“Boys, I am delighted to see you home again, safe and sound,” said Hopkins, putting his cane under his arm and shaking hands with both his friends at once. “I tell you we have been troubled about you, for some of us who returned the second day after the fight, heard the rioters say that you would never leave the city alive.” “We heard them say so, too,” replied Curtis. “But we’re here all the same. Hallo, Bert. And there’s Egan. How’s your hand, old fellow? Lost that little finger yet?”
“No; and I don’t think I’ll have to. Why didn’t you let us know that you were coming?”
“You did know it, or else you couldn’t have met us at the depot,” answered Don, after he had returned his brother’s greeting.
“I mean that you ought to have sent us word this morning,” said Egan. “The ladies would[218] have got up a good supper for you if they had had time to do it.”
“We should have done full justice to it, for we had an early breakfast and no dinner,” Curtis remarked. “But you have not yet told us what is the matter with you, Hop. I hope you were not shot.”
“Oh, no. It is nothing more serious than a sprained ankle,” replied Hopkins.
“And ‘thereby hangs a tale,’” added Egan. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get up to the academy. Hop showed himself a hero if he did run out of the back door.”
“How did you get back to Bridgeport?” inquired Don.
“I went home with the doctor on the morning that you fellows started for Hamilton, you know,” replied Egan. “Well, as soon as he had dressed my hand and the wounds of some of the other boys who were able to walk, we went up the track to the next station, and there we telegraphed for a carriage. To tell the truth I never expected to get home, for the rioters were scouring the country in search of us. We heard of them at every house along the road, and everybody cautioned us to look out for ourselves.”
[219]
During a hurried conversation with their friends, Don and Curtis learned that the people of Bridgeport knew as much about the fight as they did themselves. Perhaps they knew more, for they had heard both sides of the story. The students who came home the day after the fight—the missing ones had all reported with the exception of three, whose wounds were so severe that they could not be brought from the city—had given a correct version of the affair and described the part that every boy took in it. All those who had done their duty like men were known to the citizens, and so were those who gave up their guns when the strikers demanded them. The boys who did the fighting, however, had not a word to say regarding the behavior of their timid comrades. They had an abundance of charity for them.
“We don’t blame them for being frightened,” Don and Curtis often said. “There isn’t a boy in the company who wouldn’t have been glad to get out of that car if he could. When you have been placed in just such a situation yourselves, you will know how we felt; until then, you have no business to sit in judgment upon those who are said to have shown the white feather.”
[220]
The fifteen minutes allotted for hand-shaking having expired, the students fell in and set out for the academy. As they marched through the gate the bell in the cupola rung out a joyful greeting, the artillery saluted them, and the boys in the first, second and fourth companies presented arms. They moved at once to the armory, and after listening to a stirring speech from the superintendent the ranks were broken, and their campaign against the Hamilton rioters was happily ended.
“And I, for one, never want to engage in another,” said Captain Mack, as he and Don and Curtis set out in search of Egan and Hopkins. “Have you heard some of the fellows say that they wish they had been there?”
Yes, they and all the returned soldiers had heard a good deal of such talk from boys who would have died before giving up their guns, and who were loud in their criticisms of Mr. Kellogg, who ought to have stopped the train at least half a mile from the mob, and fired upon it the moment it appeared. What a chance this would have been for Lester Brigham, if he had only been in a situation to improve it! If he had never known before that he made a great mistake by feigning illness on the[221] night the false alarm was sounded, he knew it now. He could not conceal the disgust he felt whenever he saw a third-company boy surrounded by friends who were listening eagerly to his description of the fight. Such sights as these made him all the more determined to get away from the academy where he had always been kept in the background in spite of his efforts to push himself to the front. And worse than all, there was Don Gordon, who had come home with the marks of a rioter’s knife on his coat and belt, who had behaved with the coolness of a veteran, and showed no more fear than he would have exhibited if he had been engaged in a game of snow-ball.
“I’ll bet he was under a seat more than half the time, and that nobody noticed him,” said Lester, spitefully.
“Oh, I guess not,” said Jones. “Gordon isn’t that sort of a fellow. Well, they have had their fun, and ours is yet to come. There will be a jolly lot of us sent down at the end of the term. What do you suppose your governor will say to you?”
“Not a word,” replied Lester, confidently. “He didn’t send me here to risk life and limb by fighting strikers who have done nothing to me, and[222] when he gets the letters I have written him, he will tell me to start for home at once.”
“But you’ll not go?” said Jones.
“Not until we have had our picnic,” replied Lester.
“Perhaps your father won’t care to have Jones and me visit you,” remarked Enoch.
“Oh, yes he will. He told me particularly to invite a lot of good fellows home with me, and he will give you a cordial welcome. I haven’t got a shooting-box, but I own a nice tent, and that will do just as well. I will show you some duck-shooting that will make you open your eyes.”
