ames as football "which work the boys up to
excitement and get them into a dangerous state of mind." No one took the
pains to ascertain whether Tracey Campbell was actually expelled from
the school or had merely been withdrawn. At any rate Ridgley School
would see him no more and as the days went on, it seemed less and less
worth while to investigate the circumstances which preceded the
Jefferson game by calling upon Tracey Campbell to confess further
details.

The visit of Bassett Senior to the school--Blow-Hard Bassett as he was
known in certain sections of the West--was sadder and more pathetic. He
was a big man who dressed gaudily; even the tragedy had not served to
remove wholly from his appearance the garish quality that proclaimed his
type. To Mr. Stevens and Doctor Wells his visit was a startling
exemplification of that old saying: "Like father, like son." When they
talked to him it was as if they were talking to Whirlwind Bassett grown
into a man of fifty. His visit was an unpleasant incident,--he showed so
plainly that he had made a failure of his duties as a father and he
groped so helplessly in his grief for the reason why his boy, whose body
he would carry back to the West, had by his own acts brought an unhappy
termination to his career.

"I never understood him," he said to Doctor Wells, "and I suppose I
haven't been just the right kind of father for him. He didn't have any
mother after he was four years old, and even when he was a little feller
I never seemed to have much luck in making him mind me. He was always
doing something to cause a commotion of some sort, like running away or
getting into mix-ups--nothing very bad, you know, just such things as
young fellers are apt to do. Sometimes I talked to him but it never made
much impression."

As Blow-Hard Bassett looked out of Doctor Wells' shaded windows there
was a hint of moisture in his eyes. "He was a determined little feller,"
he remarked after a moment, "and when he'd get a notion in his head it
seemed like nothing would shake it out. I remember one time when a
mongrel dog that they had out on a ranch where we were staying bit him
on the wrist and the little chap--I guess he was only eight years
old--came bawling to me and says, 'He bit me, Pa; you've got to kill
him!'

"I said, 'Don't you see, it was your fault; the dog wouldn't of bit you
if you hadn't been teasin' him,' but he kept on begging me to kill the
mongrel and when I wouldn't do i