IT was a gray afternoon, late in April and cold enough for March, when Billy Bennett, going out of the building to the school grounds, detected a new note in the usual hubbub. There were a hundred or more boys gathered in one corner and listening to some one who was speaking.

Feeling in the school was intense. For the first time in its history there was an attempt to unite the student body under one head, thus depriving the class presidents of some of their power. The project was led by some of the best spirits, in the hope of gaining a better name for the school, and many of the teachers were, without precedent, taking a quiet part.

As Billy neared, he could hear above other angry voices the raucous, high-pitched tones of the cultus^[1] Kid, otherwise Jim Barney. He was a stickler for the “Jim.” “Just plain Jim; no handles to my name,” he would say if offered the courtesy of “Mr. Barney.” He had been for years the bully of his class, and now he aspired to be the boss of the school. He was entreating and menacing by turns, a master of the baser sort of eloquence.

“You cheap skates! Call yourselves men, do you? There’s not one of you with enough backbone to bolster a twine string! Why, you chew gum because you dass’n’t touch tobacco; and one soda pop ’ll make the whole bunch of you dippy!”

“Oh, cut it out!” mildly objected one of his own crowd.

“Yes. And trot out your grouch, whatever it is,” another demanded.

“It’s our grouch! I put it up to you,” the speaker shouted above the noise. “Has a bunch of teachers, or even the principal or superintendent, a right to meddle with us, to say who we shall have for presidents of our classes or of the whole student body, if this thing of having a school president goes?”

“Yes! Yes!” “They have!” “They ought to!” came from different quarters.

“I’d like to know why,” the Kid blustered.

“When students of this school, your own candidate even, follows girls and women on stilts—” “Sis” Jones began.

“Girls on stilts!” jeered some loud voice from the crowd, and the speaker laughed and nodded.

But Reginald Steele’s clear tones rose above the clamor. “You know what Jones means, Jim Barney. Last week your man, Buckman, and two of his fellows followed some ladies and girls for nearly a block, using language that is a disgrace to any school.”

“Rot! I suppose you think girls ought to run this high school. And that’s what they’ll do if Hec Price gets elected.” He glared around on them, and let his eyes rest on Reginald an instant before continuing. “I put it up to you fellows, what sort of a president will that grandmother prig make, that’s in with the girls and mollycoddles, in with the teachers, in with everybody that’s for style, and against a square deal for all. What sort of a fellow is Hec Price for president?”

“A good one!” Billy called cheerily, coming forward from the rear of the crowd, where he had been listening.

Billy was good to look at these days. His freckles were gone; and his skin, free from the blemish that mars so many growing boys, was girlishly fair. His cheeks had the red of full health, and his form was well knit and firm from plenty of work in the “gym”; and although the dimple, much to his disgust still adorned his chin, it had broadened and squared to match his strong shoulders.

Since entering school he had been allied with those opposing “the Kid’s crowd,” yet he had been able through sheer good-nature to avoid a clash with the bully. But lately that had seemed inevitable, though Billy himself could not understand why.

The speaker sighted Billy and challenged him. “You, Billy To-morrow, or Yesterday, or Billy Next Week, whatever you call yourself, what have you got to say about the teachers butting into student affairs?” He looked around over the boys, an angry gleam in his red-rimmed eyes. He was stocky, red of hair and skin, red of hose and tie, blustering, blowsy, yet powerful. The strong, uncontrolled passions of generations of ancestors culminated in him in conscious power, plus a tenacity and stratagem that were his own. His silent presence in the room would attract any eye. A reader of men was likely to turn away with regret, as when one sees a mighty stream capable of producing wealth and happiness for mankind, instead tearing through the smiling valley, leaving destruction in its way.

He continued. “Have we, or have we not, a right to run our student business ourselves? to elect our officers, whether class president or school president, without interference? Answer me that. Are we all sissies, to let the girls butt in, to let the high-brows whip us into knuckling to the teachers like kindergarten kids? You, Bill Bennett, what do you say to that?”

“What’s the matter with the Kid?” asked Charley Harper, called “Redtop” because of his hair. “I thought he rather liked Billy.”

“Don’t you know? Billy’s copped his girl.” Sis Jones winked knowingly.

