CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
THE NEW CAPTAIN TO THE RESCUE.
There was something more than toothache the matter with Gilks that afternoon.
The fact was his spirits were a good deal worse than his teeth.

Things had been going wrong with him for some time, ever since the day he was politely turned out of the schoolhouse boat.

He had lost caste among his fellows, and what little influence he ever had among the juniors had also vanished.
Still, if that had been all, Gilks would scarcely have been moping up at Willoughby among the virtuous few that afternoon, while the rest of the school were running mad down in Shellport.
He had a greater trouble than this.

Silk, in whose genial friendship he had basked for so many months, had not treated him well.

Indeed, it was a well-known fact in Willoughby that between these two precious friends there had been some sort of unpleasantness bordering on a row; and it was also reported that Gilks had come off worst in the affair.
This was the secret of that unfortunate youth's toothache--he had been jilted by his familiar friend.