FOR YARDLEY

BY RALPH HENRY BARBOUR.

Each Illustrated, 12mo, Cloth, $1.50.

• For Yardley.
• Finkler’s Field. ($1.25.)
• Winning His “Y.”
• The New Boy at Hilltop.
• Double Play.
• Forward Pass!
• The Spirit of the School.
• Four in Camp.
• Four Afoot.
• Four Afloat.
• The Arrival of Jimpson.
• Behind the Line.
• Captain of the Crew.
• For the Honor of the School.
• The Half-Back.
• On Your Mark.
• Weatherby’s Inning.

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, NEW YORK.

[“Wheelock cleaned the bases with a long drive over left fielder’s head.”]

FOR YARDLEY

A STORY OF TRACK AND FIELD

By

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “FORWARD PASS,” “DOUBLE PLAY,”
“WINNING HIS ‘Y’,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1911

Copyright, 1911, by

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published September, 1911

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOR YARDLEY

[CHAPTER I]
A RAINY SATURDAY

“Wonder why it always rains on Saturdays?” muttered Alf Loring, laying his book face-down in his lap and staring discontentedly out of the window beside him.

It was a cheerless outlook. Through the blurred panes his gaze traversed the Yard, empty and bedraggled, to the back of Merle Hall and the gymnasium. Everywhere was rotting snow or pools of water, while from a low, leaden sky the rain fell straight and persistently. It had been raining just this way all day and half of last night, and to all appearances it intended to continue raining in the same manner for another twenty-four hours. Yesterday the Yard had been a foot deep in nice clean snow, the result of the blizzard that had swept over Wissining and New England in general two days before, and there had been more than one jolly battle royal out there. But now—Alf sighed; and, turning, looked aggrievedly at his roommate.

Tom Dyer was seated at the study table, face in hands, the droplight shedding its yellow glow on his tousled hair, paying little heed to aught but the lesson he was striving to master. Alf scowled.

“Who invented rain, anyhow?” he demanded. There was no reply.

“Tom!”

“Eh? What?” Tom looked up from his book, blinking.

“I asked who invented rain, you deaf old haddock.”

“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Tom, vaguely. His eyes went back to the book. Then he added, evidently as an afterthought and with a desire to escape responsibility, “I didn’t.”

“Well, I’d like to know what it’s good for,” grumbled Alf.

“Makes crops grow,” Tom murmured.

“There aren’t any crops the first of March, you idiot. For the love of Mike, Tom, shut that book up and talk to a fellow!”

“What do you want to talk about?” asked Tom, without, however, obeying his chum’s command.

“Anything. I’m sick of studying. I’m sick of everything. I’m sick of this rotten rain.”

“Pull the curtains and you won’t know it’s raining,” advised Tom.

“Of course I’ll know it,” replied the other, crossly. “I’ve seen it. This is a mean old time of year, anyhow. There’s nothing to do but study and read and loaf around; no hockey, no baseball, no golf——”

“There’s chess.”

“Chess!” exclaimed Alf, derisively. “That’s not a game, that’s—that’s hard labor!”

“Well, I guess it will stop raining to-night,” said Tom, comfortingly. “And in a day or two you’ll be playing baseball—or trying to!”

“A day or two!” Alf’s book slipped from his knees and fell to the floor with an insulted rustling of leaves. With some difficulty he dropped one foot from the window-seat and kicked it venomously. “A day or two! Gee, I’ll be a doddering idiot before that.”

“You are now. Shut up and let me study.”

“What’s the good of studying?” growled Alf.

“Well, I understand,” replied the other, calmly, “that before they allow you to graduate from Yardley Hall, Mr. Loring, they hold what is known as a final examination. And the examination is due to begin in just three months. Having survived the recent one by a hair’s breadth, I thought I’d like to make sure of getting through the next. I’m very fond of this place, Alf, but I’ll be switched if I want to stay here another year.”

“I think it would be rather good fun myself,” said Alf, with a faint show of animation. “Think of the sport you could have. You wouldn’t have to study much, you see, and life would be just one long loaf.”

“To hear you, any one would think you were the original lazy-bones. Dry up for another ten minutes and just let me get this silly stuff, will you?”

“All right.” Alf yawned and turned his attention again to the outer world. He was a good-looking youth of eighteen, with a jolly, care-free countenance, upon which his present expression of irritability looked much out of place. Even hunched as he was into a faint resemblance to a letter W, it was plain to be seen that he had all the height that his age warranted. He was well-built, slim, and powerful, with more muscle than flesh, and the Yardley Hall Football Team under his leadership had in November last completed a successful season by defeating Broadwood Academy, Yardley’s hated rival. Alf was the best quarter-back that the school had known for many years.

His roommate, Tom Dyer, was big, rangy, and sufficiently homely of face to be attractive. He was ordinarily rather sleepy looking, and was seldom given to chatter. He had very nice gray eyes, a pleasant, whole-hearted smile, and was one of the best-liked fellows in school. In age Tom was nineteen, having recently celebrated a birthday. He had been basket-ball captain, but his principal athletic honors had been won with shot and hammer in the dual meets with Broadwood. Both boys were members of the First Class, and were due to leave Yardley at the end of the next term.

The room in which they sat, Number 7 Dudley Hall, was shabbily cozy and comfortable, combining study and bedroom. It was on the first floor, with two windows looking on to the Yard, as the space loosely enclosed by the school buildings was known, and so possessed the merit of being doubly accessible; that is to say, one might enter by the door or, if faculty was not looking, by the window. The latter mode was a very popular one, inasmuch as it was strictly prohibited, and the windows of Number 7 were in full view of some four studies inhabited by instructors.

Alf looked at his watch, holding it close in the waning light. It was a quarter past five. He slipped it back into his pocket with a sigh. There was a good three-quarters of an hour to be lived through before supper-time. At that moment his glance, wandering to the Yard, descried a slim figure approaching along the path from Merle, slopping carelessly through puddles and paying no heed to the rain. Alf looked a moment and then smiled.

“Guess you’ll have to call it off now, Tom,” he announced. “Here comes Gerald, and it’s a safe bet he’s headed for our humble domicile.”

Tom groaned. “That kid will be the death of me if Maury doesn’t call the track candidates pretty soon. Gerald asks me every time I see him when we’re going to begin work, and whether I think he will make the squad.”

Alf chuckled. “I thought when he got his Y at hockey last month he wouldn’t be so keen about making the Track Team. He’s a funny kid.”

“He’s a rather nice one, though,” said Tom. “Here he comes. Bet you he will ask about track work before he’s been here two minutes.”

Footsteps sounded along the hall, and then there came a modest knock on the door.

“Come in, Gerald,” called Tom.

The boy who entered was not large for his fifteen years, and seemed at first glance a bit too slender and delicate to hope to distinguish himself on the cinders. But his slenderness held a litheness that spoke well for his muscles, and the apparent delicacy was largely a matter of coloring, for Gerald Pennimore had the fairest of pink and white skins, the bluest of blue eyes, and hair that only barely escaped being yellow. He was a nice-looking youngster, though, with an eager, expressive face, and an easy grace of carriage that was good to see. He greeted his hosts, closed the door behind him, and went over to the grate, where a little coal fire glowed ruddily.

“Yes,” said Alf, “I should think you’d want to dry your shoes, Gerald. You walked into every puddle in the Yard.”

“They’re not very wet,” responded Gerald, amiably.

“They’re soaking! It’s a mighty good thing for you that Dan isn’t here.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” laughed Gerald.

“You’d better be,” said Tom. “He will tan your hide for you, son, if he catches you doing stunts like that. Where is he to-day?”

“I don’t know. I expected to find him here.”

“I haven’t seen him since dinner,” said Alf.

“Pull a chair up there, Gerald, and get those shoes dry. Beastly weather, isn’t it?”

“Ye-es, but I’m rather glad to see the rain, aren’t you? It will take the snow off. I guess the track will be clean by to-morrow, won’t it, Tom?”

Tom shot an amused glance at Alf. “I guess so, but it will take some time to get it dried out and rolled down.”

“Will it? Do you know when Captain Maury is going to call the candidates, Tom?”

“Yes, I saw him this morning, and he told me he was going to get them together Monday,” answered Tom, patiently.

“Going to try the mile, Gerald?” inquired Alf, innocently.

“I want to. Do you think I’d stand any show of getting on the team, Alf?”

“I guess so. What’s your best time for the mile, Gerald?”

“I don’t quite know. Andy said he thought I did it once in about five minutes in the cross country, but that was on a dirt road, of course. I guess I could do a lot better than that on the cinders.”

“Rather! Besides, any chap can do better in warm weather. Even if you shouldn’t make the team this spring, Gerald, you’d get a lot of fun out of it, and it would do you good besides. It’s a bit unfortunate, though, that Maury runs the mile himself. It’s awfully hard to crowd the captain off the team.”

“Oh, I wasn’t expecting to do that,” Gerald replied, with amusing naïveté. “I just thought maybe I could get a place. Has Broadwood got good mile runners?”

“How about that, Tom?”

“Yes, I think so. Usually she’s better on the distances than anything else. But we beat her in the cross country, and maybe our men are as good as hers this year. I suppose Goodyear and Norcross will both enter for the mile.”

“Are you going to be on the team this year, Alf?” Gerald asked.

“No, I guess not; not unless I’m pretty badly needed. What’s the use? Both Rand and Bufford can beat me in the sprints.”

“You might crowd a Broadwood man out in the trials, though,” said Tom. “And you wouldn’t have to train much; your baseball work would keep you in trim.”

“Wouldn’t it be fine,” asked Gerald, enthusiastically, as he felt of his damp shoes, “if we won the baseball and the track meet, too, this year? That would be a clean sweep, wouldn’t it? Football, cross country, hockey——”

“We won’t,” said Alf. “We never have in the school’s history. We’re bound to drop either track or baseball. Personally, I hope it will be track. Even then, though, we’d be doing ourselves proud, what?”

“We’ll be lucky if Broadwood doesn’t get track and baseball,” said Tom, piling his books up.

“Why? I thought we were pretty certain of the Duals,” said Alf. Tom shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t see why. Just because we ran away with Broadwood last spring doesn’t mean that we’ve got an easy thing this year. She will work a whole lot harder, I guess. And we haven’t the men we had then. We’ve lost Wass in the hurdles, Bird in the quarter, Johnson and Fyles in the high jump, and two or three second-string fellows who might have made good this year. I guess we’ve got the sprints cinched without a doubt, but I’m not very easy in my mind regarding the field events.”

“Well, we know who will get first in the hammer,” laughed Alf.

“Meaning me? Perhaps; but if Broadwood gets enough seconds and thirds she may fool us.”

Gerald turned, listened, and then retired hurriedly from the grate.

“There’s Dan,” he said. There was a knock and the door swung open, admitting a disreputable figure in a dripping raincoat and a felt hat, from the down-turned brim of which drops of water trickled.

“Hello, you chaps! Fine day, isn’t it?”

“Who’s your tramp friend, Tom?” asked Alf. “Isn’t he a sight? Where’s the dog? Why, if it isn’t our old friend, Mr. Vinton! Ouch!”

The final remark was emphatic and spontaneous, for Dan’s wet hat sailed across the room with beautiful precision, and landed fairly against Alf’s face with a damp and dismal splash.

The others grinned enjoyably as Alf wiped the rain from his eyes and looked about for a weapon. Finding nothing save the hat, and doubting his ability to use that effectually, he had recourse to verbal weapons.

“Canaille!” he hissed. “Dog of a Christian! Varlet!”

“Go it!” laughed Dan, shedding his raincoat. “It was a bully shot, though, wasn’t it? What have you fellows been doing?”

“Leading a quiet, studious, respectable existence until you broke in with your low, rough-house manners,” responded Alf, severely. “Dan, you’re a mucker.”

“Alf, you’re a gentleman.”

“That’s a lie,” answered Alf, with dignity, subsiding on the window-seat again and hugging his knees. “Where have you been, you old brute?”

“You’d never guess,” replied Dan, with a laugh, as he backed to the fireplace and held his hands to the warmth.

“Taking tea with Old Toby,” hazarded Alf. (Old Toby was school vernacular for Dr. Tobias Hewitt, Principal.)

“Not as bad as that, Alf. I’ve been sliding around the river in two inches of slush on what Roeder calls his ice yacht. Seen it? It looks like somebody’s front gate with a leg-of-mutton sail stuck up on it.”

“Must have been fun in this weather,” laughed Alf.

