"Eh! Are you sick, Deacon? Are you all right?"
"Sure--dreaming," came the muffled reply.
There was something unreal to Deacon about the morning. The sunlight
was filled with sinister glow; the voices of the rowing men were
strange; the whole environment seemed to have changed. It was
difficult for Jim Deacon to look upon the bronzed faces of the
fellows about the breakfast table, upon the coach with his stiff
moustache and glittering eyeglasses--difficult to look upon them and
realize that within a few hours his name would be anathema to them,
that forever where loyal men of Baliol gather he would be an outcast,
a pariah.
That was what he would be--an outcast. For he had come to his
decision: Just what he would do he did not know. He did not know
that he would not stroke the Baliol varsity. Out of all the welter
of thought and travail had been resolved one dominant idea. His
father came first: there was no evading it. With all the
consequences that would follow the execution of his decision he was
familiar. He had come now to know what Baliol meant to him as a
place not only of education, but a place to be loved, honoured,
revered. He knew what his future might be. But--his father came first.
Arising from the breakfast-table, he spoke to but one man, Junior
Doane.
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