Chapter XII. The Downfall - Page 2

combination and team play.

The master's unexpected interest in the shinny game was the first and chief cause of Foxy's downfall as leader of the school, and if Hughie had possessed his soul in patience he might have enjoyed the spectacle of Foxy's overthrow without involving himself in the painful consequences which his thirst for vengeance and his vehement desire to accomplish Foxy's ruin brought upon him.

The story of the culmination of the rivalry between Hughie and Foxy is preserved in John Craven's second letter to his friend Edward Maitland. The letter also gives an account of the master's own undoing--an undoing which bore fruit to the end of his life.

"Dear Ned:--

"I hasten to correct the false impression my previous letter must have conveyed to you. It occurs to me that I suggested that this school afforded unrivaled opportunities for repose. Further acquaintance reveals to me the fact that it is the seething center of the most nerve-racking excitement. The life of the school is reflected in the life of the community, and the throbs of excitement that vibrate from the school are felt in every home of the section. We are in the thick of preparations for a deadly contest with the insolent, benighted, boastful, but hitherto triumphant Front, in the matter of shinny. You know my antipathy to violent sports, and you will find some difficulty in picturing me an enthusiastic trainer and general director of the Twentieth team, flying about, wildly gesticulating with a club, and shrieking orders, imprecations, cautions, encouragements, in the most frantic manner, at as furious a company of little devils as ever went joyously to battle.

"Then, as if this were not excitement enough, I am made the unwitting spectator of a truly Homeric contest, bloodier by far than many of those fought on the plains of windy Troy, between the rival leaders of the school, to wit, Hughie of the angelic face and other-angelic temper, and an older and much heavier boy, who rejoices in the cognomen of 'Foxy,' as being accurately descriptive at once of the brilliance of his foliage and of his financial tactics.

"It appears that for many months this rivalry has existed, but I am convinced that there is more in the struggle than appears on the surface. There is some dark and deadly mystery behind it all that only adds, of course, to the thrilling interest it holds for me.

"Long before I arrived on the arena, which was an open space in the woods in front of what Foxy calls his store, wild shrieks and yells fell upon my ears, as if the aboriginal denizens of the forest had returned. Quietly approaching, I soon guessed the nature of the excitement, and being unwilling to interfere until I had thoroughly grasped the ethical and other import of the situation, I shinned up a tree, and from this point of vantage took in the spectacle. It appeared from Foxy's violent accusations that