“It wasn’t so bad until we went into a hole up near Flat Island and had to work for half an hour pulling the silly thing out. I wanted to let it stay there; told him it would float down when the ice thawed; but he insisted on rescuing it.”

“You’re a crazy chump,” said Alf, viewing him, however, with evident affection. Dan Vinton was tall and lithe and long-limbed, with a wide-awake, alert appearance and an almost disconcerting ability to think quickly and act in the same way. In age he was just over sixteen, and he was a trifle large for his years. He had steady brown eyes, brown hair, a short, straight nose, and a pleasant, good-tempered mouth. Dan was a Second-Class fellow and had been chosen football captain in the fall.

“I’d give a dollar for a nice cup of hot chocolate,” he announced. “I’m hungry as a bear. Got anything to eat, you fellows?”

“Not a thing,” replied Alf. “I can’t keep grub here; Tom eats it all up. Anyhow, eating between meals,” he added, virtuously, “is very bad for the health.”

“It’s good for the tummy, though,” said Dan, crossing over and seating himself at the other end of the window-seat. “Well, what’s new?”

“New! Nothing’s new. Nothing has happened in this dead-and-alive hole since—since the hockey game. I detest this time of year, don’t you?”

“It is a bit dull, but I guess we’ll be outdoors in a few days. Gee, but I’ll be glad to feel a baseball again!”

“Me too. We’ve been discussing the Track Team’s chances. Now that Gerald has decided to come out for the mile it looks like a pretty sure thing for Yardley.”

“Oh, you can make all the fun you want,” said Gerald, cheerfully. “I’ll bet, though, that I’ll win just as many points as you will, Alf.”

“That’s a good safe wager,” observed Tom, lazily. “Of course, I’m not saying Alf might not win a third some time if he could keep his feet. But he always takes a header just before the tape, and tears up the track. Gets an idea, I suppose, that the quickest way to get there is to slide. Shows his baseball training.”

“Oh, run away! I never fell but once, you old chump!”

“That’s all Adam fell,” said Dan, “and see what happened to him! By the way, did I tell you what Tom calls his ice-boat? The Planked Steak.”

“Go ahead,” said Alf, “what’s the joke?”

“I asked him why he called it that and he said it was made of planks, and the mast was the stake. Not bad, what?”

Alf groaned. “It sounds like one of Tom’s jokes. His sense of humor is decidedly heavy.”

“My sense of hunger is decidedly strong,” said Tom. “And it’s five minutes of six. Let’s go over. Want to wash up here, you two?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, “though I feel as though I was pretty well washed already. I’ll bet there isn’t a really dry spot about me. Where’d you get this villainous soap, Tom?”

“Don’t ask me; that’s some of Alf’s. Doesn’t it smell fierce?”

“Awful! Where’d you find it, Alf?”

“That soap,” responded Alf, haughtily, “is the best made, and extremely expensive. The delicious perfume which you mention and can’t appreciate is lilac. That soap costs me two and a half cents a cake, at Wallace’s.”

“Well, then, Wallace has at last got even for the glasses you broke there once,” laughed Dan. “I’ve noticed an unpleasant atmosphere about you for some time. Now it’s explained. All ready? Come on, then; let’s eat!”

[CHAPTER II]
THE S. P. M.

While our four friends are satisfying four very healthy appetites, let’s look about us a little. The place is Wissining, Connecticut, and Wissining, in case you happen not to be acquainted with it, is on the Sound, about equidistant from New Haven and Newport. Perhaps you can locate Greenburg better, for Greenburg is quite a city in a small way, and something of a manufacturing town. Wissining lies just across the river from Greenburg, and Yardley Hall School is about a half-mile from the Wissining station. It may be that you have never noticed it, even if you have traveled that way, for the railroad passes through the Yardley property by way of a cut, and the school buildings are not long in sight. But if you look sharp as your train crosses the bridge over the little Wissining River, you will see them describing a rough semicircle on the edge of a not distant hill; Clarke, Whitson, Oxford, Merle, and the Kingdon Gymnasium. Dudley you won’t see for the reason that it is situated back of the other buildings and across the Yard. Oxford is a recitation hall; but, besides class-rooms, it holds Dr. Hewitt’s apartments, the office, the laboratories, the library, the assembly hall, and the rooms of the two school societies, Oxford and Cambridge. The dining-room, or commons, is in Whitson.

The school property consists of some forty acres of hill, woodland, and meadow, and ascends gradually from the shore to the plateau whereon the buildings are set, and then descends as gently to the curving river at the back. Here are the tennis courts and the athletic field, the golf links and the boat house; and here, near the river-bank not long since, was the ice rink whereon Yardley defeated the Broadwood hockey team and won the first leg of the Pennimore Cup, the trophy presented by Gerald’s father.

Yardley usually holds two hundred and seventy students, their ages ranging from twelve to twenty. There are five classes known as First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Preparatory, and Yardley’s graduates have a habit of going on to Yale for the rest of their education, although there have been occasions when rash youths have preferred Harvard. Broadwood, which is situated some four miles distant as the crow flies, is a prominent feeder to Princeton, and so rivalries begun at these schools are often nourished at college. There have been other stories written about Yardley Hall, and so if you want a more detailed description of the school you have only to refer to a book called “Forward Pass,” though for my part I think you already have heard enough about it to answer our purpose. It’s a good school, is Yardley Hall; good in all ways; and, which is more important, it turns out some fine fellows. If I had space to set down a list of all the eminent government officials, scientists, writers, jurists, diplomats and the like who have graduated you would be vastly impressed. But I haven’t, and you must just take my word for it. I might add that it has turned out a large number of athletes who, if their renown has been more fleeting, have won honor and acclaim.

There was a stereoptican lecture that night in Assembly Hall and, after they had finished supper, Dan was all for hearing it. But Alf refused to entertain the idea for a moment.

“It’s something about the Irish Lakes,” he said, “and no one cares a fig for the Irish Lakes. It’s wet enough here to-night without having to listen to a lot of drool about the Lake of Killarney and—and the others. If the chap would lecture on Irish bulls I might go. No, my soul craves excitement, Dan.”

“So does mine,” Dan laughed, “but I don’t know where to find it. We might go up to Cambridge and watch Chambers and Rand play backgammon.”

“Awful thought! No, you come over to our room, Dan, and Tom and I will entertain you. Bring little Geraldine along, if you like.”

“He’s gone off with Thompson. I’ll come over for awhile after the lecture.”

“You won’t. You’ll be drowned in the Irish Lakes. Let the old lecture go.” But Dan was obdurate. Alf called on Tom for aid.

“Tell him to come, Tom,” he said. “We’ll dance and sing and recite poetry for him, won’t we?”

“Maybe you will,” was the calm response. “I’m going over to Oxford for awhile. There’s a debate and a concert.”

Alf groaned.

“Another of your silly vaudevilles! All right, go ahead, both of you. But you’ll be sorry when you come back and find that I’ve blown up the building or assaulted a faculty from sheer boredom. You’ll wish then that you’d been kind to me.”

They parted on the steps of Whitson, Dan and Tom scudding across to Oxford, and Alf, hands in pockets and head drooping dejectedly, walking off through the downpour toward Dudley. Dan tried to persuade Tom to accompany him to the lecture, and Tom strove to induce Dan to accept the hospitality of Oxford Society. They argued it out at the head of each flight of stairs and consumed some ten or fifteen minutes, and finally Tom tried to kidnap Dan by main force in the upper corridor, and was severely reprimanded by an usher for unseemly noise. The lecture was mildly interesting and lasted the better part of an hour. At the back of the hall a group of younger fellows, among whom was Gerald, found the darkened room much to their liking and spent most of the time cutting-up. The lecturer, a spare, nervous gentleman with a prominent Adam’s apple and a very bald head, was visibly annoyed at times, and when one of the pictures was thrown on the screen upside-down didn’t discover the fact until the snickers of his audience appraised him that something was wrong. After the entertainment was over Dan met Gerald in the corridor and took him off to Alf’s room. They scuttled over to Dudley through the rain and slush and found Alf alone in his glory, his feet to the fire and a tablet and pencil in his hands.

“Where’s Tom?” he asked. “I need him. Hello, Gerald. Fate, Mr. Pennimore, has decreed that you be one of us. Your appearance, as welcome as unexpected, decides the matter. I congratulate you.”

“What the dickens are you babbling about?” asked Dan, ruffling Alf’s hair. “What’s the game?”

“You shall know in due time. I can’t explain it more than once, and so we will await the arrival of Mr. Dyer, our respected colleague. While you fellows have been wasting your valuable time in aimless pleasures I have been working.” He held up a leaf from the tablet scrawled upon on both sides.

“Is it poetry?” asked Gerald.

“Or an essay for The Scholiast?” suggested Dan.

“No, children, it is—But here comes Mr. Dyer. Welcome, Mr. Dyer. Remove your coat and join our little home circle.”

“Alf’s got one of his silly fits,” said Dan. “Sit down, Tom, and let him get it off his chest.”

Alf arose, turned his back to the fireplace, thrust one hand between the buttons of his waistcoat and faced his audience impressively. Dan and Tom cheered subduedly.

“Gentlemen,” began Alf. “(For the moment we will suppose that you are gentlemen.) There is an adage which has it that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. At this time of year when the inclemency of the weather and—ah—lack of athletics deprive most of us of occupation, leaving us little wherewith to interest ourselves save degrading studies, it is especially desirable that our minds and hands should be kept busy to the end that Satan shall not get in his work with us. Let us keep out of mischief at all cost, say I.”

“Hooray!” applauded Dan. Alf bowed profoundly.

“Gentlemen, I thank you. Now, therefore, I have spent a profitable hour during your absence, and am happy to be able to say to you, gentlemen, that the problem is solved. In order that we have an interest above the drudgery of study, I submit to you plans for the forming of a society, a secret society which—Mr. Pennimore, kindly close the transom and guard the door. As I was about to say, a secret society, to be known as the ‘S. P. M.’” He paused dramatically.

“What’s that mean?” asked Tom.

“The Society of Predatory Marauders!”

“Bully name,” commented Dan, with a grin. “Who are we going to maraud, Alf?”

“Society in general; we will strive not to show favoritism or—or bias. I suggest that we begin with the faculty.”

Enthusiastic applause from the audience.

“After that we will settle scores with such of our personal friends as need attention.”

More applause.

“Then we can turn to our ancient and much-loved enemy, Broadwood Academy. After blowing up the buildings at Broadwood, we will search for other worlds to conquer.”

“Let’s begin with Broadwood,” suggested Tom, lazily. “I never did like green as a color.”

“Mr. Dyer is out of order,” said Alf, severely. “I will read to you a brief outline of—of—a brief outline. Mr. Pennimore, as Sergeant-at-arms you will kindly plug up the key-hole. Now, then. ‘The Society of Predatory Marauders, incorporated under the laws of the State of New Jersey.’ (That’s where all the robbers and hold-ups incorporate, you know.) ‘Object, the betterment of Society and the uplifting of the Human Race. Motto: Sic semper facultus——’”

“That’s rotten Latin,” grunted Tom.

“Dry up! ‘Sic semper facultus et al. Password, Vengeance.’ (We will have a grip and a special knock, but I haven’t got to those yet.) ‘Officers: Alfred Loring, Chief Assassin; Thomas Dyer, Executioner; Daniel Vinton, Torturer; Gerald Pennimore,—er—Incendiary.’ Now, gentlemen, the resolutions. These have been very thoughtfully and carefully prepared. ‘Whereas, for years we have been ground under the merciless heel of the faculty of this institution, have been deprived of our innocent pleasures and punished without provocation, have been intimidated and brow-beaten, crammed with useless knowledge and otherwise maltreated, now, therefore, be it Resolved that we arise in our might and overthrow the despotic rule of the tyrants; that we burn, pillage, and destroy; that we show no mercy nor hold our hands until vengeance is satisfied and the ground is strewn with the lifeless bodies of our enemies and not one is left to tell the tale. So perish all tyrants!’”

“Dandy!” cried Gerald.

“Sounds like one of Joe Chambers’s editorials,” commented Tom.

“Now then, the oath!” commanded Alf. “Arise, gentlemen! Raise your hands and repeat after me. ‘To the S. P. M. I pledge my fealty and life, forgetting all ties of blood, friendship, and affection, pledging myself to obey its laws and commands. Failing this, I hope to choke!’ Swear!”

“Darn,” said Tom, calmly.

“We swear,” said Dan in a sepulchral voice.