“All right,” said Enoch. “I’ll go, according to promise, and you must be sure and visit me in my Maryland home next year. Both the Gordons and Curtis will visit Egan at that time, and unless I am much mistaken, we can make things lively for them.”
“Nothing would suit me better,” returned Lester. “I hate all that crowd. Don and Bert went back on me as soon as they got me here, and I’ll never rest easy until I get a chance to square yards with them.”
(Lester learned this from Enoch. He remembered[223] all the nautical expressions he heard, and used them as often as he could, and sometimes without the least regard for the fitness of things. He hoped in this way to make his companions believe that he was a sailor, and competent to command the yacht during their proposed cruise.)
The conversation just recorded will make it plain to the reader that Lester and some of his particular friends, following in the lead of Don and Bert Gordon and their friends, had made arrangements to spend a portion of their vacation in visiting one another. They carried out their plans, too, and perhaps we shall see what came of it.
When Mack and the rest found Hopkins and Egan, they went up to the latter’s room, where they thought they would be allowed to talk in peace; but some of the students saw them go in there, and in less time than it takes to write it, the little dormitory was packed until standing-room was at a premium. The boys were full of questions. What one did not think of another did, and it was a long time before Don could say a word about Hopkins’s experience, which Egan related substantially as follows:
[224]
To begin with, Hopkins did not leave the car because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t help himself. When the rioters voted to disarm the young soldiers, half a dozen pairs of ready hands were laid upon his musket, but Hopkins wouldn’t give it up. Threats, and the sight of the revolvers and knives that were brandished before his face, had no effect upon him; but he could not contend against such overwhelming odds, with the least hope of success. He was jerked out into the aisle in spite of all he could do to prevent it, and dragged toward the door. When the students turned their bayonets and the butts of their pieces against their assailants, the latter made a frantic rush for the door, and Hopkins was wedged in so tightly among them, that he could not get out. His gun was pulled from his grasp, and Hopkins, finding his hands at liberty, seized the arm of the nearest seat in the hope of holding himself there until the mob had passed out of the car; but the pressure from the forward end was too great for his strength. He lost his hold, was carried out of the door by the rush of the rioters, who, intent on saving themselves, took no notice of him, and crowded him off the platform.
[225]
“But before I went, I was an eye-witness to a little episode in which our friend Egan bore a part, and which he seems inclined to omit,” interrupted Hopkins.
“Now, Hop, I’ve got the floor,” exclaimed Egan, who was lying at his ease on his room-mate’s bed.
“I don’t care if you have. There’s no gag-law here.”
“Go on, Hop,” shouted the boys.
“It will take me but a moment,” said Hopkins, while Egan settled his uninjured hand under his head with a sigh of resignation. “When the mob went to work to disarm us, one big fellow stepped up to Egan and took hold of his gun. ‘Lave me this; I’m Oirish,’ said he. ‘I’m Irish too,’ said Egan. ‘Take that with me compliments and lave me the gun;’ and he hit the striker a blow in the face that lifted him from his feet and would have knocked him out of the front door, if there hadn’t been so many men and boys in the way. That fellow must have thought he had been kicked by a mule. At any rate he did not come back after the gun, and Egan was one of the few who got out of the car as fully armed as he was when he went in.”
[226]
Hopkins could be irresistibly comical when he tried, and his auditors shouted until the room rang again. They knew that his story was exaggerated, but it amused them all the same. Egan did say that he was Irish (Hopkins often told him that if he ever denied his nationality his name would betray him), and it was equally true that he floored the man who demanded his gun, and with him one or two of his own company boys who happened to be in the way; but he said nothing about “compliments” nor did he imitate the striker’s way of talking. Among those who felt some of the force of that blow, was Captain Mack.
“That explains how I got knocked down,” said he. “The rioters were trying to drag the professor out of the car, and we were doing all we could to protect him, when all at once some heavy body took me in the back, and the first thing I knew I was sprawling on the floor. I thought I should be trampled to death before I could get up.”
When Hopkins struck the ground he stood still and waited for some of the mob to come and knock him on the head; but seeing that they were looking out for themselves, and that some of[227] his comrades were making good time up the track in the direction of Bridgeport, he started too, doing much better running than he did when he stole farmer Hudson’s jar of buttermilk, and passing several of the company who were in full flight. The bullets sang about his ears and knocked up the dirt before and behind him, and Hopkins began looking about for a place of concealment. Seeing that some of his company ran down from the track and disappeared very suddenly when they reached a certain point a short distance in advance of him, Hopkins stopped to investigate. He found that they had sought refuge in a culvert, which afforded them secure protection from the bullets; but Hopkins was inclined to believe that in fleeing from one danger they had run plump into another. There were strikers as well as students in there; and as he halted at the mouth of the culvert he heard a hoarse voice say:
“You soldier boys had better not stop here. You have made the mob mad, and as soon as they get through with those fellows in the car, they are going to spread themselves through the country and make an end of everybody who wears the[228] academy uniform. I heard some of them say so, and I am talking for your good.”
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