the newcomer
if the opportunity came, and it was noticeable in the practice that
afternoon, when Teeny-bits got a chance to play with the first team for
a few minutes, that Campbell made a tremendous effort to down the new
member of the squad with a crash.

Bassett was watching on the side lines and that evening he came round to
Campbell's room with a proposition.

CHAPTER III

A PLAN AND A GAME

Campbell and the Western Whirlwind had certain qualities in common; both
had ambitions to be "sporty." They shared an inclination for lurid
neckties, fancy socks and striped silk shirts; they believed themselves
wise as to the ways of the world, and each had been heard to express the
opinion that Ridgley School was a "slow old dump." Campbell was the
leader of the two--he dominated Bassett as a political boss dominates
his hench-men. One reason was that Bassett foresaw favors to be had at
the hands of Tracey Campbell.

Tracey's home was only eight miles away--just on the other side of
Greensboro--and within recent years his life had been greatly changed
through the fortunes of war. To many homes in the busy town of
Greensboro the struggle in Europe had brought privation and to some it
had brought tragedy, but to the Campbells it had brought prosperity.
Campbell, Senior, was a wholesale dealer in leather; he had caught the
market just right and, in the expressive words of his neighbors, had
made "a mountain of money." He had moved from his modest home in the
town and had built a pretentious house on a hillock two miles to the
west. Those of the townspeople who had been inside "the mansion"
declared that every chair and every picture on the wall was screaming
aloud, "He got rich quick! He got rich quick!"

Campbell, Senior, did not believe that the son of a man who had made a
million should remain in the public school, and so he had arranged to
have Tracey go to Ridgley. The younger Campbell had come to the school
on the hill with a certain feeling of superiority that was in no small
measure owing to his belief that his father was richer than the father
of any other fellow in sight.

Bassett had been brought up in a somewhat similar home; his father was a
promoter of mines and oil wells and had come naturally by a bombastic
manner which he had in turn passed on to his only son. The elder Bassett
was known behind his back as Blow-Hard Bassett, and it was said of him
that he owned more diamond stick-pins than any o