“Aren’t there going to be any other members?” asked Gerald, eagerly.

“In time we will recruit. For the present the members are all here. Now then.” Alf seated himself and dropped into conversational tones. “What awful thing shall we do first, fellows?”

Tom yawned loudly.

“Go to bed,” he said.

“Bed!” exclaimed Alf. “Do you mean to tell me that you have listened—er—er—listened unmoved to my eloquence, you old sleepy-headed chump? Bed! Why, doesn’t your soul cry out for vengeance, for——”

“Sleep? It does.” Tom started to unlace a shoe.

“Where’s your sporting instinct, Tom,” pleaded Alf. “Please don’t go to bed yet. Let’s do one desperate deed first, just a tiny desperate deed! Breathes there a man with soul so dead who even to himself has said ‘It’s time to go to bed?’ No!”

But Tom went calmly on with his preparations, and finally Alf gave him up.

“Traitor!” he hissed. “Ingrate! Sluggard! Here I go to work and get up the dandiest secret society that ever was, and what’s the result? Do I get gratitude, support? I do not! I am yawned at! Very well, go to bed; saturate yourself with sleep. The rest of us will go on with the great work without you.” Alf seized a golf club from a corner and waved it above his head. “On to Oxford Hall!” he shouted. “Death to the tyrants! Down with faculty! Viva la Commune! A bas le——”

There was a soft knock at the door. Alf’s arm and the improvised sword dropped.

“Come!” called Tom.

The door opened and Mr. McIntyre, or Kilts, as the boys called him, faced them. Kilts was the mathematics instructor and roomed at the end of the corridor. He shook his head gently.

“’Tis past ten,” he said, “and I’m thinking ye’d best be quiet, gentlemen.”

He closed the door again and went off down the hall. Alf looked at the others in deep disgust.

“That’s always the way,” he grumbled. “Whenever I try to save the country some one butts in and spoils it!”

“You’re like the Irishman who said that Ireland could be free to-morrow if it wasn’t for the police,” laughed Dan. Alf viewed him coldly.

“I don’t see the apposition of your story, Mr. Vinton.”

“Why didn’t you start in and slay Kilts?” asked Tom.

“Because,” replied Alf, with dignity, “he was unarmed.”

“Come on, Gerald,” laughed Dan. “Let’s go home. The massacre is postponed until to-morrow.”

“To-morrow is Sunday,” Gerald objected. “We can’t wipe out the faculty on Sunday, can we?”

“No.” Alf shook his head thoughtfully. “No, my soul revolts at the thought of killing any one on Sunday. We will wait until Monday. Good-night, Brothers in the Cause. Sic semper facultus et al.!”

“The same to you,” replied Dan, politely, from the doorway, “and many of them.”

[CHAPTER III]
A CALL FOR CANDIDATES

The rain continued most of Sunday, and when it ceased the snow was a thing of the past. Monday dawned bright, and a brisk easterly breeze began the task of drying the sopping, spongy world. Winter had lingered long that year; or, perhaps, it would be better to say that winter had returned for a supplementary season. But now that appeared to be over at last and, in spite of the chill wind, the sunshine held a very springlike warmth in the sheltered places. Gerald Pennimore watched the weather anxiously, and once, between French and mathematics recitations, he stole down to the field and set foot tentatively on the track. The result wasn’t encouraging, for his shoe sank into the cinders for a depth of two inches. He sighed and shook his head. It did seem as though fate was determined to discourage in every possible way his efforts to become a mile runner!

Gerald had been at Yardley only a little over a year, for he had entered at the beginning of the previous Winter Term. Gerald’s father, known the country over as the Steamship King, owned a big estate, Sound View, which adjoined the school grounds on the west. There Mr. Pennimore and Gerald—there were no others in the family since Gerald’s mother was dead and he had neither brothers nor sisters—usually spent nine months of the year, retiring to New York in the early winter and returning at the first sign of spring. Until last year Gerald had been in the care of tutors and would, perhaps, have been so still had not a chance meeting with Dan Vinton ripened into a friendship. Dan had fostered Gerald’s desire to enter Yardley, and in the end Mr. Pennimore, to whom Gerald was very dear, had consented, though not without misgivings. The misgivings, however, had soon departed, for after the first month or two Gerald had got on famously. It had been hard going at first, for many of the fellows had suspected Gerald of being stuck-up because of his father’s wealth, and “Money-bags” was the least offensive of the nicknames devised for him. But Gerald had been fortunate in having the friendship of Dan, Alf, and Tom, under whose guardianship he had eventually settled down into a fairly useful member of the school community. Gerald had made good on his class baseball team, had won election to Cambridge Society in the face of some rather malicious opposition, had run a good race in the Cross Country meet, and not more than a fortnight since had scored the winning goal and won his Y when, as a substitute on the Hockey Team, Alf had put him in in the last minute or two of the Broadwood game. That goal had been something of a fluke, but Gerald had worked hard with the substitutes, and no one begrudged him the privilege of wearing the Y, a privilege of which he proudly availed himself whenever possible. At the present time Mr. Pennimore was abroad and Sound View was still closed. Gerald roomed with Dan in 28 Clarke.

But life wasn’t all discouragement for Gerald to-day, for this morning the long-delayed summons to the track and field candidates had appeared on the notice board in the corridor of Oxford.

“There will be a meeting of all candidates for the Track Team in the Gymnasium at four-fifteen this afternoon. New men are wanted in all events, and any one who has ever done any distance running or would like to try it is especially urged to come out.

“Albert T. Maury, Captain.”

Gerald gloated over that request for distance men, for he meant to try for the team as a miler, and the acknowledgment that the squad as it was composed now was weak in that department meant that he would be welcomed and given attention by the trainer. There was very little conceit in Gerald, but he possessed the excellent attribute of believing in his ability to do a thing until he had conclusively proved that he couldn’t. Just now Gerald was pretty sure that with proper training he could run the mile fast enough to secure a place on the team and get into the Dual Meet with Broadwood the last of May.

Gerald was one of the first to reach the gymnasium after English was over. So early was he, in fact, that he had to cool his heels a good half-hour before the meeting began in the Trophy Room. About thirty fellows appeared in response to the summons, many of them Fourth Class fellows, showing more ambition than promise. Tom, with whom Gerald sat, didn’t speak enthusiastically of the new material.

“Still, though,” he added, “it’s usually like this. The real stuff comes dribbling along after work begins outdoors. Fellows hate to have to do the gym stunts.”

Bert Maury, the captain, reminded the fellows that Yardley had won two legs of the present Dual Cup, and that if they were successful this spring the trophy would become Yardley’s property for good and all. “It isn’t going to be so easy, though,” he said. “I happen to know that Broadwood is making a big effort to get a good all-around team together this year. Their trainer, as you know, is a mighty good man, and while I guess he can’t hold a candle to our own Andy——”

“Oh, you Andy Ryan!” shouted some one, and Maury had to wait for the laughter and applause to stop.

“Anyhow, Broadwood’s going to do her level best, and we’ve got to buckle down and do better,” he went on. “There are some things I guess she can’t touch us at this year; the sprints and the high hurdles and the pole vault and the shot and the hammer; I guess we can be pretty certain of those events, but we’re weak at the jumps especially and none too strong in the mile and the quarter. We’ve got to develop two or three good milers and as many fellows for the four-forty; and some good jumpers. And we want hurdlers, too. I hoped more fellows would turn out to-day. We’ve got to have more if we’re going to win. Now you fellows talk it up and see if you can’t get more candidates, will you? We are going to have practice in the gym here until the track is in shape, but I guess we will be able to get out of doors in another week if this weather holds on. Now I’ll ask Mr. Ryan to say a few words.”

Andy Ryan, the trainer, was a short, red-haired, green-eyed little Irish gentleman, mightily popular with the fellows, and when he got on his feet the thirty-odd occupants of the trophy-room cheered for all they were worth and made noise enough for twice their number. Andy spoke with a slight brogue that, when he was excited, became almost unintelligible.

“Much obliged,” he said, smilingly when they let him speak. “If you fellows could run as well as you can cheer you’d have Broadwood licked to a frazzle.”

“Quit your blarney!” said some one at the back of the room.

“Sure, ’tis not blarney I’ll be givin’ you if I git hould of you,” responded Andy, dropping into his thickest brogue amid the laughter of the boys. Then he became serious. “Boys, what Cap Maury says is true as true. We’ve got to work pretty hard if we’re to win this year. I ain’t saying we can’t do it, for I know we can, but I do say that every one of you must make up your minds to strict training and hard work. The faculty has been good to us, as you all know, and let us start work out of doors before the recess, and if the weather is kind to us it will make a difference of most two weeks, I’m thinking. That will be a help, you see. But in the meanwhile we’re going to have a little mild exercise in the gymnasium; just a bit of work with the weights and the bells, you understand; nothing any of you need be feared of. And there’ll be some running on the boards and some jumping and the like. The training table won’t start until after the recess, but aside from that I don’t see why we can’t be well on the way by the first of April. Cap has spoken of the Broadwood trainer. Boys, he’s a good one. If he hasn’t done better since he’s been there ’tis because he hasn’t had the material to work with. I know him. I know him personally, and I know what he can do. And I know that this year he’s going to do his best to make up for the lickings we’ve given him. So keep that in mind, all of you, and see can we put it on them again this year. Now, Cap, I guess we’ll take the names if you’re ready.”

“All right, unless you want to say something, Bob.”

Bob Norcross shook his head without getting up.

“No. We’ve got four dollars in the treasury and need more. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Having heard at length from the manager,” said Maury amid laughter, “we’ll proceed. Give your names to Mr. Ryan, please, and tell him what you’ve done and what you’d like to try for. As for the treasury, I guess we can manage to do something for that after recess.”

The boys crowded around the table at which Andy seated himself. He didn’t take much time with the old members.

“All right, Goodyear; I’ve seen you before. Roeder, you’ll have to do a foot better this year, my boy. Is it yourself, Dyer? And how’s the lad? And who’s that you’re hiding behind you?”

That was Gerald.

“Out for the mile, you say?” asked Andy. “Sure and why not? How old are you?”

“Sixteen, Andy.”

“Never!”

“Yes, I am. You can ask Tom.”

“Well, sure you ought to be growing a bit, my boy. What’s your class? Third? Have you ever done any track work?”

“No. But I was on the Cross Country Team, you know.”

“Indeed I do know it! Sure ’twas you saved the day to us. Come to me to-morrow and I’ll give you some work to do. But you’ll have to get Mr. Bendix to pass you first, you know.”

“He let me run in the Cross Country, Andy,” said Gerald, anxiously.

“It makes no difference,” replied Andy, severely. “Rules is rules. You can tell him I said we needed you, though. He will pass you, all right.”

And so it proved the next morning. The physical instructor merely looked Gerald up in his records, frowned a bit, and made a new entry in his book.

“All right, Pennimore. You can try for the team if you like. But I’m afraid you’re still a little weak for fast company in the mile run, my boy. But it will do you a lot of good. Tell Mr. Ryan that—but never mind; I’ll speak to him myself.” And Mr. Bendix, or Muscles, as the boys called him, jotted a memorandum on the tablet before him.

That afternoon the track and field candidates assembled in the gymnasium, and Gerald found himself toiling with the chest weights. Later Andy set him six laps on the running track, after which he plunged under a cold shower, to emerge feeling as though he could give Captain Maury seventy yards and beat him in the mile. The baseball candidates had begun their work in the cage the day before, and the locker-room that afternoon was a very noisy and very merry place. There were Alf and Dan and Captain Durfee and Wheelock and Richards and several more of the ball players that Gerald knew, and Tom and Arthur Thompson and Roeder and lots more of the track fellows.

Arthur Thompson, a boy of about Gerald’s age and a member of the Second Class, was rather a chum of Gerald’s. Arthur had secured second place in the pole-vault last spring, and was expected this year to get first. Arthur was rather heavily built for pole work, and his success in the event had been a surprise to most every one save possibly himself and Andy. He had very dark hair, a somewhat sallow complexion, and even his dearest friends would not have called him handsome. Gerald had started out by detesting him, but, as so often happens in such cases, had ended by liking him thoroughly. He and Gerald left the gymnasium together and walked across the Yard to a back entrance of Whitson. Here they climbed the stairs, and Arthur led the way into Number 20. At a table, bending absorbedly over a big stamp album, sat a youth of thirteen.

“Look here, Harry,” said Arthur, sternly, “what have I told you about those silly stamps? Haven’t I given you fair warning?”

