CHAPTER I

BARRY LOCKE ARRIVES

Barry didn’t wait for the conductor’s announcement. He was at the car

door before the little Connecticut village came into sight. There was

a glimpse of South Street, shaded, asleep in the afternoon sunshine,

and then the freight-shed interposed a blank yellow countenance. Barry

shifted the light overcoat on his arm――he had wanted to put it in

the trunk, but his mother, suspicious of September in the hills, had

overruled him――and picked up his suit-case just as the conductor bawled

past him, into the hot, dusty interior:

“Wessex! Wessex! Change for Sanborn Mills, Mount Sippick, and Alden!

_We-e-essex!_”

The station threw a welcome shadow and the train stopped. Barry

descended, his brown eyes alight, a smile, slightly shy, already

curving his lips. Others, crowding about him, sent him deeper into the

shade of the platform, his gaze still questing. At least a score of

boys had alighted, and these, mingling with almost as many previous

occupants of the platform, made for sound and confusion. Friends parted

since June sighted one another with loud hails and plowed determinedly

toward a reunion, heedless of all between.

No one, however, took notice of the fifteen-year-old boy who, puzzled

and disappointed, still viewed the fast thinning throng. He was worth

notice, too. Very straight he was, and rather slender; although the

slenderness suggested the process of development rather than the lack

of it. He had brown hair, and eyes that may have been intended to

match it but didn’t because they were very much warmer in tone. Rather

arresting eyes they were, and perhaps the best feature of a countenance

which, while in no way suggesting the classic beauty of Apollo, was

undeniably attractive. The nose was a perfectly good nose, but you

had to stop there; and the mouth was all right, too, and had a nice

smile; and there was the usual chin and forehead, and a coating of tan,

and――well, that’s about all there is to tell――and I haven’t made you

see John Barry Locke as he really looked, after all.

I fancy it was Barry’s expression rather than his features that made

folks warm to him and want to know him and do nice things for him, and

expressions are difficult to portray in print. Perhaps the simplest

way to describe him is to say that Barry looked, in his boyishly eager

yet shy fashion, as though he were ready to like everybody else! Yes,

I think that was the secret of his attraction――just friendliness. And

yet there was something beyond that, too; something promised in those

deep-brown eyes that looked at one so straightly. Maybe it was loyalty.

The last flivver had honked off into silence and the afternoon’s event,

the arrival and departure of the four-eighteen train, had passed into

history. Barry gave up his quest and followed the route taken by the

others, along the platform to the corner of the station and thence

across an area of sun-smitten gravel to the main thoroughfare of

Wessex. His suit-case wasn’t heavy, and he wasn’t going to mind the

walk; only, he didn’t understand why Clyde hadn’t met him as he had

promised. And then, quite abruptly, Clyde was there.

Clyde was rather warm of face and a trifle breathless, a condition

that caused him to voice his greeting in tones of resentment rather

than apology:

“Well! Got here, eh? Gosh, but it’s warm! How are you?”

“Great,” answered Barry, with an enthusiasm the other considered quite

uncalled for. “What time did you get here, Clyde?”

“About a quarter-past two. We had a flat, and lost ten minutes, I

guess. That new chauffeur of Dad’s is a dumb-bell. All thumbs.”

“Dumb-bells are like that,” chuckled Barry. Clyde Allen glanced

questioningly at him and then frowned. Barry had an irritating way

of making jokes that Clyde didn’t fathom. The boys were proceeding

unhurriedly along Main Street, Barry still in possession of bag and

overcoat. Clyde had made a none too emphatic reach for the suit-case,

but Barry had shaken his head and tightened his grasp on it. Now the

latter asked:

“How far is this room of mine, Clyde?”

“Oh, just a little way. Not quite out to the school. You understand how

it was about the other place, don’t you?”

“Why, yes, I guess so,” replied Barry. “Anyhow, it’s all right. I

mean――oh, of course I’m disappointed, Clyde, because I did want to get

into a dormitory, but if I can’t, I can’t.”

