“Then let Shag Larocque take my place,” decided Hal instantly.

“Very appropriate, too, I should say,” replied the Professor spontaneously.  “Lord Mortimer has seen Shag and knows him; very appropriate.”

So Hal slept that night contentedly, with never a dream of the storm that would burst on the morrow.

The first indication of the tempest was when Locke burst into his room after breakfast, with, “Hal, you must be sick!  Why, man alive, you are clean batty!  Shag read that address—­why, it is impossible!”

“And why?” said Hal, glaring at him.

“He can’t do it; we won’t let him; we won’t have that Indian heading the whole school!”

“Who won’t?”

“We! we! we!—­Do you hear it? We!” yelled Locke.

“You and Shorty and Simpson and about two others, I suppose,” answered Hal.  “Well, he’s going to read it; now, get out and shut the door—­I feel a draft.”

“Well, he isn’t going to read it!” thundered Locke, banging the door after himself as he stormed down the hall to the classrooms, where the boys were collecting to arrange details for the day.  Hal shivered back into the bedclothes, listening anxiously to various footsteps trailing past.  He could occasionally catch fragments of conversation; everyone seemed to be in a high state of excitement.  He could hear his own name, then Shag’s, then Shorty’s, and sometimes Locke’s.

“I’ve evidently kicked up a hornets’ nest,” he smiled weakly to himself, too tired and ill to care whether the hornets stung or not.  Presently Locke returned.  “I tell you, Hal, it won’t do; that Indian isn’t a fit representative of this college.”

“The masters won’t do a thing; you’ve got to appoint someone else.  You’re disgracing the college,” said Shorty at the door.  “We won’t stand for it, Hal; this is no North-West Indian school.  We won’t have it, I tell you!”

“Shag’s going to read that address!” said Hal, sitting up with an odd drawn but determined look around his mouth.

“Well, he isn’t!” blurted Shorty.  “There’s a big meeting in the classroom, and there’s a row on—­the biggest row you ever saw.”

“Shag Larocque read that address!” yelled Simpson from the hall; “not if I know it!  He’s not a decent sport, even—­he won’t resent an insult.  I called him a Red River halfbreed and he never said a word—­just swallowed it!”

“Shut that door!” shouted Hal, the color surging into his face, “and shut yourselves on the outside!  Go to the classroom, insult him all you like, but you’ll be sorry for it—­take my word for it!”

Once more they banged the door.  No sooner was it closed than Hal sprang out of bed.  His legs shook with weakness, his hands trembled with illness, but he began to get into some clothes, and his young face flushed scarlet and white in turn.

Out in the classroom a perfect bedlam reigned.  Dozens of voices shouted, “Shag’s the man for us!  Hurrah for Shag!” and dozens replied, “Who will join the anti-Indians?  Who will vote for a white man to represent white men?  This ain’t an Indian school—­get out with the Indians!”