“Please, Arthur, I was only pasting a few——”

“I’ve told you I’d pitch it out of the window if you didn’t let it alone for a minute. And I will, too. Now shove that out of sight and speak to our guest.”

Harry Merrow grinned as he closed the book.

“Hello, Gerald,” he said. “Isn’t he a fussy old thing?”

“Fussy!” exclaimed his roommate. “My word, kid, the first thing I see in the morning is you sitting up in bed with that idiotic book, and the last thing I see at night is the same. And you’re at it all day! You’ve got stampitis, that’s what you’ve got, Harry.”

“Don’t you ever go outdoors?” asked Gerald.

“Oh, yes, lots! I was out this afternoon. But I just got eight new stamps and they’re dandies. One’s a——”

“Shut up!” commanded Arthur, sternly. “I’ve told you you are not to talk about them. I’m so blamed sick of cancellations and superimposed this and that and first issues and second issues and—and— Honest, Harry, for two cents I’d pitch the whole fool collection out into the mud!” Arthur flung his cap across the room with a gesture of despair.

“I know a fellow in Merle,” began Harry, addressing Gerald, “who’s got the dandiest lot of old revenues you ever saw, and he says if I’ll——”

But Arthur was upon him, and Harry found himself lifted bodily from his chair and set on his feet.

“Here,” said Arthur, seizing the boy’s cap from the table and jamming it onto his head, “out you go! Down to the tennis courts and back three times for yours, kid. You’ve just got time for a nice constitutional before supper.”

“But I don’t want to go out, Arthur!” pleaded Harry. “And I was out, honest I was!”

“And you’re going again,” was the firm reply. “I’m not going to have you bleach out like a clump of celery right under my eyes. If you haven’t sense enough to take exercise yourself, why, here am I, little darling. Run along now!” And Arthur propelled him across the room to the door, Harry struggling unavailingly in his grasp. “There you are, Harry. Three times to the courts and back, mind. And I’ll be watching from the window; so don’t try any funny tricks. You can’t get into the gym now, because it’s locked by this time, so you needn’t try that on again.” The door closed behind the rebellious form of the youngster, and presently they heard his lagging footsteps on the stairs. Arthur went to the window and watched him started across the Yard. Then he threw himself into a chair.

“Honest, Gerald, that kid bothers me to death. I’d change my room if it wasn’t that someone’s got to look after him, and I suppose it might as well be me. Those stamps— And, by the way, it was you started him going when you gave him your collection last year.”

“Oh, he was collecting before that,” said Gerald.

“Yes, I know, but you gave him about a million dollars’ worth of top-notchers, and now he’s trying to live up to them. Why, that little chump writes letters to the crowned heads of Europe, I believe, in the hope that he will get hold of something new in the way of stamps. And as for catalogues and price-lists and sheets on approval, why, sometimes I can’t find my books for the trash on top!”

“You certainly are in hard luck,” laughed Gerald. “You’d better join the S. P. M. and eradicate Harry and his stamps.”

“What’s that?” asked Arthur.

Gerald told about Alf’s secret society, and Arthur chuckled with glee.

“That’s great,” he declared. “I’d like to join. Think they’ll have me?”

“I guess so. I don’t know, though, whether there are any offices left to be filled. You might have to be just a plain, every-day marauder.”

“You ask Alf if he doesn’t want a high-class poisoner. But say, Gerald, you don’t want to let faculty get wind of it. Secret societies are barred, you know.”

“Of course, but this is just a joke.”

“Um, yes; but faculty is deficient in humor, you see. Old Toby never did have any, and I guess Collins had his worn out years ago. When’s the next meeting?”

“I don’t know. I think we must have adjourned—what is it?—sine die. I wouldn’t be surprised if the S. P. M. didn’t meet again.”

And doubtless it wouldn’t have, had the weather behaved itself. But on Wednesday forenoon it started in to snow, and in the afternoon the snow changed to rain, and the rain kept up all day Thursday. And fellows who had been softening up their baseball gloves with neatsfoot oil or porpoise grease, or polishing their golf clubs, or taking their tennis rackets from the press, grumbled loudly and said unkind things about the New England climate. Gerald did no audible grumbling, but was vastly disappointed and disgusted, and spent much of his time watching the sky for signs of a break in the weather.

Alf stood Wednesday with equanimity, but on Thursday he grew restive. Practice in the baseball cage wasn’t a satisfactory substitute for outdoor exercise. Casting about for something to amuse himself with, Alf recollected the S. P. M., which, like other of his foolishness, he had promptly forgotten. The result was that just before supper that evening there was a peculiar knock at the door of 28 Clarke, three raps, a pause, and three more. Dan called “Come in!” and the door opened. But the visitor remained outside in the darkened corridor. He wore a black domino over the upper part of his face, and held forth two bulky envelopes.

“Vengeance!” he whispered, hoarsely.

Dan, wondering, took the envelopes, trying to discover the identity of the bearer. The clothes were not familiar to him, but there was something about the mysterious visitor that suggested Alf.

“Who the dickens are you?” asked Dan.

But the other made no answer, and was already retreating into the shadows.

“It’s Alf,” laughed Gerald, looking over his roommate’s shoulder. “Come on in, Alf.”

But Alf, if it was Alf, turned and scuttled along the corridor and disappeared down the stairs.

“I don’t believe it was Alf,” said Dan, doubtfully.

“I know it was,” Gerald replied. “I’ve stood up in front of him too often when we used to box not to know that mouth and chin. What’s in the envelopes?”

“Let’s find out. Here, one of them’s for you.”

They were addressed in scrawly, printed characters. They tore them open and drew from each a folded sheet of paper and a round piece of yellow cardboard about the size of a silver dollar, on which was inscribed “S. P. M.” in black letters and, above, what was evidently intended for a skull and crossbones. The communication was brief:

“Brother in the Cause: There will be a Special Meeting of the Society in the Secret Rendezvous at half after seven to-night. Wear this insignia, and fail not on peril of disfavor and death!

“Number One.”

[CHAPTER IV]
THE INITIATION

At supper Gerald asked Alf if he might bring a recruit to the meeting. “It’s Arthur Thompson, and he wants to join, Alf.”

“Bring him. Where’s your badge, though?” Alf pointed to his own yellow disk, which he wore conspicuously pinned to his lapel. “Didn’t you get instructions to wear it?”

“I didn’t know you meant to wear it to supper, Alf.”

“Why not? How do you suppose people are to know that we have a secret society unless we advertise it?” asked Alf, disgustedly. “Well, bring Thompson along with you. Joe Chambers is coming, too. As editor of The Scholiast, he may be able to give the society a nice write-up in the next number.”

When Gerald and Arthur reached 7 Dudley, they were confronted by a sheet of brown paper pinned to the door. It read:

Headquarters of the S. P. M.

A SECRET SOCIETY

Ask for a circular!

Alf, Tom, Dan, and Joe Chambers were already inside as Gerald gave the password and was admitted. Chambers was a tall First Classman, who wore glasses and tried his best to look cultured. Joe rather fancied himself as a molder of public opinion, and really did have a knack of writing red-hot editorials. When Gerald came in he was sprawled in an easy chair, visibly amused by the proceedings.

“We are all here,” announced Alf, gravely. “The Sergeant-at-Arms—I mean the Incendiary—will lock the door. Hold on a minute, though!” He took a sheet of foolscap from a table drawer, and pinned it on the outside of the door, under the first sign. The others followed him and read:

INITIATION NOW GOING ON.
NO ADMITTANCE.

“There,” said Alf, “I guess that’s some businesslike, what?”

“Look here,” said Joe, uneasily, “you didn’t say anything about initiation when you beguiled me to this den of iniquity.”

“My dear chap,” expostulated Alf, “you didn’t think, did you, that you could join a society of this sort without being initiated? Why, that’s absurd, positively absurd. Isn’t it, Tom?”

“Silly,” grunted Tom.

“Of course.” Alf locked the door. “The initiation will now proceed. The novitiates will remove their coats and waistcoats, please.”

Arthur obeyed smilingly, but Joe Chambers looked a trifle uneasy, and hesitated. “What for?” he asked. “What do you think you’re going to do with me?”

“What!” roared Alf, savagely. “Would you dare question the authority of the Chief Assassin?”

“I would,” replied Joe, firmly. “What’s your game?”

Alf looked helplessly at Tom and Dan. “Did you ever hear of such effrontery, such ingratitude, such—such— Honest, now, did you?”

Dan sadly acknowledged that he never had. Tom grunted.

“Here I invite him to become a member of the finest, most high-toned little band of cutthroats in the country,” said Alf, “and now he refuses to allow himself to be initiated. Ha, I have it!” He viewed Joe darkly. “It was a scheme to penetrate to our meeting-place and learn our secrets! You are a brave man, Joe Chambers, to put yourself in our power!”

“Come on, Joe, be a sport,” begged Dan. “What do you care if you get killed?”

“And think what it would mean to the school, Joe,” added Tom. “We’d be spared those editorials in The Scholiast!”

“Yes, be a good fellow, Joe. Just one tiny little initiation,” said Alf. “It won’t take five minutes; honest, it won’t. Look at Thompson there, brave and calm. My word, how brave and calm!”

“Oh, all right,” laughed Joe. “Go ahead with your tomfoolery. What do you want me to do?”

“Remove your coat and waistcoat,” returned Alf, promptly. “The Incendiary will give you a check for them. Thank you. Lay them aside, Gerald. It’s barely possible he will need them again.” Alf crossed to the window-seat and piled the cushions together in the middle. “Now, gentlemen, the first ordeal will be that known as the Ordeal by Water.” He opened the window from the bottom and put his hand out. It was still raining hard, and Alf seemed to derive much satisfaction from the fact. “Kindly place yourselves on the cushions, gentlemen. No, faces up, please, and heads outside the window. That’s it. Thank you very much.”

“But it’s raining, you idiot!” protested Joe.

“Ah, that is the point,” replied Alf, gravely.

“Well, I’m going to take my collar and tie off,” grumbled Joe. He did so, and Arthur followed his example. Then, side by side, they stretched themselves across the cushions, their legs sprawling over the floor, and their heads and shoulders over the sill.

“Beautiful,” said Alf, approvingly. “Hold it, please.” From somewhere he whisked into sight two broad-mouthed tin funnels and clapped them into the mouths of the recumbent boys. At the same instant he closed the window as far as it would go. Both strove to get their hands outside to remove the funnels, but they were so closely jammed in that they couldn’t move their arms. Dan and Tom and Gerald viewed the proceedings with broad grins.

“How long before they will drown?” asked Tom, untroubledly.

“About two minutes,” replied Alf, darting to the door. It opened and closed behind him, and they heard him speed down the corridor and then go racing upstairs. A moment later there were footsteps in the room overhead. Dan looked inquiringly at Tom.

“Whose room is above?” he asked.

“Steve Lingard’s. What’s Alf up to, do you suppose?”

“Search me, but I guess we’ll find out if we wait.” The two pair of legs on the floor were beginning to move restively. Evidently the position was growing wearisome. The three boys inside heard a window above being softly raised, and they crowded around Joe and Arthur and watched. Suddenly, there descended a great stream of water straight onto the faces of the two initiates. Away went Arthur’s funnel, but not until he had swallowed enough water to almost choke him. Joe’s funnel had tipped sideways, so that he fared rather better; but when Dan and Tom raised the window and pulled them into the room, there wasn’t much to choose between them. Both looked like drowned rats, and were gasping and choking and sputtering wildly. They were soaking wet halfway to their waists. Alf came hurrying in, and the quartette sank into chairs and laughed until their sides ached. Joe was the first one to find his voice.

“A r-r-rotten joke!” he gasped. “You fellows think you’re plaguey smart, don’t you? L-l-look at me! I’m wet to the skin!”

“Yes, but you’re a member in good standing of the S. P. M.,” returned Alf, soothingly. “All that remains is to swear to reveal everything that you have witnessed at the meeting.”

“Yah!” said Joe, disgustedly, seizing a towel and trying to dry himself off. “You make me tired!”

Arthur, however, took it quite good-naturedly.

“Gee,” he said, “I thought I was drowned there for a minute. What was it, Loring, a cloudburst?”

“Yes, from Lingard’s pitcher. It was a peach of a shot, wasn’t it? Better take your shirts off, fellows, and get dry. Joe, you are elected to the office of Press Agent Extraordinary and Chief of the Bureau of Publicity. Thompson, you are First Assistant Assassin. Any little jobs too menial for me to attend to will become your duty; trifling murders that you can attend to in the evenings after study. And now, Brothers in the Cause, we will banquet.”