“Gee! Not the Fish?”

“Yep. Kid wouldn’t have cared if it had been Sally or Belle, they’re both dead gone on him; but Fishie’s different.”

“So that’s—”

“Go on, Billy! Answer him!” cried several of Jim’s opponents.

Billy stepped in front of the crowd, which shifted restlessly, and waited a moment looking them over, trying to arrange his thoughts so that they might carry weight. He had no liking for the fight his mates were forcing on him. He knew the Kid’s “line-up” was against the best of the school, including the girls; knew that his methods were, to say the least, unpleasant, and important enough to cause anxiety to the Principal.

Yet Billy was no shirk. He could think on foot better than most of the students; and when his enthusiasm was aroused no one better loved a “scrap” of wits.

He began slowly: “There are several questions we must each put up squarely to ourselves before we can rightly answer Mr. Barney. First, what’s a school for?”

“Come off!” growled Jim. “Stick to—”

“Shut up, you!” shouted Redtop, who had grown in size and muscle till he was a force Jim respected. “Billy didn’t interrupt you. Be game!”

The Kid subsided. He prided himself on allowing fair play to all.

“Second, why do we hire superintendents and principals, to say nothing of teachers, if they are to have no authority over us that we should respect? And—”

“We don’t hire ’em; our fathers do,” objected one of Jim’s admirers.

“That brings me to my third question: Who pays for the schools?” Billy stopped an instant to think out his argument, and the pause was more effective than he knew. Some of the boys were considering a phase of the school question not often presented to them.

“Nobody’s talking about the cost of schools; it’s us—ourselves we’re talking about. We want—”

Redtop promptly “chucked” the turbulent one.

Billy went on. “At least we don’t pay for them, nor hire the teachers. But they are responsible to those who do hire them for the good name of the schools. If students are lazy or lawless the teachers are called to account.”

“Well, what’s the matter with us? Aren’t we all right?” Jim loomed formidably in front of Billy.

“No! We’re not all right, Jim Barney. If you and your crowd, and the sort of manners toward women and girls you stand for,—if that’s to be the standard for this school, I’m ashamed of it, and ashamed of any principal that will stand for it,—when he knows it.” Billy’s eyes flashed and he shook his hand at Jim.

“You’ll be the tell-tale, I suppose.” Barney lunged forward and reached his long arm for Billy’s leg; but half a dozen hands pulled him back; and more hisses than he had believed possible warned him that he was on the wrong tack.

“It’s because each year Jim Barney has put in his man for class president, and each year his class has made a worse name for itself; and now he wants to boss the whole school and run his man for the new office,—it’s because of this condition that the teachers think it time to interfere.” Billy leaned forward and looked fearlessly into the face of the Kid. “If you’ve any remarks coming, you can make them later to me personally.”

“Gee!” Redtop whispered to Sis Jones; “I wish Hec Price was here to see that! Billy’s called the Kid’s bluff.”

“As to the last proposition,” Billy continued, “who does pay for the schools? Do we kids put up the money or the brains or the anxiety, or—the any other things it takes to put through a system? Did we build this great institution of the city schools? It is mighty easy to knock it, but I don’t see any school kids offering anything better. Do you? I think as long as the State,—but it’s the fathers and mothers really,—as long as they hand us a chance to get an education it’s up to us to accept it decently or—” he glared at Jim defiantly; “or quit!”

A burst of noisy applause warned Barney that his leadership was imperilled. He looked angrily around and was about to speak, when Billy, with a power new to his mates and startling to the bully, launched a threat that electrified them all. “Kid Barney, your man for president is a rowdy, and you know it. We are going to expose him and defeat him.”

“Not on your life, you won’t!” Barney hurled back with a wicked gesture; and his followers broke out noisily.

But Billy’s voice rose above the din, the more impressive for dominating it. “We’re going to have a man in this new office that represents the whole school,—a man that’s honest and capable, and a gentleman besides.”

“A kid-glove sneak—”

“And if by any chance your man gets in, Jim Barney, all of us who stand for the decent thing will cut the student body as an organization.”

This threat met an instant’s silence. It was Billy’s own idea, born that moment; but when its great import filtered through those surprised brains, a storm broke that neither Billy nor Jim could master.