“Sure!” agreed the other, with evident relief. “Anyhow, you aren’t

missing anything. Lots of the fellows would be glad to be where you

are. Being outside gives you a heap more――more freedom. And Mrs. Lyle’s

is the best of all the private houses. Gosh! I was disappointed, too,

old top, when Hal sprung it on me! I thought of course he was going in

with Pete Johnston, but Pete fixed up a deal with another chap so he

could get into Meddill, and so――well, Hal had no place to go and the

least I could do was to tell him to stay. I thought of course you’d be

able to get on the campus. But everything’s chockablock this fall. A

whole bunch of chaps have had to go outside, I hear.”

“Are there any other fellows at Mrs. Lyle’s?”

“Yes, I believe she said she had two others. You’ll like it there.

She’s a good scout――Mrs. Lyle. I knew a fellow who was there last year

and he was crazy about it.”

“Is he there now?” asked Barry.

“No, he’s in Dawson this year. He’s in the First, and of course

First-Class fellows want to be on the campus. Last year, you know,

and――and all that.”

“I suppose so,” Barry responded. “Well, I dare say I’ll get along fine

at Mrs. Lyle’s, Clyde, and you mustn’t bother about me.”

“Sure! And you must use our room like it was your own, Barry. Hal said

I was to tell you that. Lots of times you won’t want to go back to

Lyles’ between recitations, and you can come up to Forty-two and make

yourself at home.... That’s the Town Hall over there. Looks like a

relic, doesn’t it? And that’s the Methodist church.”

“Sort of a pretty town,” said Barry.

“Well, yes, but it’s a dead old hole. Only one movie, and that’s

upstairs over the post-office! But the school’s all right. Corking lot

of fellows. I’ll take you around to-morrow and show you the ropes. It’s

a bit late to-day. Say, why didn’t your folks bring you over in the

car? I was sure surprised when you ’phoned me yesterday that you were

going by train.”

“Dad had to go to Hudson on some business and needed the car. He wanted

me to take it, but I didn’t see any sense in that. Besides, the train

was pretty good fun. I hadn’t been on one for a couple of years.”

“I haven’t, either. I’ve got no use for them. Give me an auto every

time. Say, I shouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t any railroad

trains pretty soon! Almost every one has some sort of a car. Oh, well,

for long trips, like out to Chicago, or to San Francisco, maybe. But I

guess we’ll be doing that by airships before long.... You can see Croft

Hall now, if you look past the end of that barn. Dawson’s this side of

it, but it’s behind the trees. The Lyles’ house is beyond this one.

This is Stimson’s. He’s our math instructor.”

Barry wasn’t following Clyde’s chatter very closely. For one thing,

the lightest suit-case will become a burden toward the end of three

quarters of a mile, and an overcoat on a warm day is no comfort, even

if hung over the arm. Besides, Barry found more interest in the scene

than in his friend’s remarks. There were times when he thought Clyde’s

talk a trifle vapid, and this was one of them. He always tried to

banish that thought, however, for he liked Clyde, and, too, owed him a

debt of gratitude. They had left the town well behind and were going

southward on a well-paved road beside which, at intervals, modest

houses, usually flanked by barn and stable, stood back of neat shaded

lawns.

On the right stretched a wide meadow. Now and then Barry caught the

glint of sunlight on the surface of a little river that wound through

it, and, far ahead, a cluster of farm buildings well away from the

road dozed in the shade of four giant elms. What interested him more,

though, was the white dwelling that presently emerged to view beyond

the end of an old red barn.

As they neared it Barry experienced a sense of disappointment. It was

two stories in height, and the peaked roof presented so many warped and

broken shingles that it was difficult to credit it with efficiency. But

the white paint was fresh, there were flowers about the low veranda

across the front, and the windows, between their green blinds, were

hung with clean muslin curtains. Rather a box of a house, thought

Barry, and one promising few luxuries. Not that he demanded luxuries,

exactly; but, until a few days since, he had looked forward to being in

Dawson Hall, and this was very unlike what he had pictured Dawson to be.