Alf had provided crackers and pâté and cheese, and six bottles of ginger ale; and Joe, who had wiped his shoulders dry, and hung his upper garments over the radiator, became pacified. Alf removed the initiation notice from the door, and replaced it with one announcing that a midnight orgy was in progress. They were disturbed several times by knocks and demands for admission, but no one was allowed in. When Tom Roeder became too obstreperous, Dan mounted a chair and dropped an empty ginger-ale bottle through the transom. He had to guess at his aim, but, from the subsequent sounds, and the fact that Roeder took himself off precipitately, it is probable that the aim was not so bad.

The meeting broke up late, and none of the six had any study to their credit that night. But then, as Alf pointed out, that didn’t matter very much, since in a very short time the faculty would be totally eradicated. That, he explained, would happen just as soon as he was able to decide which member to do away with first.

“The trouble is, fellows, that as soon as I decide on one, it occurs to me that another deserves the honor more. At present Old Toby and Noah are tied for first place.”

“I wish you’d make it Noah,” sighed Arthur. “I’m having beastly luck with his old physics lately.”

“Why not begin at home?” asked Joe. “There’s Kilts right down the hall there.”

“Ssh!” Alf leaned across the remains of the feast. “Just between ourselves, I have a weakness for Kilts, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to get him to join us. I’ve always thought that Kilts would make a dandy assassin. He reminds me so often of one of those old Scotch Boarders—I mean Borderers. When the time is ripe I shall put it up to him, and I think—mind you, I only say I think—that he will jump at the chance!”

After that evening the S. P. M. met occasionally and informally, and there was one hilarious evening when another double initiation took place, Harry Durfee, the baseball captain, and Tom Roeder, being admitted to the fold. By that time the S. P. M. had become rather famous throughout school, and there were many applications for membership. But Alf counseled keeping the society select. Many guesses were made as to what S. P. M. stood for, the guesses varying from Socially Prominent Members to Stewed Prune Munchers. Alf managed to derive a good deal of entertainment from his society; but as the faculty continued to breathe and have their being, it must be confessed that the S. P. M. failed of its avowed mission. March settled down to fair and warm weather before it was half gone; and with the beginning of outdoor work for baseball and track candidates, the S. P. M. lost its interest.

The track and field squad had grown to over forty boys, and every afternoon they were hard at it under Andy Ryan’s direction. Every one was glad when gymnasium work was over, and they could get out on the field and feel the sod or cinders under their spiked shoes. Dan and Alf were busy on the diamond, Dan at second base and Alf in left field. Tom was swinging the hammer around his head or tossing the shot, getting himself into form again, and at the same time helping Andy with the coaching of three other candidates for the weight events. Thompson was working hard at the high bar, and Gerald—well, Gerald was trying his best to run his young legs off, and would have succeeded, I fancy, had not Andy Ryan kept a close watch on him. For Gerald was eager and willing to a degree; and if he had been left to his own devices, would undoubtedly have blasted his chances in the very first fortnight by overexertion.

For Gerald’s idea of training for the mile run was to go out every day and run that distance at top speed; and he was both surprised and disappointed when Andy restricted him to jogging around the track one day, racing a quarter of a mile the next, and, as like as not, laying him off entirely the third.

“But I’m perfectly able to run to-day, Andy,” he pleaded on one such occasion. Andy shook his head.

“Easy does it, my boy, easy does it,” he replied. “You’ve got two months ahead of you yet. We’ll start slow and work up. Mile runners aren’t made in a day, nor a week, nor yet a year, for that matter.”

And when Gerald complained to Alf that he feared Andy wasn’t going to take enough interest in him, Alf gave him a little lecture. “Get that idea out of your head, Gerald,” he said, severely. “Andy knows what he’s up to. When he tells you to jog, you jog. When he tells you to sprint, you sprint; and when he says rest, why, rest as hard as you know how. That’s the way to get on fastest. Distance running, as I’ve heard, is largely a matter of endurance, and I guess endurance is something you’ve got to learn slowly.”

“But I’ve run three miles time and again, Alf, and finished strong.”

“Yes, but you weren’t doing the mile around five-five, and that’s what you’ll have to do if you want to get a place in the Duals, Gerald. Has Andy given you a trial yet?”

“No, and I wish he would. He says he isn’t going to until after recess, though.”

Alf nodded wisely. “What he says goes, Gerald. Keep that in mind. Remember that Andy knows more about training than you ever will know if you live to be a hundred.”

And Gerald got the same sort of talk from Dan and Tom. Only Arthur Thompson was at all sympathetic.

“Seems to me,” said Arthur, “he might let you do a good deal more than he is, Gerald. But then I don’t pretend to know anything about running. Anyhow, I guess he means to take you on the squad.”

“I guess so, because there are only four of us out for the mile. Maury has been at it every day this week, except Saturday. I don’t think it’s fair, Arthur. Of course, I won’t be able to do anything against him if I don’t get any practice!”

“Well, you don’t expect to beat him, do you?” asked Arthur, with a smile. “He’s pretty good at it, you know.”

“The best he ever did it was five, three-and-four-fifths,” Gerald objected.

“Well, isn’t that pretty good?”

“Y-yes, but I’ll bet I could do it pretty near that.”

“Bet you couldn’t!” replied Arthur, laughingly. “Not yet awhile. Why, Maury’s nineteen, I guess; eighteen, anyhow.”

“Well, I’m sixteen,” answered Gerald, stoutly. “And, besides, age hasn’t got much to do with it, anyway.”

“Yes it has, Gerald. You’re stronger at eighteen than you are at sixteen, and strength means endurance; and I guess you’ve got to have a heap of that to make good in the mile run.”

“I read in a book,” said Gerald, “that all you have to do to become a good distance runner is to practice. And Andy won’t let me do that. I guess I’ll try for something else. Think I could learn to pole vault?”

“Maybe. But I’d stick to the mile if I were you, Gerald. You’d have to begin all over if you went in for the pole.”

“Yes, I suppose I should,” answered Gerald, dispiritedly.

Arthur slapped him on the back.

“Buck up, Mr. Pennimore! Never say die, you know.”

But Gerald’s countenance didn’t clear. “That’s all well enough for you,” he grumbled, “for Andy treats you right. And Maury makes a fuss about you, because you’re our crack pole vaulter. But they don’t care a button whether I get along or not. I guess they’re just laughing at me behind my back. Guess they think I’m sort of a fresh kid for wanting to make the team. I’ve seen fellows kind of grin as I went by on the track.”

“Oh, come, Gerald, that’s nonsense!” said Arthur, heartily. “Nobody’s laughing at you, I’ll bet. It’s plucky of you to try for the track squad, and I guess every fellow thinks that way. And don’t get discouraged about it. Even if you don’t do terribly well this year, you’ve got two more years here, and college afterward.”

“But I’m going to do well this year,” replied Gerald, determinedly. Adding, less assuredly, “If they’ll give me a fair show, I mean.”

“And they will. Why shouldn’t they? Don’t you think Andy and Maury want to win the Duals as much as you do? Not to treat you fair would be cutting off their nose to spite their face, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” answered Gerald. Then he laughed. “Andy would have a hard time cutting off his nose, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t find it, I guess!”

[CHAPTER V]
THE CHALLENGE

“Piffle!” said Alf. “Any one could edit a paper like that old sheet of yours, Joe. It’s most all ads, anyhow.”

It was the last week in March, and Alf, Tom, and Dan and Joe Chambers were clustered around the fireplace in 7 Dudley. The weather had been so mild that over in the heating plant the boilers had been allowed to go out, and to-night, with a northerly March wind rattling the windows, it was decidedly cold in the room; or had been until Alf had lighted a fire in the little grate. Joe Chambers stretched his long legs out and smiled indulgently.

“That’s all right,” he replied, “but I wish you had it to do for awhile. It may seem simple enough to you chaps, but just let me tell you that getting out The Scholiast is no joke.”

“No, it’s a very serious proposition,” murmured Tom, who had been on the verge of slumber several times. “A joke now and then would help it like anything.”

“Of course,” went on Joe, warming to his subject, “I have three fellows to help me, but—well, you see how it is: nobody can know as well as you do just what you want. So, in a way, I have to be pretty nearly the whole thing down there.”

“That ought to please you,” said Alf, gravely.

“I think The Scholiast is a mighty good paper,” remarked Dan. “It’s a heap better than any I’ve seen—any school paper, I mean.” Alf sniffed.

“Why say school paper?” he asked. “Why, The Scholiast has the New York Sun and Herald and everything else beat a mile! It’s the only gen-oo-ine, all-wool, yard-wide journal in existence! Talk about your Danas and your James Gordon Bennetts and—and your Hearsts! Why, they’ll be swallowed in eternal gloom while the name of Joseph Chambers still—er—flares athwart the—the——”

“Oh, shut up, Alf! You talk like one of Joe’s editorials,” said Tom, disgustedly. “After all, it is a pretty good little weekly——”

“Yes, a little weakly,” murmured Alf.

“But every one knows that it’s Holmes who makes it go. Holmes is the real thing on The Scholiast.” Tom winked at Dan. “Why, it’s Holmes who gets the advertising, looks after the circulation, pays the bills, and does the whole big stunt. I know, because he told me so himself.”

Joe smiled pityingly. “Holmes is a mighty smart business editor,” he said, “but there’s some difference between soliciting advertisements and writing copy; to say nothing of editing it after it’s written!”

“But think of the glory!” exclaimed Alf, rapturously. “Think what it is to be a Molder of Public Opinion! And as a molder of Public Opinion, Joe, you’re just about the moldiest ever!”

“You’re having a pretty nice little time knocking me to-night, aren’t you?” asked Joe, with a suspicion of heat. “Well, you may make all the fun you want to, but I’d like to see you hold down my job for ten minutes, you smart Aleck!”

Alf, having at length succeeded in getting a fall out of Joe, as he would have expressed it, smiled joyfully.

“Nonsense, Joe! I could get out a better paper than that with my eyes shut and one hand tied behind me!”

“Yes, you could!” sneered Joe, with an inflection that belied his words. “That’s what they all say! Every fellow thinks he can edit a newspaper.”

“I’m not saying anything about newspapers,” retorted Alf, sweetly. “The Scholiast is not a newspaper, Joseph. It never had any news in it since it started.”

“Cut it out, Alf,” growled Tom. “Don’t be nasty.”

“It’s a fact,” declared his roommate, warming to his subject the more as he saw Joe Chambers losing his temper. “For instance, there’s a new plank walk put down from Merle to the gym steps on Monday. The following Friday The Scholiast comes out with the startling information that ‘A new plank walk has been established from Merle Hall to the Gymnasium, and is meeting with much favor from those who have occasion to pass that way.’ News! Poppycock!”

“Anything connected with the school,” said Joe with much dignity, “is of interest to the readers of The Scholiast.”

“Then why don’t you put in something that every one doesn’t know? Why don’t you tell about Old Toby’s new wig? That’s real hot stuff for your readers. Why, Toby hasn’t had a new wig before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant!”

“You’re a silly ass,” grunted Joe. “I’m glad I don’t have to edit your copy.”

“I’m glad I don’t have to write for your paper,” Alf retorted. “If I did, though, I’ll bet I’d get some more interesting stuff in it.”

“Oh, you make me tired,” said Joe, getting up. “You’re a regular Mister Fixit. You couldn’t hold down a reporter’s job for ten minutes.”

“Fancy that! Joe, I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you a feed at Farrell’s for the crowd that I can get out a livelier number of The Scholiast than you ever have. What do you say?”

“I say you’re a silly idiot,” replied Joe from the doorway.

“Take me up?” Alf insisted.

“What’s the good? You’ll never get the chance to try.”

“All right; then you’re safe? Bet me?”

“Yes, I’ll bet you.” Joe smiled pityingly at the others. “You may know something about football and hockey, Alf, but you couldn’t write a two-line paragraph that The Scholiast would publish.”

After which parting fling, Joe nodded to the rest and took his leave. As the door closed behind him Alf chuckled with wicked glee.

“Got a fall out of him, though, didn’t I? He’s a chesty youth, is Joe.”

“What did you want to rag him so for?” inquired Dan, who, while he had enjoyed the hostilities, didn’t quite approve. Alf shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, I don’t know. Felt like it, I suppose. Joe sort of got on my nerves to-night. He’s such a know-it-all. I really like him, but it does him a heap of good to be taken down a few pegs now and then. Besides, what I said was true. He fills that sheet up with a lot of the dullest, stalest, messiest old trash I ever read.”

