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Frank Armstrong at Queen's.

CHAPTER I.FRANK ENCOUNTERS A BULLY.

"Can you tell me how to get to Warren Hall, please?"

The question was addressed by a slender youth of fourteen to a group of lads lolling on the grass at the foot of a great elm in the yard of Queen's School.

"Well, I guess the best way would be to walk, unless you have an automobile," was the flippant answer of a freckle-faced and aggressive member of the group, who, lying with his hands under his head, gazed up at the questioner with an impish grin. The rest of the crowd laughed loudly at the sally.

"I mean," said the newcomer, visibly embarrassed with this unkindly reception, "in which direction is Warren Hall?"

"Follow your nose and your two big toes, kid, and you'll get there all right," was the rude response from the self-appointed guide, and at this several of the recumbent youths rolled around on the ground with laughter. It was great, this exhibition of wit. Chip Dixon considered himself brighter than the morning sun, and through a certain strength of his own held sway over his satellites, some of whom were with him this particular afternoon.

The boy asking for information, at the second rebuff looked the speaker coolly in the eye. His embarrassment had gone now, and in its place came a look of disdain. He threw his head back.

"I asked for Warren Hall because I'm going there, and I'm not sure which one it is, but this smart fellow," indicating Chip, "doesn't have sense enough to answer a straight question. Can anyone tell me?" He cast his eye around the group. A look of amazement that a new boy should dare to cross words with this rough and ready fire-eater, spread over the faces of several of them, and a titter ran around, for Chip was not over well liked in the school.

Before anyone had time to answer, Chip himself sprang to his feet with clenched fists. He liked to say sharp things, but like many others, young and old, he could not stand his own medicine, and the titter angered him no less than the cool looking boy who had drawn it forth.

"Smart, am I?" he yelled, rushing up to the newcomer. "I'll show you whether I'm smart or not," and he pushed his face up close to that of the new boy, who held his ground bravely in the rush of the fellow who evidently meant fight. In an instant the two were surrounded.

"Ow! ow!" yelled Chip, just at the moment he appeared to be ready to land his fist on the unoffending boy, "ow! ow! I'll kill you for that," and he grabbed one of his feet and danced around on the other in agony. The heavy suit case, which the newcomer carried had been dropped on the toes of Chip's thin pumps, and must have hurt cruelly. And it looked as if it had been dropped intentionally.

"I'll pay you for that, you fresh kid," and Chip made another rush.

"Cheese it, Chip, here's Parks. Cut it out."

Chip subsided quickly, assumed an air of easy indifference, and began to talk with those of his cronies nearest to him as if nothing had happened.

Mr. Robert Parks, the assistant master of the school, and a martinet for discipline, was swinging rapidly down the walk, unaware that anything out of the ordinary was taking place. He was a young man in appearance, perhaps not over thirty-five, but he had trained for the army, and showed it in his bearing. A railroad accident had deprived him of his left arm, and as army service was impossible for him, he took up the work of teaching. He nodded pleasantly to the boys as he approached them, and then stopped suddenly.

"Hello, Armstrong," he said with surprise, as he saw the strange lad standing there, "I was just going across to your room. Been talking with your father on the telephone and I promised him I'd see you settled all right. He said that he had been unable to come up with you, but described you so well I knew you at once. Glad you fell in with friends, though," added Mr. Parks, glancing around the circle of faces.

"They are not friends of mine. I was just asking for directions when you came up," answered Frank, for the new boy was none other than Frank Armstrong. He had made up his mind to enter Queen's in the fall term after all, and as his health was so robust owing to the great vacation he had had at Seawall and in the Everglades, his mother and father offered no objections, and so here he was faring forth alone.

"They have given you a room in Warren Hall, I believe, haven't they?" said Mr. Parks.

"Yes, sir; eighteen is the number."

"Alone?"

"No, a fellow named Gleason is with me, from New York State, I think. I don't know him."

"Well, come along," said Mr. Parks, and led the way in the direction of Frank's future domicile.

"So that's Frank Armstrong, is it?" growled Chip, still with his feathers ruffled from the setback he had received. "I've heard of him and he's what I call a pretty fresh guy. If old Parks hadn't showed up when he did I would have knocked a little freshness out of him."

"He wasn't as fresh as you were," broke in little Willie Patterson. "He asked a civil question and you began to be funny before any of us had time to answer. And, besides, it mightn't have been so easy to knock what you say is 'freshness' out of him. I notice he didn't back up much when you rushed him. Was the suit case heavy?" he added mockingly. Willie's diminutive size made him bold, and, besides, wasn't his sturdy but slow-witted room-mate, A. B. C. Sinclair, commonly called Alphabet, there to fight his battles for him in case his sharp tongue ran him into difficulties?

Dixon knew he was at a disadvantage, shut his jaws tight and said nothing, but if his look meant anything it meant that a heavy hand was to fall on Frank at the first opportunity.

"That's the fellow the papers have been talking about. Call him the 'great swimmer boy of Milton' because he got in a race with the champion Darnell down in Florida somewhere," sneered one of Chip's cronies, anxious to find favor in the eyes of his boss.

"Swimmer! My eye," grunted Chip. "I could tie one hand behind me and beat him out." Chip boasted of being something of a swimmer himself, and he could not believe that the slender boy, whom he had tried to jolly and later to scare, had the strength to swim against him. "If I get him in the water some time I'll drown him."

"I don't know about that," said Willie. "I think he's all right, and I'm going up to his room and tell him we are not all grouches like you are," and picking himself up he steered rapidly for Warren Hall to square matters with his own conscience. The bearing of the new boy had won him completely.

Without a hint of the storm of injured feelings left behind, and consequently unheeding, Mr. Parks walked rapidly with Frank across the school quadrangle to Warren, and shortly arrived at the quaint old doorway of the second entry.

"Warren was the first of the buildings of Queen's,"