all, a cloud hung
lower than the rest.

From his position of vantage he could hear scraps of conversation
through the open windows, and see dark figures flitting before the
mellow lamps. The fellowship in the Houses, the good times, the
feeling of home that hung about each room came to him with acute
poignancy as he sat there, vastly alone. In the whole school he had
made not a friend. He had done nothing; no one knew him. No one cared.
He had blundered from the first. He saw his errors now--only too
plainly--but they were beyond retrieving.

There was only a week more and then it would be over. He would never
come back. What was the use? And yet, as he sat there outside the life
and lights of it all, he regretted, bitterly regretted, that it must
be so. He felt the tug at his heartstrings. It was something to win a
place in such a school, to have the others look up to you, to have the
youngsters turn and follow you as you passed, as they did with Charlie
DeSoto or Flash Condit or Turkey Reiter or a dozen of others. Instead,
he would drop out of the ranks, and who would notice it? A few who
would make a good story out of that miserable game of baseball. A few
who would speak of him as the freshest of the fresh, the fellow who
had to be put in Coventry--if, indeed, any one would remember Dink
Stover, the fellow who hadn't made good.

The bell clanged out the summons to bed for the Houses. One by one
the windows dropped back into the night; only the Upper remained
ablaze.

At this moment he heard somewhere in the dark near him the sound of
scampering feet. The next moment a small body tripped over his legs
and went sprawling.

"What in the name of Willie Keeler!" said a shrill voice. "Is that a
master or a human being?"

"Hello!" said Stover gruffly, to put down the lump that had risen in
his throat. "Who are you."

"Me? Shall we tell our real names?" said the voice approaching and at
once bursting out into an elfish chant:

_Wow, wow! Wow, wow, wow!
Oh, me father's name was Finnegan,
Me mother's name was Kate,
Me ninety-nine relations
To you I'll now relate._

"Oh, you're Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, are you?" said Dink,
laughing as he dashed his cuff across his eyes. "The kid that wrote
the baseball story."

"Sir, you do me honor," said Finnegan. "Who are you?"

"I'm Stover."

"The Dink?"

"Yes, the Dink."

"The cuss that translates at sight?"

"You've heard of it?"

"Cracky