“Well, there isn’t much to publish, I guess,” murmured Tom. “He does the best he can, most probably.”

Alf made no response. He was gazing fixedly at the flames in the grate. Dan pulled himself out of his chair and found his cap.

“I’m off,” he announced. “Good night, you chaps.”

“Good night,” said Tom. “See you to-morrow.”

Alf only waved a hand.

The next evening Alf haled Tom over to Cambridge Society. Tom was a member of Oxford, but occasionally allowed himself to be led astray, as he termed it. Dan had received summons to be present, and was on hand with Gerald.

“Come over here in the corner,” said Alf, mysteriously. “I wouldst a tale unfold. Come on, Gerald; you can keep a secret, I guess.”

He led the way to an uninhabited corner of the big room and pulled four chairs together. When they were all seated with heads close together, Alf began with lowered voice:

“Remember Joe Chambers’s wager last night?” he asked. Tom and Dan nodded. “You don’t, Gerald, because you weren’t there. But Joe bet me a feed at Farrell’s that I couldn’t get out a livelier number of The Scholiast than he had ever published.” Alf leaned back and grinned at the puzzled faces. “Well, I’m going to do it.”

“Do it! How can you?” asked Dan.

“You don’t suppose for a minute, do you, that Joe’s going to let you get out The Scholiast for him?” inquired Tom.

“No, my slow-witted friend,” replied Alf, engagingly, “but he can’t prevent me—us, I mean—from getting out a Scholiast of our own, can he?”

[CHAPTER VI]
ALF BECOMES AN EDITOR

Tom stared.

“What the dickens are you babbling about?” he demanded, impatiently. “Out with it, or I’m going home. I’d hate to be seen here, anyway.”

“You never did care for good society,” retorted Alf. “But listen, now; here’s the game; see what you think of it.” The four heads drew together again. “What I propose doing is getting out a fake number of The Scholiast, having a whole pile of fun and putting up one nice, fine, big joke on the immortal Joseph. Are you with me?”

“Sounds all right,” said Dan, eagerly. “But just how——”

“Easy as pulling teeth! We’ll go over to Greenburg, see a printer there, and get him to copy The Scholiast exactly; same heading and type and—and style all through. He can do it all right, I’ll bet. Then the three of us—no, the four of us, for Gerald’s in on it now—will write the stuff. We’ll have a whole bunch of fake advertisements, and a column or so of ‘School Notes,’ and a couple of Joe’s inimitable editorials, and—and the rest of the guff, you know.”

“Bully!” exclaimed Gerald.

“Say, that’ll be dandy,” cried Dan. Tom nodded approval.

“Only thing is, Alf,” he objected, “it’ll cost a lot of money, I’m afraid. Got any idea how much?”

“No; I’m going to see the printer to-morrow. I’d have gone to-day, but I didn’t have a chance to get away. I don’t believe, though, that it will cost so very much. All we’ll want is about three hundred copies, Tom.”

“Three hundred will cost about as much as three thousand,” replied Tom. “I know, because I’ve had some dealings with printer folks. They’re robbers. It’s the—the composition that costs.”

“Well, I say we do it if we can get the money,” said Dan. “Gee, but it will be fun to write the stuff, won’t it?”

“The Scholiast is sent out Friday at about noon,” said Alf. “We’ll have to get ours out two or three hours earlier. I guess the best way will be to get hold of the fellows who deliver the real paper and have them take ours around for us. In that way no one will suspect that he’s not getting the genuine article.”

“But they’ll find out as soon as they begin to read it, won’t they?” Tom objected.

“Well, maybe; but I don’t care about that. Besides, we’ll write it so foxily that they won’t quite know for sure, don’t you see, until they get their real copies.”

“When shall we do it?” asked Gerald, excitedly.

“Next week. This is Thursday. We’ll see the printer to-morrow and make all the arrangements. Then we’ll have a full week to get it out in.”

“You’ll have to swear him to secrecy, though,” said Dan, “or he will give the snap away.”

“Sure. But that will be all right. I guess the best place to go will be the Greenburg News. They probably have more type and stuff than the other shops.”

“Who prints The Scholiast?” Tom inquired.

“A fellow named Prince. His place is over Walton’s dry goods store. It’s just a small shop. I’ve been up there; went up last year when I was on the program committee for Cambridge. We might ask him to do it.”

Alf looked about questioningly. Tom shook his head.

“Better not risk it. He might get remorse and tell Joe.”

“That’s what I think,” said Dan. “Better go somewhere else.”

“All right. We’ll try the News place first. There are half a dozen printers in Greenburg, I guess. Meanwhile you fellows get your thinking caps on and make notes of anything that seems good for the paper. About Saturday night we’ll meet over at our room and get busy; have a meeting of the Editorial Council—whatever that is!”

“It’s a perfectly swell idea,” said Dan, admiringly. “How’d you come to think of it, Alf?” Alf looked becomingly modest.

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wanted some way to get a laugh on Joe Chambers. He said I couldn’t hold down a reporter’s job for ten minutes. I don’t know what a reporter has to do, exactly; and I dare say he’s quite right; but I don’t intend to have him saying so to my face!”

“Shall we call the paper The Scholiast?” asked Dan.

“What do you think?” Alf looked doubtful. “I guess we’ll have to, won’t we? We don’t want the joke given away too soon.”

“Maybe Joe could have us arrested for forgery or libel or something,” said Tom. “Couldn’t we change it a little? Call it The Schollarast or something like that?”

“Sure; just change a letter or two; no one would notice if they weren’t looking for it.” This from Dan.

“Call it The Scholiant,” Gerald suggested.

“Right-o,” agreed Alf. “That’s a good one: The Scholiant. We’ll call it that. No one would notice it, I’ll bet. As the—the instigator of the scheme, I choose to be Editor-in-Chief, fellows, and as Editor-in-Chief I am entitled to write the editorials. And just you watch me! I’m going to out-Chambers Chambers! All I want is a nice little subject that nobody gives a hang about. What do you think of doing a column or so on making Yardley a co-educational school?”

“Shucks!” said Dan. “Joe would never hit on a subject half as interesting.”

“No, he never would,” Tom agreed. “What you want to write about is something regarding the faculty, I guess. I’ll tell you, Alf! Make the proposition that the school would be better off without a faculty!”

“Good! That’s a peach! But I must remember to write School and Faculty and Student Body with capitals; Joe’s great on capitals!”

“He’s a regular capitalist,” murmured Tom.

They talked the project over for a half-hour longer, and then, very full of it, sought their rooms. Dan informed Gerald the next morning that he had been writing articles for The Scholiant all night in his dreams!

Alf and Dan went over to Greenburg the next forenoon and had a talk with the printer. They displayed a copy of The Scholiast and asked him what it would cost to have three hundred copies printed. At first the foreman of the shop thought they were offering him the contract to print The Scholiast every week, and was extremely affable. Later, when he found that they only wanted one issue turned out, he was inclined to pay no more attention to them, and they had to explain that the thing was a joke in order to reinlist his interest. This proved a lucky move, for the foreman had a strong sense of humor and was immediately eager to have a hand in the hoax. But after he had done his figuring on the job their enthusiasm was somewhat dashed, for forty dollars and eighty cents seemed a good deal to pay for the joke. Dan told the man they would have to think it over, and would let him know right away; and after swearing him to secrecy returned to Yardley.

Tom was for taking more fellows into the scheme in order to raise the money, but the others demurred on the ground that it would increase the risk of having the secret leak out. It was Gerald who finally proposed a solution of the difficulty.

“I’ve got a lot of money I don’t need,” he said, apologetically. “I could pay fifteen dollars and you could make up the rest. I’d be awfully glad to.”

“That doesn’t seem fair, though,” said Dan. “We ought all to share alike. I’m pretty nearly busted though, and that’s a fact.”

“I’ll get my allowance Wednesday or Thursday next,” said Alf. “I guess I can put in seven or eight of it. I tell you what, fellows. Let Gerald put in fifteen—or twenty, if he will—and we’ll all pay him a dollar a week until we’re even. How’s that?”

That suited every one, and so Gerald advanced twenty dollars to the fund and the others made up the balance; and the next day the printer was informed that the copy for the first, last, and only issue of The Scholiant would be in his hands by Wednesday.

That was a busy week, and it would be untruthful to say that studies didn’t suffer in 7 Dudley and 28 Clarke. Every evening there was a meeting in one room or the other, and the Editorial Force read their productions, compared notes, criticised each other’s efforts, planned new work, and laughed themselves tired. Alf was Editor-in-Chief, Tom was assistant Editor, Dan was Business Manager, and Gerald was Star Reporter.

They had had no idea when they started of the amount of labor entailed. The Scholiant was only a four-page publication, but the pages were of good size and it was no mean task to fill the columns. Alf was allowed two columns for his editorials, a column and a half was scheduled for School Notes, five columns were set aside for advertisements, and the entire front page was to be devoted, in the manner of The Scholiast, to important news articles. That left four columns to be filled with miscellany. The advertisements proved a source of much amusement, and they all took a hand in concocting them. And Tom made a big hit with his contributions to the School Notes department. But, although they wrote and wrote and racked their several brains for days, when Tuesday night came there was still, according to their reckoning, some three columns to be filled. They viewed each other with dismay and discouragement.

“I’m just simply written out,” sighed Alf. “I say we fill the rest up with ads.”

“Ads!” exclaimed Tom. “They’re the hardest of all. We’ve just about played that game out.”

“I tell you!” said Gerald. “When a paper hasn’t anything to put in it prints an advertisement of its own, like ‘Subscribe to The Scholiant! One Dollar a Year! Do it Now!’”

“Bully scheme!” cried Dan. “That’ll use up a whole column.”

“One! Pshaw! Let’s make it three columns,” said Alf. “And we’ll make it a good one, too. Push me some paper, Tom.”

Alf wrote busily for a minute, and then read the result of his inspiration and labor as follows:

“‘Read The Scholiast! The Only Paper Publishing Chambers’s Editorials! The Only Paper Giving You Yesterday’s News Next Week! Fearless and Almost Intelligent! Subscribe To-day! Don’t Wait! We Need the Money!’”

“We’ll print that across three columns,” said Alf, as the applause died out. “And that ought to be enough. Now let’s go over the whole batch again. You read, Tom, and don’t chew your words.”

So Tom started in and read all they had written, growling now and then over some illegible writing or mis-spelled word, and the others suggested changes or corrections. Finally the sheets were bundled together and given to Alf to convey to the printer on the morrow; and with sighs of relief the Editorial Force sought their beds. Dan, in his capacity of Business Manager of The Scholiant, had rounded up the boys whose work it was to deliver The Scholiast, and had found them very willing to earn a little more money by performing similar duties. He didn’t tell them what it was they were to deliver, but made them promise to say nothing about it nevertheless. There were only two of them, both Third Class fellows, and young enough and sufficiently in awe of the football captain to keep still tongues. The copy went to the printing shop Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday Tom and Alf went over and read proof, and didn’t leave until the first copy of the paper had been “pulled” from the press.

[CHAPTER VII]
THE SCHOLIANT

At half-past ten the next forenoon the two carriers toiled up the hill with the papers under their arms. Their instructions were to deliver a copy to each Scholiast subscriber, and this they proceeded to do. Oddly enough, the first copies to reach their destinations were those for Dr. Hewitt and the library. The Doctor’s was left in the Office, and the library copy was placed, as usual, on the periodical table. As the Doctor was engaged with a class at the time, and as the library was empty, these copies found no readers until much later in the day. Meanwhile the paper had been delivered at the rooms of the two societies upstairs, and the two boys left Oxford and began their tours of the dormitories.

The first discovery of the hoax is credited to a Preparatory Class youth named Wilkes, who at the time was enjoying a slight attack of German measles, in his room in Merle Hall. It was Wilkes who, contrary to the doctor’s instructions, threw up his window and hailed a friend excitedly some ten minutes after the delivery of The Scholiant had begun.

“Oh, Billy!” sang out young Mr. Wilkes. “Oh, Billy! Have you seen The Scholiast?”

Billy paused under the window and deliberated.

“Is it a joke?” he asked finally and suspiciously.

“No—yes——”

“Then I don’t know the answer,” replied Billy, shifting his books to his other arm and starting on again.

