For hadn’t they given all their brain and muscle to building up an athletic club that should be a credit to the town and a terror to outsiders!  And hadn’t they given up every free hour for two years to working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything—­except the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby-horse?

But while all of the Dozen were deep in the dumps, and had their brows tied up like a neglected fish-line, the loudest complaint was made, of course, by the one who had done the least work in building up the club—­a lazybones who had been born tired, and had spent most of his young life in industriously earning for himself the name of “Sleepy.”

“It’s a dad-ratted shame,” growled he, “for you fellows to go and leave the club in the lurch this way, after all the trouble we have had organizing it.”

“Yes,” assented another, who was called “B.J.” because he had jumped from a high bridge once too often, and who read wild Western romances more than was good for his peace of mind or his conversation; “it kind of looks as if you fellows were renegades to the cause.”

None of the Twelve knew exactly what a renegade was, but it sounded unpleasant, and the men to whom the term was applied lost their tempers, and volunteered to clean out the club-room where they all sat for two cents.

But the offenders either thought they could have more fun for less money, or hadn’t the money, for they changed their tune, and the debate went on in a more peaceful manner.

The trouble was this:  Some of you who are up on the important works of history may have heard how these twelve youth of the High School at Lakerim organized themselves into an athletic club that won many victories, and how they begged, borrowed, and earned enough money to build themselves a club-house after a year of hard work and harder play.

Well, now, after they had gone to all this trouble and all this expense, and had enjoyed the fruits of their labors barely a year, lo and behold, one third of the Dozen were planning to desert the club, leave the town, and take their good muscles to another town, where there was an academy!  The worst of it was that this academy was the very one that had worked hardest to keep the Lakerim Athletic Club from being admitted into the league known as the Tri-State Interscholastic.

And now that the Lakerim Club had forced its way into the League, and had won the pennant the very first year, it seemed hard that some of the most valuable of the Lakerimmers should even consider joining forces with a rival.  The president of the club himself was one of the deserters; and the rest of the Dozen grew very bitter, and the arguments often reached a point where it needed only one word more to bring on a scrimmage—­a scrimmage that would make a lively football game seem tame by comparison.