h your face off," said Carl. "I don't
understand Professor Frazer's principles like I ought to. I'm not
fighting for them. Prob'ly would if I knew enough. But I don't like
your face. It's too long. It's like a horse's face. It's an insult to
Frazer to have a horse-faced guy listen to him. You apologize for
having a horse face, see?"

"You're bluffing. You wouldn't start anything here, anyway."

"Apologize!" Carl's fist was clenched. People were staring.

"Cut it out, will you! I didn't mean anything."

"You wouldn't," snapped Carl, and rammed his way out, making wistful
boyish plans to go to Frazer with devotion and offers of service in a
fight whose causes grew more confused to him every moment. Beside him,
as he hurried off to football practice, strode a big lineman of the
junior class, cajoling:

"Calm down, son. You can't lick the whole college."

"But it makes me so sore----"

"Oh, I know, but it strikes me that no matter how much you like
Frazer, he was going pretty far when he said that anarchists had more
sense than decent folks."

"He didn't! You didn't get him. He meant----O Lord, what's the use!"

He did not say another word as they hastened to the gymnasium for
indoor practice.

He was sure that they who knew of his partisanship would try to make
him lose his temper. "Dear Lord, please just let me take out just one
bonehead and beat him to a pulp, and then I'll be good and not open my
head again," was his perfectly reverent prayer as he stripped before
his locker.

Carl and most of the other substitutes had to wait, and most of them
gossiped of the lecture. They all greedily discussed Frazer's charge
that some member of the corporation owned saloon lots, and tried to
decide who it was, but not one of them gave Frazer credit. Twenty
times Carl wanted to deny; twenty times speech rose in him so hotly
that he drew a breath and opened his mouth; but each time he muttered
to himself: "Oh, shut up! You'll only make 'em worse." Students who
had attended the lecture declared that Professor Frazer had advocated
bomb-throwing and obscenity, and the others believed, marveling,
"Well, well, well, well!" with unctuous appreciation of the scandal.

Still Carl sat aloof on a pair of horizontal bars, swinging his legs
with agitated quickness, while the others covertly watched him--slim,
wire-drawn, his china-blue eyes blurred with fury, his fair Norse skin
glowing dull red, his chest strong under his tight fo