“Hold on! Come up here and see it, will you? Chambers has gone crazy, and the paper’s full of the funniest things you ever saw!”

“Huh! You want me to catch the measles, I guess!”

“You won’t; I’m all over ’em.”

“It’s against orders, though. Besides, I’ve got a copy of my own in the room.”

“All right, don’t!” said Wilkes, aggrievedly. “You’re missing something great, though. Listen to this.” Wilkes stuck The Scholiant through the window, and proceeded to read from the first column: “‘Yardley Wins at Last! Notable Victory Scored Over Greenburg Female Academy!!’”

“What?” cried Billy. “Here, I’m going to have a look!”

He tossed his books on to the steps and dashed upstairs, the danger of infection all forgotten.

A quarter of an hour later Yardley was in an upheaval. Copies of The Scholiant were at a premium; and the few fellows who, from motives of economy, didn’t subscribe to the school weekly, regretted the fact deeply. Between classes the steps of Oxford fluttered with the sheets, and copies were even handed about surreptitiously during recitations; and more than one copy was confiscated by authority.

Of course it is out of the question to reproduce that number of The Scholiant here, but some of its features deserve mention. At first glance The Scholiant was The Scholiast, and nothing else; lots of fellows refused to believe that it was not the regular issue of the school paper until, at noon, the grinning carriers appeared with the latter. And it was almost dinner-time when some smart youth made the discovery that an N was doing duty for an S in the title. The first article was an account of a baseball victory for Yardley over the Greenburg Female Academy, a private day school for girls. This production was Tom’s, and he had had a lot of fun in writing it, since it gave him excellent opportunities to score hits on Alf and Dan and others of the baseball team.

“Two weeks ago to-morrow,” said the account, “Yardley won its first baseball victory of the season. Greenburg Female Academy was our opponent, and a hard-fought and closely contested game was the result. Not until the ninth inning had been played was the outcome apparent. Then, rallying nobly about its captain, our team refused to be denied. The final score was 37 to 29, eleven runs being tallied in the last inning when, with admirable presence of mind, our Coach released six field mice from a cigar box. During the subsequent confusion our team scored at will. We understand that the game has been protested by the Academy, on what score is not apparent to The Scholiant.”

Then followed a column and a half giving the game by innings. One inning will do as a sample: “In the eighth, Matilda Moore opened for the visitors with a long hit halfway to the pitcher’s box. She was clearly out, pitcher to first baseman, but as the entire visiting team gathered about the umpire and called him ‘a mean old thing,’ he reversed his first decision. Jessie Jones, who followed at bat, insisted on standing on the plate and was hit by the first ball pitched. After recovering from hysterics she was given her base. Matilda walked over to third and would have been out had she not threatened to stick a hat-pin in our third baseman if he touched her with the ball. Condit, being a gentleman of discretion, promptly dropped the ball and couldn’t find it until the runner was safe on the bag. Mary Ann Arbor struck out, but was given her base by the umpire when she claimed that Reid had pitched the ball so swiftly that she had been unable to see it.

“With the bases filled, Daisy Doolittle sent up a foul, which was captured by Hammel. She was called out, but the runners came home and refused to go back to their bases when instructed to do so by the umpire. They said they were too tired to walk so far. Gwendolyne Gwynne made eyes at the pitcher and walked to first, scoring a moment later, when Alice Smith struck at the first ball, a wild pitch, and ran to first. Gwendolyne neglected to make a circuit of the bases, explaining that she didn’t like the second baseman and wasn’t going near him. Sarah Feathers struck out. Four runs.

“For Yardley, Captain Durfee went to bat first in the last of the eight. He made a clean hit past shortstop and reached second, but was called out for having jostled Matilda Moore at first. After Matilda had stopped crying, the game went on. Condit couldn’t reach the ball, although he got a lot of exercise going after it, and the umpire gave him his base. Loring hit to deep center, advancing Condit to third and taking second. Vinton, naturally of a shy disposition, was so deeply embarrassed that he was struck out easily. Daisy Doolittle dropped the ball on the ground while she fixed her hair, and Condit and Loring scored. Wheelock made a safe hit to right, but got talking to the catcher and forgot to take his base. The umpire finally called him out for delaying the game. Two runs.”

Gerald had followed this with an article on “The Track and Field Outlook,” in which he managed to have some mild fun with the candidates. (Gerald’s copy had had to be pretty thoroughly edited, for English composition was not one of the boy’s strong points.) Dan’s first-page contribution made a great hit with its readers. It was headed “Broadwood Academy To Be Sold.”

“Broadwood Academy,” declared The Scholiant, gravely, “is announced to be sold under the hammer to the highest bidder, next Tuesday afternoon, at two o’clock. The sale will take place on the steps of the Court House, at Greenburg. Broadwood Academy was started a few years ago as a preparatory school for boys, but failed signally of its purpose, and for the past two years has been conducted as a Sanitarium for Weak-Minded Youths. The property consists of a small parcel of pasture land situated on a hillside about two or three miles from Greenburg, four or five tumble-down buildings, several keepers, and a handful of patients. We shall be sorry to see Broadwood Academy go, for it has been considered one of the unnatural curiosities of the neighborhood, and picnickers have always found the campus a comfortable place on which to lunch. A rumor has been current to the effect that Yardley Hall proposed buying the property and moving it to a corner of the Athletic Field. The Scholiant, however, is able to state authoritatively that the project has been abandoned.

“Professor Collins, when interviewed on the subject, said: ‘Yes, there was some talk of purchasing the property and bringing it here to Yardley, placing it, possibly, on the Athletic Field between the Boat House and the Tennis Courts. But the plan would be impracticable, since the buildings are too old to stand the journey.’ The property will probably be bought in by W. J. Arthur, the popular Wissining grocer, who contemplates using it as a poultry farm.”

Alf had two editorials, each done in Joe Chambers’s most flamboyant style. The first announced a change of editorial policy as follows: “A New Scholiant. Journalism in America has entered upon a New Era! Conservatism is dead! The Watchword of To-day is Houpla! It is no longer sufficient merely to print the News. The Public, the Great American Reading Public, demands Sensation. Hitherto and heretofore The Scholiant has followed the Old Methods of Journalism. It has published the News truthfully and deliberately. It has been Sedate, Dignified, and Courteous. But the Times compel a Change. The Scholiant is a Servant of the Public. The Scholiant bows to the Inevitable. We are done with Conservatism. Hereafter The Scholiant will be at once Up-to-Date, Sensational, Untruthful, and Interesting. It will be Saucy and Spiteful. Above all it will be Yellow. Ever in the van among the Journals of the Old School, from now on The Scholiant will be in the fore with the Journals of the New. Beginning with its next issue The Scholiant will be printed on yellow paper. It will be copiously illustrated. It will have Special Departments dealing with Burglary, Homicide, and Kindred Subjects. Always Fearless, it will hereafter be Reckless, Rampageous, and Reprehensible. Its Editorials, which have been copied all over the Civilized World, will continue to be written by the same Gifted and Eloquent Pen, but will be Brighter, Breezier, and Better than ever. The Old Scholiant is dead. The New Scholiant salutes you!”

A second editorial advocated the abolishing of the Faculty and the substitution of a Student Government body. It was the sheerest nonsense, but it served its purpose, which was to poke fun at Chambers’s tempest-in-a-teapot eloquence.

The “School Notes” filled almost two columns and, from a school standpoint, were extremely funny.

“Ferris, 2d, says he is raising a mustache. It looks to us like dirt, but Hy ought to know.”

“T—— L——, 1st, wears his collars so high that every time he looks over the edge he gets dizzy.”

“Notice anything new about Doctor H——? One at a time, please!”

“A clean towel has been placed in the Gymnasium wash-room. This makes the second this year.”

“Rand, 1st, has a new pair of trousers. Congratulations, Paul! (Later. We were mistaken. It’s the same old pair. Paul has had them pressed. Apologies, Paul!”)

“There’s going to be a party at Farrell’s before long. Ask Editor Chambers who is giving it.”

“There’s a case of German measles in Merle. Even our diseases are Made in Germany nowadays.”

“Captain Vinton says the football prospects are extremely bright. They always are at this time of year.”

“Hiltz, 2d, took tea on Friday with our popular Matron. So far his nerve has not been affected.”

The advertisements were perhaps the funniest feature of the issue. Practically every advertiser in The Scholiast was represented. The popular drug store across the river was Wallace’s, and Wallace advertised “Wallace’s Famous Fried Egg Sundae Can’t Be Beat! Try one at our Soda Fountain! We also have a full stock of Post Cards, Sarsaparilla, Toothbrushes, and Chewing Gum. Prescriptions filled while you sleep!”

“Indigestion? Farrell’s Lunch Emporium is the place to get it! Have one of my India Rubber Sandwiches! They last a Life Time!”

“Hardware of All Kinds at Topham’s. Why wear Woolen? Try a Suit of Our Chain Armor! Wears Harder and Lasts Longer!”

“Hurd and Gray’s Livery and Boarding Stable solicits the esteemed patronage of the young gentlemen of Yardley Hall. Good board at moderate prices. Try us when you are tired of Commons.”

“Proctor’s! Proctor’s! Proctor’s! Stationery in All its Branches. Post Cards Free to Patrons. Help Yourself when we are Not Looking. Try one of our Famous Non-Leakable Fountain Pens. A Bottle of Ink Eradicator Gratis With Every Pen!”

A telegraph item from New Haven announced that hereafter Yale University would admit Yardley Hall graduates without examination. Another, dated at Greenburg, stated that owing to the fact that the Faculty at Broadwood Academy had decided to insist upon a mild course of study at that institution many of its foremost athletes were leaving; and in consequence Broadwood would not be represented that Spring on field or diamond.

The Scholiant was a success, and the printer did a good business for days after in striking off extra copies at ten cents apiece for boys who wanted to send them home. “The Fake Scholiast,” as it was called, lived in history, and you will find framed copies of it hanging in the rooms of Cambridge and Oxford Societies. For days Yardley laughed itself sore over it, and hazarded all sorts of guesses as to who had perpetrated the joke. In the end the facts leaked out, and Alf and his associates reaped praise and renown, not only from their fellows but from members of the faculty as well. Tradition has it that Mr. Collins, the Assistant Principal, was discovered doubled over with a copy of The Scholiant in his hand.

But there was one who failed to appreciate the joke at its full value. That was Joe Chambers. Joe took it fairly well, but his grins lacked sincerity. No one was present when he caught his first glimpse of The Scholiant, so, unfortunately, his sensations must be left to the imagination; but Alf and Dan and Tom ran him down a half-hour later in his room. He was scowling darkly and, as he confessed days afterward, was writing a red-hot editorial on “The Vulgarity of Practical Joking.”

A day or two later, however, after the fellows got through teasing him, he regained his poise and managed to smile wanly when the subject was mentioned. The party at Farrell’s came off in due time, and, under the benign and softening influence of frankfurters and chicken sandwiches and chocolate eclairs and root beer, Joe forgave his tormentors. He would very willingly have forgotten, too, but that was denied him. I regret to say that at first Joe tried, in Alf’s picturesque language, to “squeal.”

“I agreed to give you fellows a feed,” he declared, “if you got out a livelier issue of The Scholiast than we did. You didn’t. You called your sheet The Scholiant. That lets me out, don’t you see?”

Alf viewed him reproachfully, sorrowfully, and shook his head.

“Joe, that isn’t like you,” he replied. “That’s quibbling. It—it even savors of dishonesty. No, no, as your friends, we can’t allow you to take that stand. Truth is truth, Joe, and justice is justice. Be a man, Joe. Pay up, old sport!”

Joe looked about him for moral support, but the faces of Dan and Tom and Gerald expressed only disapproval and hunger.

Joe sighed and gave in.

[CHAPTER VIII]
GERALD LIES LOW

March hurried along toward April, and Spring Recess drew near. This lasted one week, and Gerald was not looking forward to it with much pleasure. His father was still absent from home, and Gerald would be forced to spend the vacation in the big house in Fifth Avenue, with only the servants for company. To be sure, Tom, who lived in New Jersey, had asked Gerald to visit him for a couple of days, and that would help some; but, on the whole, he expected to pass rather a dull and lonesome time. He had half a mind to remain at Yardley, where there would be at least a handful of boys whose homes were too far distant to allow of their making the journey. Dan, who lived out in Ohio, was to spend the recess with Alf in Philadelphia. Gerald had wanted Dan to come home with him, but Alf had spoken first. Gerald grew daily more down-hearted as the first of April approached.

