How did we get out of it? Well, if you want to catch the last car, old
man, I'll have to hit the high spots on the sequel. Of course, it was a
tremendous scandal--a memorial meeting breaking up in a fight. We all
stood to be expelled, and some of the Faculty were sorry they couldn't
hang us, I guess, from the way they talked. But in the end it blew over
because there wasn't much of anything to hang on any one. The telegrams
were all traced to the agent at Weeping Water, and he identified the
sender as a long, short, thick, stout, agricultural-looking man in a
plug hat, or words to that effect. What's more, he declared it wasn't
his duty to chase around town confirming messages--he was paid to send
them. Hogboom had a harder time, but he, too, explained that he had come
home from Weeping Water a day late, owing to a slight attack of
appendicitis, and that when he found himself late for chapel he had
climbed up into the balcony through a side door to hear the chapel talk,
of which he was very fond, and had found, to his amazement, that he was
being reviled by his friends under the supposition that he was dead and
unable to defend himself. Nobody believed Hogboom, but nobody could
suggest any proof of his villainy--so the Faculty gave him an extra
five-thousand-word oration by way of punishment, and Hogboom made
Perkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. Poor
Hoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of his
engagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying to
make a good showing and redeem himself, he didn't have time to work up
another before Commencement--while the rest of us lived in mortal terror
of exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though it
was some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the scheme
had worked--for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon.