Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/155

 The ring of the shovel made him stop thinking how he should have played the last hand, and, by some process which has a long psychological name, the whole current of his thought was turned. A certain big ugly Fact stared him in the face, and made him shiver.

So, saying good-night to Runt, he jumped into bed to sleep off his sour. But this was not an ordinary sour, and he did not close his eyes until daybreak, and then he slept through chapel and two recitations. In consequence, he received a note from the Registrar, stating that the Absence Committee would wait upon him on Wednesday, at noon.

For over a year now this thing had come over him every now and then like a dull ache. He knew that it was all a matter of time before he would have to do something; but he thought he could keep on a while longer, dodging or turning his back upon it. But this time the big black fact seemed to have him in a narrow pass, and at eleven o'clock in the morning, as Mrs. O'Sullivan