Badger sat in his room. His bandaged head ached painfully, but in his heart there was a glow of pleasure. The surgeon had told him that he would be all right in a day or two, and he had just received a note from Winnie Lee.

"Dear Buck," it read, "I have had a long talk with father. He says that both you and Merriwell fought like heroes, and that your prompt appearance on the scene no doubt saved his life. In spite of this, though, he is not willing that I shall receive calls from you. But I can see that his opposition is not nearly so strong as it was, and I have hopes that it will soon disappear altogether. Father says that the burglars which Merriwell captured will no doubt be sent to State's prison. Thank Frank for me for his great favor in speaking to father for you, as he did--for I can see that father's change toward you is due more to Frank's talk than to your fight, brave as that was. I will meet you as often as I can, Buck, and I will send you a note every day. And we will be true to each other always, in spite of father's opposition.

Your sweetheart, WINNIE."

"There never was any girl truer!" muttered the Kansan, as he read and reread the note. "That's whatever! She is true as steel! But," he continued, "how can I thank Merriwell for his part in the affair? He pulled me through, all right, and there's no mistaking that fact."

Hardly had he uttered these words, than a knock came at the door. "Come in," said Buck--and in walked Frank himself!

"Well, I'm glad to see you," said Buck, "and that's whatever! I want to know how I can thank you for what you've done for me in this affair, in going to Winnie's father in the way you did."

A gleam came into Frank's eyes as he sat there, and a smile played on his lips.

"My dear fellow," he said finally, "I don't want any reward from you or any one else for what I do, by way of helping them out. I do the best I can in that respect--the same as you or anyone else would do--and that's reward enough for me--a clear conscience! Thanks, all the same, Buck."

CHAPTER XXI.

BAD NEWS.

So sunshine follows storm!

It was a jolly party aboard the _Merry Seas_, as she bowled along on her way from New Haven to New York. It was composed of Frank Merriwell and a number of his intimate friends; and wherever Frank and his friends were, Dull Care usually hid his agued face and gave place to smiling Pleasure.

"That grumbling old boatman at the New Haven wharf was a liar!" groaned Dismal Jones, as if it were a grief that he had not found the boatman's unpleasant prognostications true.

"What did he say?" asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nostrils.

"He said that a smoker of cigarettes is always a measly runt!" grunted Bruce Browning, from the big chair in which he had ensconced himself almost as soon as he came aboard, and which he had hardly left since.

"You're another!" said Danny. "He didn't say anything of the kind."

"He was a poet," said Dismal, "and he threw his comment into rime. I was taken in by him, I suppose, because he seemed to be half-way quoting Scripture:

"'The Pharisees were hypocrites, And the _Merry Seas_ is a ship o' fits!'"

"A ship o' fits? Nothing eccentric about this steamer, so far as I can see!"

"Except Danny Griswold!" exclaimed Bink Stubbs. "He is enough to give anything fits."

"Something your tailor is never able to give you!" Danny retorted.

"Sit down!" growled Browning. "You are shutting out the view!"

"What view?" Danny demanded.

"The view of the steamer's funnel. I'd rather look at that. It can smoke and keep still--and you can't."

Inza and Elsie came along, accompanied by Merriwell and Bart Hodge.

Winnie Lee, who was at present under her father's displeasure for her persistence in continuing to encourage Buck Badger, was not aboard, but Amy May was a member of the party. At the moment, she was conversing gaily with Bernard Burrage, Inza's semi-invalid father, on the forward-deck.

"We're going to have a fog!" said Merriwell, speaking to Bruce and those near. "I have been hoping it would hold off until we reach New York, but it isn't going to."

"I'd rather be in a ship that has fits now and then, than to be stuck in a fog-bank!" Bink declared. "I guess that New Haven boatman was a prophet, after all."

The _Merry Seas_ was a steamer running on a somewhat irregular schedule to New Haven and New London, and back to the great metropolis by the sea route along the ocean side of Long Island, touching at one or two Long Island points.

Merriwell's friends had decided on a steamer voyage to New York and back as a change from the usual work and athletics at Yale. Not that they were tired of either. But nothing of signal importance was on the program to detain them in New Haven, and they were away, therefore, for this short trip by boat.

The ordinary Sound route between New Haven and New York was familiar ground to every member of the party, and something new was desired.

Hence they had taken the _Merry Seas_, which had steamed to New London, and out to sea between Block Island and Montauk Point, and had then laid her course down the Long Island coast for New York harbor.

Inza laughed at Bink's lugubrious declaration. Gamp was laughing, too.

"If we get stuck in a fog, we can have Joe Gamp yell a few times for us.

That will do for a fog-horn."

"Then the _Merry Seas_ will have fits, sure enough!" said Bink.

Gamp looked serious.

"Well, honest, now, that dud-dud-don't sus-sound so funny to mum-me as it dud-does to you. Owned a cuc-cuc-carf once, that was pup-prancing raound in the med-der pup-pup-pasture, and I gug-got so tickled that I just sus-set daown and hollered. Goshfry! you wouldn't believe it, bub-bub-but that cuc-carf fell over dead's a stun wall!"

"Gave it heart-disease, of course!" Bink gravely observed. "Not to be wondered at."

"I'm just tut-tut-telling this story as a warning tut-to you!" Joe solemnly observed. "The hoss dud-dud-doctor said that the pup-poor thing's head was weak. Sus-so when we get into a fuf-fog and I begug-gin to holler, bub-bub-better pup-put cotton into your ears, Binky!"

Stubbs fell back into Danny's arms.

"Ar-r-r-r!" he gurgled. "I've got 'em now. Fits!"

"I'll give you fits, if you don't stop tumbling over against me!" Danny howled, giving Bink a push that landed him in Browning's lap. Everybody laughed, and Merriwell and his companions walked on round the steamer's rail.

"It hurts me to think that I must separate soon from all those jolly fellows!" Merry observed, in a saddened voice. "But commencement is rushing this way at railroad speed, and most of them will go out of Yale then forever."

"We'll not get blue about it until we have to," said Elsie, though the thought had saddened her more than once.

"Just see how the fog is coming down!" Inza observed.

"h.e.l.lo!" cried Hodge, "another vessel!"

A steamer hove into view through the thickening mist. The boats began to sound their whistles.

"A sort of Flying Dutchman!" remarked Merriwell, and, indeed, the pa.s.sing steamer did seem more a phantasm of the fog than a real vessel carrying living, breathing people. The _Merry Seas_ sounded her whistle at frequent intervals as she pushed on into the fog, and for some time after the steamer had vanished her hoa.r.s.e whistle could also be heard.