There was a somewhat decrepit picket fence in front, and a gate which

obligingly swung inward or outward, but creaked complainingly either

way. A short brick walk between narrow beds of salvia and geraniums and

flaming nasturtiums led to the open doorway. It also led to a boy who

sat on the edge of the low porch and, clasping a knee in a pair of

very brown hands, unwinkingly observed their approach. However, when

they had traversed half the walk he spoke.

“Hello, Allen,” he said.

“Hello,” answered Clyde; and then, as Barry dropped his suit-case and

reached for his handkerchief, he added perfunctorily: “This is Mr.

Locke, Mr. Jones. You fellows might as well get acquainted. Didn’t know

you hung out here, though, Jones.”

The boy on the porch arose and shook hands with Barry. He had hair that

was neither brown nor red but some shade between, a lean, deeply tanned

face, two very blue eyes, and a smile that Barry liked immensely. But

the smile vanished when the youth dropped again to his seat and replied

to Clyde:

“That’s strange, I’ve been here some time.”

“Oh,” said Clyde, in the tone of one dismissing an unimportant topic.

“Well, we’d better find Mrs. Lyle, Barry.”

“She’s gone to town,” said Jones. “Locke’s room is in front, on this

side.” He pointed a thumb over his left shoulder. “You can’t miss it.”

“I’ll go up with you,” said Clyde. “Oh, by the way, what about your

trunk? Did you give your check to the man at the station?”

Barry shook his head ruefully:

“I didn’t think a thing about it!”

“You’re a wonder!” jeered Clyde. “Guess it’s a good thing you’ve got me

here to look after you, kid.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Jones, somewhat surprisingly.

“I was speaking to Locke,” answered Clyde, shortly. Barry saw the scowl

that accompanied the words, and wondered. Jones nodded imperturbably.

“My error,” he murmured. His gaze returned to the road.

Clyde led the way inside, along a narrow hall, and up a stairway. He

was muttering to himself, but Barry caught fragments. “Fresh bounder”

was one of them. Evidently Clyde and the brown-skinned youth downstairs

were not very friendly. Clyde seemed to have regained his equanimity,

however, by the time they reached the second floor. There were four

doors in sight, one at the head of the stairs, one, that of the

bath-room, half-way along the hall, and two more after the stair-well

had been passed. That to the right was barely ajar, the other stood

wide. Clyde, in advance, paused impressively on the threshold and waved

a hand.

“Here you are,” he proclaimed congratulatingly. “How’s this, old top?”

Barry looked past him over a shoulder. There was a protracted moment of

silence. Then, rather haltingly, rather faintly, Barry replied:

“Why, it――it’s very nice, isn’t it?”

* * * * *

“You’d better get the expressman on the ’phone pretty soon,” advised

Clyde, from across the front gate a few minutes later, “and have him

call for your check. He will probably ask you seventy-five cents, but

don’t pay more than fifty. That’s the regular price. Well, glad you

like the room, Barry. Come over a little before six and I’ll take you

around to Bates. Wish I could stay longer, but I promised to see a

fellow at five.”

“That’s all right,” said Barry. “Thanks for getting me fixed up.”

Clyde nodded and went briskly off in the direction of school, a rather

large, fairly tall lad, well set up, very carefully and a trifle

expensively dressed. He was bareheaded, and his dark hair glistened in

the sunlight, every lock carefully plastered into place. Clyde Allen

was a good-looking fellow, and he wasn’t entirely unconscious of the

fact. Barry thought him extremely handsome and didn’t blame him in the

least for being――well, just a bit vain. He watched until Clyde passed

from view, and then went back to the porch.

Jones had disappeared during their visit to the room. Barry wasn’t

sorry, for he had already concluded that he wasn’t going to like Jones

very well. Barry found it difficult actually to dislike any one, but

there were degrees of liking. He took Jones’s place on the edge of the

porch and, stretching his knickered legs before him, thrust his hands

into his pockets and surveyed the world and the future.

The world was quite all right, a warm, scented, sunlit world. Wessex

lay in a hollow formed by two ranges of hills, disputing the little

valley with the East Fork River. Directly in front of Barry, across

the road, stood a white house very like the one behind him. From an

upstairs window of it came faint, tentative sounds as of a bow being

drawn lightly across the strings of a violin. They were not unpleasant.

Beyond the opposite dwelling the land ran levelly to a marsh streaked

in the lengthening rays of the sun with russet and pinkish brown. Half

a mile away the hills began, climbing steeply to a dome-shaped mountain

on the north and waving southward in a series of lesser elevations.

Cows were grazing below the knoll that held the shaded farm buildings,

and a bell tinkled at intervals. Yes, the world was a perfectly good

world, and Barry approvingly dismissed it from his thoughts and

reverted to that second subject, the future.

Somehow Broadmoor School had disappointed him. Or, since save for a

hasty glance from a window of his room he had not yet seen the school,

the circumstances attending his arrival had disappointed him. First

there had been Clyde’s failure to meet him punctually. Then there had

been his introduction to that upstairs room. It had been five days

since he learned that he was not to share Number 42 Dawson with his

friend, and so that disappointment was no longer fresh, but――well, the

substitute for the dormitory room was rather awful. Barry had assured

Clyde that it was quite satisfactory, but that was just because he

hadn’t wanted to hurt Clyde’s feelings.

To be sure, the room was clean and neat, but it was also threadbare;

and the five pieces of furniture, a nondescript assemblage, looked

horribly inadequate. There were the remains――Barry couldn’t think of

a kinder word――of an ingrain art-square in the middle of the floor, a

thing of faded greens and yellows, its borders frayed and its startling

pattern relieved by many lapses of the fabric. It looked very lonely,

for it was not a large carpet and the room, whatever else might be said

of it, was spacious. Between the edges of the carpet and the walls lay

broad expanses of painted floor, expanses of awful greenish gray that

jarred Barry’s sensibilities. As though in atonement for the floor,

the plastered walls had been unevenly calcimined in pale pink. Barry

shuddered at the recollection.

He couldn’t help contrasting that upstairs chamber of horrors with his

rooms at home, and he wondered if it were possible to live contentedly

with that floor and those bare walls for eight long months. Of course

he could send home for things or buy them in the village, but what

could any one put up there that would look as though it belonged? He

wondered whether, after all, he was going to like Broadmoor. He had

taken Clyde’s word for everything. They had been chums――well, not

exactly chums, perhaps, but friends――for years, had gone to high school

together, lived within three houses of each other in Hazen, New York,

and shared acquaintances and interests.

Clyde had come to Broadmoor the year before; he was sixteen years

old to Barry’s fifteen, and a class ahead of him, and Barry had

quite naturally chosen Broadmoor too. His parents had approved

enthusiastically, for they shared Barry’s admiration for Clyde. The two

boys were to room together, of course; that had been understood right

along, until last week. Then this Stearns fellow, a Second Classman

like Clyde, had spoiled that. Barry wondered whether or not Clyde was

really disappointed. He had said he was, but somehow his tone hadn’t

carried conviction. And, after all, it was natural enough for Clyde to

prefer a fellow of his own age as room-mate. Barry could understand

that, of course, only――well, gee! look what it had done to him!

He hadn’t forgotten about his trunk, but in his present mood that

article didn’t seem very important. Nevertheless, if the matter were

to be attended to it was high time he bestirred himself, for it was

almost a quarter after five. He got up with a sigh for wasted dreams

and sought the telephone inside. He was putting the receiver back when

the doorway was darkened and a pleasant voice said:

“Is that you, Crawford? Would you mind taking this basket of grapes

before――”

“Not at all,” said Barry. “I’m not Crawford, though. I suppose you’re

Mrs. Lyle.” He rescued the grapes and drew aside, smiling.

