ess us!"

The three sat in long silence. Finally the Tennessee Shad spoke:

"I am afraid Doc was sore because we tried to freeze him out at first.
It was a mistake."

No one noticed this.

"Great Willie Keeler!" said Dennis suddenly. "If this thing had been a
success we'd have been ruined!"

"But what right," said Dink, unwilling to give up the fight, "had he
to pay the Eureka such prices. Who authorized him?"

"A vote of fifty-one per cent. of the stock," said the Tennessee Shad.

"But he never said anything to us--the forty-nine per cent. Has the
minority no rights?"

"The minority," said the Tennessee Shad, speaking beyond his horizon,
"the minority has only one inalienable right, the right to indorse."

"I'll get even with him," said Dink, after a blank period.

"I suppose," said Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, "that's what's
called Finance."

And the Tennessee Shad nodded assent:

"Higher Finance, Dennis."

XV

During the busy October week Dink found little time to vent the
brewing mischief within him. The afternoons were given over to the
dogged pursuit of the elusive pigskin. In the evenings he resolutely
turned his back on all midnight spreads or expeditions to the
protecting shadows of the woods to smoke the abhorrent cigarette, for
the joy of the risk run. At nine o'clock promptly each night he dove
into bed, wrapped the covers about his head and, leaving the Tennessee
Shad deep in the pages of Dumas, went soaring off into lands where
goals are kicked from the center of the field, winning touchdowns
scored in the last minute of play and bonfires lighted for his special
honor. He was only end on the scrub, eagerly learning the game; but
with the intensity of his nature that territory, which each afternoon
he lined up to defend, was his in sacred trust; and he resolved that
the trust of his captain should not be misplaced if it lay in his
power to prevent it.

However, the busy mind was not entirely inactive. With the memory of
his financial disappointment came the resolve to square himself with
The Roman and turn the tables on Doc Macnooder.

The opportunity to do the first came in an unexpected way.

One evening P. Lentz came in upon them in great agitation.

"Why, King," said Dennis, who was lolling around, "you're excited,
very, very much excited!"

"Shut up!" said the King of the Kennedy, who was in anything but a
good humor. "It's the deuce to pay. I've had a first warnin