Ye know how hard an Idol dies,an'what that meant to me--E'en take it for a sacrifice,acceptable to Thee.
--KIPLING
THE ball game on Friday,the thirteenth,was a great event this year.
The Sunrise football eleven had held the championship record with an uncrossed goal line in the autumn.The basket-ball team had had no defeat this year.Debating tests had given Sunrise the victory.
That came through Trench and the crippled student.And the state oratorical struggle repeated the story,a conquest,all the greater because Victor Burleigh,the athlete,wore also the laurels of oratory.
And why should he not,with that fine presence and magnificent voice?
As Dr.Fenneben listened to his forceful logic he saw clearly the line for the boy's future,a line,he thought,that could end at last only in the pulpit.
One more battle to fight now and Lagonda Ledge and the whole Walnut Valley would go down in history as famous soil.
It was a banner year for Sunrise,and enthusiasm was at fever pitch,which in college is the only healthy temperature.
In this last battle Sunrise turned again to Victor Burleigh as its highest hope.Although this was his first game for the season,he had never failed to bring victory to the Sunrise banners,and in all his base-ball practice he was as unerring as he was speedy.
And then success was his habit anyhow.So "Burleigh at the bat"was the slogan now from the summit of the college ridge to the farthest corners of Lagonda Ledge;and idol worship were insignificant compared to the adulation poured out on him.
And Burleigh,being young and very human,had all the pleasure the adoration of a community can bring to its local hero.
For truly,few triumphs in life's later years can be fraught with half the keen joy these school day victories bring.
And the applause of listening senates means less than good old comrades'yells.
Vincent Burgess,A.B.,Greek Professor from Boston,seemed to have forgotten entirely about types and geographical breadths and seclusion for profound research amid barren prairies.
He was faculty member on the Athletic board now and enthusiastic about all college sports.Sunrise had done this much for him anyhow.
In addition,the young educator was taking on a little roundness,suggestive of a stout form in middle life.
But Vincent Burgess had not forgotten all of the motives that had pulled him Kansas-ward,although unknown to Dr.Fenneben,he had already refused to consider a position higher up in an eastern college.
He was not quite ready to leave the West yet.Of course,not.
Elinor Wream was only half through school and growing more popular as she was growing more womanly and more beautiful each year.
His salvation lay in keeping on the grounds if he would hold his claim undisturbed.
Burgess had come to Kansas,he had told Fenneben,in order to know something of the state where his only sister had lived.
He did not know yet all he wished to know about her life and death here.
Her name was never spoken in his father's presence after she came West,so great was that father's anger over her leaving the East.And deep in Vincent's mind he fixed the impression that his daughter had died as unreconciled to her brother as to her father himself.
This was all his own business,however,and hidden deep,almost out of sight of himself,was a selfish motive that had not yet put a visible mark on the surface.
Burgess wanted to marry Norrie Wream,and he wanted her to have all the good things of life which in her simple rearing had been denied her.
The heritage from his father's estate included certain trust funds ambiguously bestowed by an eccentric English ancestor upon someone who had come West not long before his death.
These funds Vincent held by his father's will--to which will Joshua Wream was witness--on condition that no heir to these funds was living.
If there were such person or persons living--but Burgess knew there were none.Joshua Wream had made sure of that for him before he left Cambridge.And yet it might be well to stay in Kansas for a year or two--much better to settle any possible difficulty here than to have anything follow him East later.
For Burgess had his eye on Dr.Wream's chair in Harvard when the old man should give it up.That was a part of the contract between the two men,the old doctor and the young professor.
Until the night when Bond Saxon forced him to take an unwilling oath,Burgess had had a comfortable conscience,sure that his financial future was settled,and confident that this assured him the hand of Elinor Wream when the time was ripe.With that October night,however,a weight of anxiety began that increased with the passing days.
For as he grew nearer to the student life and took on flesh and good will and a broader knowledge of the worth of humanity,so he grew nearer to this smoothly hidden inner care.And,outside and in,he wanted to stay in Kansas for the time.
In the weeks before the big ball game,Victor Burleigh seemed to have forgotten the glen and the west bluff above the Kickapoo Corral.The girls who would have substituted for Elinor in the afternoon ramble took up much of the big sophomore's time,and he never seemed more gay nor care free.
And Elinor,if she had a heartache,did not show it in her happy manner.
On the afternoon before the ball game,a May thunderstorm swept the Walnut Valley and the darkness fell early.As Dennie Saxon waited on the Sunrise portico before starting out in the rain,Professor Burgess locked the front door and joined her.Victor Burleigh was also waiting beside a stone column for the shower to lighten.
Burgess did not see him in the darkening twilight and Burleigh never spoke to the young instructor when it was not necessary.
"I must be nervous,"Professor Burgess said,trying to manage Dennie's umbrella and catching it in her hair.
"I had a letter today that worried me."
"Too bad!"Dennie said sympathetically.
"I'll tell you all about it sometime."