“Rats! What good would that do?” Jim at last made himself heard.

“It will be blazoned in every paper in the State,” Billy replied quickly. “The names of the students that follow your man will be published, as well as the names of those standing with the teachers for decency. And you’ll find, Jim Barney, when it comes to a show-down, there won’t be many fathers and mothers patting you on the back, even among those who don’t wear kid gloves.”

A roar drowned Billy, but at last they saw that he had more to say and subsided into an expectant hush.

“I propose we form a Good Citizens’ Club under Mr. Streeter’s system, ask the girls to join, and help the Playground Progressives carry their campaign for a clean playground, no improper language, and a larger respect for the teachers and law.”

“Well, I’ll be lead-dog to a blind man if that isn’t a little the rawest dose yet!” Even that bit of choice English did not relieve the Kid, for he stared silently around at the boys, evidently trying to grasp the situation.

“We got fool clubs enough, except for fun. I’m in for that any time, but not for more work,” an overgrown, bulgy-looking boy yawned.

“More work?” jeered Sis Jones; “did you ever do any work, Lazyleg?”

“Cut it! School’s rotten anyway,” the yawner returned; “a kid don’t need it like the old folks let on.”

“Any slob that goes to school after he’s out of the grades, if he don’t have to, is dippy,” drawled another.

Mumps stepped forward and faced them. Someway, when Sydney Bremmer, the ex-newsboy,—called “Mumps” from his heavy jaw,—when he said anything, people always listened in spite of his style of speech.

“I lay you’re mistaken, you wise kids. Thirty years ago a kid could get along in the world without much schooling; but now, if a man expects to do more than dig some other man’s ditches, he’s got to kick in for things he can’t learn in any grammar school. The chap that don’t know enough to go to school to-day is the one that’s dippy.”

“Hooray for Mumps!” Redtop bellowed with a grin of contempt at the bulgy one. Then to Billy, “What’s your scheme, anyway?”

“It’s Mr. Streeter’s idea, a corking good one. He’ll come up and tell us about it if we ask him.”

“We’ll do it!” shouted several at once.

“No! We don’t want any swells running things here,” Jim struck in; but even his partial ear heard fresh warning in the conflicting cries. Some suspicion of a force beneath the surface that was growing in strength angered him, but he did not reckon it at its full strength, and he displayed an ill temper that he would better have controlled. “And say, any kid that kicks in on this frame-up has to cut my crowd from this on.” He started off, but at the edge of the crowd turned and called, “Come on, kids!”

There was a breathless moment. The dullest one there knew that this was a crisis, knew that the smouldering rebellion against Jim Barney’s tyranny had at last broken into open war.

None understood the situation better than Billy. “Fellows, think before you follow Jim Barney. His game is as cultus as his name; and this hour starts the open fight between rowdyism and decency. All that want to line up for things we shall not be ashamed of, stay!”

For a second no one stirred.

“Come on!” Jim shouted, paused a second, then waved his hand toward Billy. “Or stand in with lily-necked Bill and his Fish!”

With this parting gibe that set Billy’s face blazing, he wheeled and walked off the grounds with no backward glance.

Slowly, one by one at first, then in groups as their courage rose, about thirty boys followed him off. Down on the street they sent back one or two loud shouts, and were soon out of hearing.

“This is better than I thought it would be,” Billy said to those remaining; “but Jim Barney can divide the school a good deal nearer even than some of you think. How many here are in for an active fight for the good name of the Fifth Avenue High?”

Nearly every one shouted “I!”

“How many like the idea of a Good Citizens’ Club?”

Again the vote was largely in favor.

“How many will stand for the girls joining?”

Groans and objections warned him he was on thin ice.

“Well, they can have their clubs separately, then, as they do in the playground campaign. How many favor a preliminary talk from Mr. Streeter?”

This carried.

“All right. I’ll put it up to the Principal, set a day, and post it on the bulletin board.”

“All the committee for the Price campaign meet at his house to-night,” Redtop yelled.

In the midst of the noise that followed, Mumps went up and slipped his arm into Billy’s higher one. “Billy, you’re up against a tough job, and I’ve got some pointers for you. Any time for me?”

“Sure! Come up to dinner, can you?”

“All right.”

The two walked off together.