stone at us as we were going down the hill," said Dreer, "and when we told him to stop it he--he wanted to fight."

"That was the way of it, Beaufort?"

"Aw, find out," growled Beaufort. "I don't have to account to you for what I do."

"Keep a civil tongue, Beaufort," counselled Mr. Conklin, "or it may prove bad for you, my boy."

"You've been told before that you must keep off school property," said Mr. Daley, otherwise known as "Horace."

"I'm not on school property," replied Beaufort defiantly.

"You're not now, but you have been or you wouldn't be here. After this kindly remain away from the school entirely. We've had trouble with you before."

"Sure and you'll have more if you get gay," answered the other with a grin. "When anyone throws stones at my head he gets licked for it."

"Did you do that, Durkin?"

"No, sir," replied Penny quietly. "Thayer and I were lying under the rock here when those fellows came up the hill. They saw us and went on up. Then, pretty soon, they came down again and Beaufort pretended I'd thrown a stone at him and came over here and insisted on a scrap."

"Pretended you threw it? What for?"

"Oh, it's some of Dreer's funny work," replied Penny. "He had it in for me because--for something that happened a while back, and he got Beaufort to pick a quarrel with me."