This was not easy for a fellow in Merriwell’s position and with his ardent love for all sorts of manly sports to do.  He gave all the time he could to studies without becoming a greasy grind, but that was not as much as he would have liked.

To Ditson’s disappointment and chagrin Merriwell seemed quite unaware that his enemy stood ahead of him in his classes.  Frank seemed to have quite forgotten that such a person as Roll Ditson existed.

Ditson was an outcast.  The fellow with whom he had roomed had left him shortly after his treachery was made public, and he was forced to room alone, as he could get no one to come in with him.

Roll did not mind this so much, however.  He pretended that he was far more exclusive than the average freshman, and he tried to imitate the ways of the juniors and seniors, some of whom had swell apartments.

Ditson’s parents were wealthy, and they furnished him with plenty of loose change, so that he could cut quite a dash.  He had fancied that his money would buy plenty of friends for him.  At first, before his real character was known, he had picked up quite a following, but he posed as a superior, which made him disliked by the very ones who helped him spend his money.

He had hoped to be a leader at Yale, but, to his dismay, he found that he did not cut much of a figure after all, and Frank Merriwell, a fellow who never drank or smoked, was far more popular.  Then it was that Ditson conceived a plot to bring Merriwell into ridicule and at the same time to get in with the enemies of the freshmen—­the sophomores—­himself.

At last he had learned that at Yale a man is not judged so much by the money he spends and the wealth of his parents as by his own manly qualities.

But Ditson was a sneak by nature, and he could not get over it.  If he started out to accomplish anything in a square way, he was likely to fancy that it could be done with less trouble in a crooked manner, and his natural instinct would switch him off from the course he should have followed.

He was not at all fond of Walter Gordon, but he liked him better than he did Merriwell, and it was gall and wormwood for him when he heard how Merriwell had replaced Gordon in the box at Cambridge and had pitched a marvelous game for three innings.

“Oh, it’s just that fellow’s luck!” Roll muttered to himself.  “He seems to be lucky in everything he does.  The next thing I’ll hear is that he is going to pitch on the ’Varsity team.”

He little thought that this was true, but it proved to be.  That very day he heard some sophomores talking on the campus, and he lingered near enough to catch their words.

“Is it actually true, Parker, that Pierson has publicly stated that Merriwell is fast enough for the Varsity nine?” asked Tad Horner.

“That’s what it is,” nodded Puss Parker, “and I don’t know but Pierson is right.  I am inclined to think so.”