which,
for some reason, Roy had hoped a good deal, had so far worked no relief.
There were moments when Roy was strongly tempted to accuse Horace to his
face and dare him to display the contents of that battered trunk of his
in the Senior Dormitory. But there was always the lack of certainty in
the other's guilt to deter him.

Of Harry, Roy caught but fleeting glimpses. But although she had no good
news for him, no brilliant plans to suggest, she was by no means idle.
She very nearly thought herself into brain fever. So absorbed was she in
Roy's dilemma that the permission wrung from Farmer Mercer to allow the
boys to fish his stream passed entirely out of her mind until after
school had closed. None of the members of the poaching expedition cared
to talk about it, and so Harry remained in ignorance of it for the time
being.

Roy finished the last of his examinations on Thursday afternoon, and,
while he would not learn the results until next week, he was hopeful of
having made a better showing than in the winter. Afterwards he went to
the limit of his prison on the river side and watched from a distance
the placing of the course flags for the race.

Presently from down the river the brown-shirted crews swept into sight,
rowing strongly in spite of their weariness. They had finished the last
work before the race, although in the morning there would be a half-hour
of paddling. Number 2 in the first boat was splashing a good deal as the
slim craft headed toward the landing, but it probably came from
weariness rather than from poor form. The second crew looked pretty well
done up and the coxswain's "Let her run!" floated up to Roy long before
the landing was in sight. After that they paddled slowly in and lifted
their shell from the darkening water as though it weighed a thousand
pounds.

From behind Fox Island, well over toward the farther shore, a row of
white shirts caught a shaft of afternoon sunlight and Roy watched the
rise and fall of the oars as the Hammond four returned home at a good
clip closely pursued by the second crew. Then, on his own side of the
river, a single scull crept into view around the point and Mr. Buckman,
handling the long sweeps with an ease and rhythm that seemed the poetry
of motion, his little brown megaphone bobbing from the cord about his
neck in time to his movements, shot his craft up to the landing. Then,
save for the launch gliding across to the Hammond side, the river was
empty an