“Why, gracious!” exclaimed the lady; “so you aren’t! You must be the

new boy. Is it Key? No, not――”

“Locke!” laughed Barry. “It’s the next thing to Key, though. Shall I

take these――”

“Oh, you mustn’t trouble!” Mrs. Lyle was plainly flustered. “If you’ll

just put them on top, I’m sure――”

“Better not, I guess,” Barry demurred. The landlady’s arms were already

laden to capacity with packages, and one, plainly labeled “Fresh Eggs,”

looked none too secure.

“Then if you’ll just bring them into the dining-room,” said Mrs. Lyle.

“I hate to take any one into it, too.” She opened a door at the end of

the hall. “Betty’s been away all day and I’ve been so busy――”

Evidently unfinished sentences were the fashion with her, Barry decided

as he followed her into a room which, while it had apparently not

been “picked up” since morning, was pleasantly homy in spite of its

shabbiness. Evidently, too, it was Mrs. Lyle’s custom to give the maid

the whole day off. He set the small basket of grapes on the bright-red

cloth of the table and rescued the eggs, now on the very verge of

demolition. Mrs. Lyle murmured relief, disencumbered herself of the

remaining packages, and smiled at Barry. And right then Barry became

her devoted subject.

She was small and slight, faded and rather tired-looking; but one knew

that not so many years before she had been a very pretty girl. When she

smiled she was still pretty. There was a quality in that smile that

imbued Barry with an instant desire to perform some service for her. He

wondered if she needed any wood chopped or――or anything. He couldn’t

remember ever having chopped any wood, but he was eager to do it!

“I hope you found everything all right in your room,” Mrs. Lyle was

saying. “I meant to be here when you arrived, but I forgot my purse and

had to come back for it, and so――”

“Oh, yes, thanks!” he declared emphatically. “Everything is fine! That

is――well, I wonder, Mrs. Lyle, if I might have a table. Of course if

you don’t happen to have one on hand I can get along perfectly.”

“A table? Why――but――goodness gracious! there _is_ a table! I mean there

_was_ a table! Are you sure――”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Barry said earnestly. Mrs. Lyle’s agitation

made him regret extremely the introduction of the subject.

“But of course it matters! I’ll go up and see what――”

Barry followed her. Mrs. Lyle looked perplexedly at Barry.

“Why, I don’t see what――where――” Then, however, perplexity vanished. “I

know where it is.” She nodded, with conviction. “You wait a minute.”

She went out and along the hall. Curious, Barry followed as far as the

door. Mrs. Lyle had stopped before the closed portal at the head of the

stairs and was knocking on it.

“Toby! Toby Nott!” she called. There were faint sounds from beyond the

door, then a slightly querulous voice answered:

“Yes’m Mrs. Lyle?”

“Open the door, Toby.”

“I can’t! I――oh, well, all right; only, I’m terribly busy, Mrs. Lyle.”

The end of the sentence was delivered through a six-inch aperture.

“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Lyle, “but you can’t have that table, Toby.”

“Huh? What table?”

“The one that was in Mr. Key’s room. You’ll have to put it back, Toby.”

Mrs. Lyle strove to speak firmly, but succeeded only in sounding

apologetic.

“Oh, thunder!” replied an aggrieved voice. “I need that table,

awfully.” The door opened wider, disclosing a strange apparition――a

boy in a bath-robe of barbaric coloring; a tall, extremely thin youth

with unkempt black hair above a pale, annoyed countenance, and a pair

of round spectacles which lent him the likeness of a perturbed owl. One

hand held a glass jar in which some livid object floated nauseatingly

in a cloudy fluid, the other a squirming, palpitant green frog of

heroic proportions. There was a shriek from Mrs. Lyle, a startled grunt

from the boy, and the frog leaped into space.

“Now!” cried Toby Nott, anguish on his face. “Now see what you’ve done!”