To most of the fellows, however, the nearing vacation brought a restlessness and excitement that were manifested in a growing disinclination to study and an increasing inclination toward mischief. School was to close on Thursday, and the exodus was to commence Friday morning. By Tuesday even the baseball and track candidates exhibited a disposition to dawdle and loaf; and Payson, the baseball coach—he was football coach as well—had a few sarcastic remarks to make when the last practice was over Wednesday afternoon. His hearers, however, felt that he was justified, and were too contented with the outlook to resent the wigging he gave them.

“He might have said a whole lot more,” said little Durfee, captain and shortstop of the team, as he and Dan left the gymnasium together. “We certainly have been playing like a lot of chumps lately.”

“Yes, we’re all thinking too much about vacation, I guess,” Dan assented. “But it will be different after we get back again.”

“I hope so. Gee, but I want to win this year, Dan.” Durfee laughed at his own earnestness a moment later. “I suppose you always do if you happen to be captain,” he added.

“Of course. That’s the way I feel about football. I wanted Yardley to win last year bad enough, but it seems to me that if we get licked next fall, I’ll just want to throw myself in the river. It does make a difference, Harry. How is the pitching situation shaping, old man?”

“About the way you see,” answered Durfee, with a shrug of his square shoulders. “I guess it’ll be Reid for the big games, but he isn’t doing much. Servis hasn’t a thing but a whole lot of speed, Dan; and if he gets cornered, he goes up in the air like a skyrocket.”

“That’s funny, too,” said Dan, “for when he isn’t playing ball, Servis is as cool and collected as a—a cucumber.”

“I know. I’m hoping he will get over it a bit after he’s been through more. We’ll work him in every game we can, whether we win or lose. After all, it’s only the Broadwood game I give a rap about. Snow and Wallace have the making of good pitchers, I think, and we’re going to do all we can for them; but this thing of making pitchers for next year and not having a really first-class one now isn’t much fun. I suppose, though, that next year’s captain will thank me. And may be that will be you, Dan.”

“Not likely. Especially as I’m football captain.”

“That’s so; I’d forgotten that. Well, here I am. Hope you have a dandy time, Dan. Keep in training, won’t you? So long.”

Harry Durfee disappeared into the dormitory, and Dan went on to his room. When he opened the door he found Alf sprawled out on the window-seat reading. He tossed the paper aside when he saw Dan.

“Hello,” he said. “Where’d you get to? What did you think of Payson’s few well-chosen words? Not bad for an impromptu speech, eh? He has a neat little way of saying things, hasn’t he?”

“I agree with Harry Durfee,” answered Dan. “And Durfee says Payson might have given it to us a lot hotter for the way we’ve been soldiering on him.”

“Huh! Durfee’s captain; and captains are always on the side of law and order. Personally, I am an insurgent to-day. I’m agin the gov’ment, Dan! I want to do something desperately wicked. Let’s revive the S. P. M. and raise a little Cain.”

“You’d better let the S. P. M. sleep in its grave,” laughed Dan. “Not, however, that I don’t feel a little coltish myself,” he added, rolling Alf suddenly off the window-seat and taking his place. There ensued a minute’s engagement, from which both boys emerged breathless, disheveled, and laughing.

“Let’s do something, Dan,” said Alf, as he returned his necktie to its accustomed place under his waistcoat. “Honest, I’ve got to do something or bust. Let’s pie somebody’s room for him.”

“No fun in that. Besides, everybody’s in their room now.”

“That’s so. Say, Dan, Friday’s April Fool’s Day. I’d like to work a nice big hoax on some one.”

“You might fool Old Toby by staying at school instead of going home,” suggested Dan.

“Don’t be an ass! Think of something, can’t you?”

“All I can think of is supper,” replied Dan, with a laugh.

“Your soul’s in your tummy,” said Alf, disgustedly. “Well, leave it to me. If I can think of something, are you in on it? Something big—and—er—awe-inspiring?”

“Sure,” answered Dan. “Go ahead and think. I’m off to commons.”

I fear there wasn’t much studying done at Yardley that evening. A spirit of unrest had seized the fellows, and there was much coming and going across the Yard and in the dormitory corridors. There were trunks to be brought from the storerooms, and loaned articles to be recovered, and, in some cases, debts to be settled. Every one made at least one call that evening. Some fellows, possessed by an excess of sociability, seemed determined to visit every friend and acquaintance in school. As for the morrow, well, it was a well-known fact that instructors were lenient on the last day of a term, and one could always manage to “fake” a bit if necessary.

In 7 Dudley a council of conspirators was going on. Callers there had found a locked portal and no response to their demands. The conspirators were Tom, Alf, and Dan. Alf was speaking.

“We’ve been ridiculously well-behaved all term,” he was saying, “and now I think we deserve a little fun. Besides, what’s the good of a secret society that never does anything?”

“It would be fun, all right,” said Dan, “but it’s a long way to go to get it.”

“Yes,” drawled Tom, “and if faculty catches us, we’ll be soaked for it good and hard. Guess you can count me out on it, Alf.”

“Oh, don’t be a pup!” begged Alf. “Faculty isn’t going to catch us. Even if it did, what’s the odds? It isn’t anything but a perfectly good joke; absolutely harmless. I’ll bet all the others will be crazy to go.”

“Crazy to go, yes,” answered Tom, ambiguously. “You’ll have plenty without me. I don’t want to get in wrong just now and be kept off the Track Team, thank you.”

“Oh, you make me tired, Tom! Why, look here. I tell you no one can possibly know. I’ll have everything ready, and all we’ll have to do is to sneak quietly away to-morrow night, get the things from where I leave them, go over to Broadwood and do the trick. It won’t take us five minutes there, and we’ll be home and in bed by one o’clock. And think of the fun Friday morning, when those fresh-water kids get up and view the scene!”

“The trouble is, we won’t be there to see it,” objected Dan.

“We’ll hear about it afterward, though,” replied Alf, with a grin. “And I don’t have to be there to see it; I can see it now. Come on, Tom; be a sport.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll see you through, but I’ll bet a doughnut we get into trouble. Still, what’s a little trouble, after all? The world is full of it. But don’t you think it would be a lot safer if just we three attended to it?”

“Not so much fun, though,” said Alf. “The more the merrier. We’ll have to do our packing some time during the day, fellows.”

“Why? We won’t have to leave before about half-past ten,” said Dan. “I can do mine in a half hour. One thing that’s mighty comforting is, that if faculty does hear of it, we’ll be out of the way by then.”

“Oh, faculty will hear of it all right,” said Tom. “How about little Geraldine, Dan?”

“I guess we’d better leave him out of it. He’s a bit tender to be mixed up in such doings. Besides, he wouldn’t want to go if he knew about it.”

“Wouldn’t he!” exclaimed Alf, with a grin. “You tell him and see what he says!”

“No, he isn’t to hear anything about it,” replied Dan, firmly. “I don’t mind being called up myself, but as Gerald’s father holds me kind of responsible for the kid’s behavior, I prefer to have him stay out of it.”

“All right,” agreed Alf. “I’ll see the others, though, and I guess we’ll have a merry little expedition.”

It was all very well, however, for Dan to talk about leaving Gerald out of the fun, but not so easy to do it. It didn’t take Gerald long the next day to discover that something was up. Alf appeared in 28 Clarke just before dinner, breathless and mysterious, with his shoes muddy from the road to Greenburg, and led Dan out into the corridor to consult with him in whispers. Gerald said nothing then, but it was very evident to him that something was afoot, and that whatever it was, he was not to be invited to participate.

In the afternoon Dan was absent from the room; and when, seeking him, Gerald walked into 7 Dudley, the conversation stopped suddenly, and an air of constraint was apparent until Gerald invented an excuse for retiring. Not being in a mood to welcome solitude, he crossed over to Whitson and ascended to Number 20. He found both Arthur Thompson and Harry Merrow at home. As usual, the latter was deep in his stamps, while Arthur, his trunk pulled into the middle of the room, was packing.

“I haven’t started yet,” said Gerald, morosely, seating himself on Harry’s bed, for the reason that the chairs and the other bed were strewn with Arthur’s clothes.

“You haven’t?” Arthur observed him in mild surprise. “Aren’t you going to?”

“To-night’s time enough.”

“Yes, only—” He leaned over Gerald, and dropped his voice. “What time are we going to start?”

“Start where?”

“Why, you know, S. P. M.”

“Oh!” said Gerald. “I guess we’re going to start late, aren’t we?”

“I suppose so. Loring didn’t say when, but I guess it will have to be late if we aren’t going to get nabbed.” He chuckled. “Prout’s going to leave his window unlocked so I can get in that way in case the door’s locked when we get back.” Suddenly an expression of blank dismay came into his face. “Jehoshaphat!” he murmured. “Loring said I wasn’t to mention it to you! I was thinking you knew!”

“Well, that’s all right,” responded Gerald, easily. “I do know now. I think it was mighty mean of Alf and Dan to try to keep me out of it.”

“Well, he said—” Arthur paused, and looked speculatively at Harry. That youth was apparently much too absorbed in his stamps to hear anything, and Arthur went on sotto voce. “Loring said Dan didn’t want you to get mixed up in it in case the faculty learned about it and made trouble. And I promised I wouldn’t tell you. Gee, I’m an awful ass!”

“No harm done,” said Gerald, soothingly. “I knew something was up, and I meant to find out what it was, too. You might as well tell me all about it now, Arthur.” But Arthur shook his head.

“No, I said I wouldn’t.”

“But you have! And I think it’s rotten mean not to, after I went and got you into the S. P. M.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this much then, Gerald. It’s a joke we’re going to play on—on some one to-night. That’s all. And if we should get caught at it, we’d probably be fired—put on probation anyway. And you don’t want to get put on probation now, do you?”

“I wouldn’t care,” replied Gerald, stoutly. “If you fellows can risk it, I don’t see why I can’t. Who’s in it?”

“Oh, you know; the S. P. M. I guess they’re all going—except you.”

“Except me, yes,” murmured Gerald. “Oh, all right if you don’t want to tell, Arthur. That’s all right. Maybe it would be silly to risk probation just to play a silly old joke on some one. And I was on probation last year, you know. I guess it’s going to be pretty risky, too. You’re almost sure to get caught when you come back.”

“Get out! Every one will be asleep before that. If they don’t see us start out, we’ll be all right, I guess.”

“When are you going to start?” asked Gerald, with a fine show of indifference.

“I don’t know; I’ve got to ask Loring.” Then Arthur looked at Gerald suspiciously and grinned. “You’re trying to pump me, aren’t you?”

“The idea!” murmured Gerald, deprecatingly.

“Yes, you are, Mister Smarty. Say, you’re foolish like a fox, aren’t you? Well, I won’t tell you any more.”

“I don’t care. It doesn’t concern me any. Only I think it’s silly to get into trouble just for a few minutes’ fun.” Gerald paused. “Then, besides,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to play a joke on him any way, because he never did anything to me.”

Arthur grinned. “Go on, you little ferret! See what you find out.”

“Oh, if you think I’m trying to pump you,” said Gerald, with great dignity, “I’ll get out! And I hope you forget to pack everything you’ll need at home!”

Gerald left in apparent high dudgeon, deaf to Arthur’s invitations to remain and superintend the packing; but as he scuttled down the stairs and across to his own room, he chuckled softly several times and seemed in very good humor. He began the packing of his own trunk at once; and when Dan came hurrying in a few minutes before six, the trunk was locked and strapped, and Gerald was giving attention to his suit case.

“Well, you’re smart,” said Dan, approvingly. “That’s what I’ve got to get busy and attend to. We got to chinning over there, and I forgot all about packing. I’ll get at it after supper, and then I guess we’d better both get to bed pretty early. You’re going up on the nine-seven, aren’t you, with the rest of us?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Gerald. “Any way, I guess it will be a pretty good plan to get a lot of sleep to-night. Traveling,” he added, demurely, “is very tiresome, isn’t it?”

“Very,” agreed Dan.

After supper, Dan set about his packing, and Gerald helped him. The task was completed about half-past eight, and then Dan announced carelessly that he guessed he’d run over to Dudley for a few minutes. “I want to see Alf about something,” he added. “If I were you, Gerald, I’d get to bed pretty soon. If I come back late, I’ll be quiet so as not to wake you.”

“All right,” answered Gerald, suppressing a yawn. “But you needn’t be especially quiet. You know nothing short of an earthquake can wake me after I’m once asleep, Dan.”

As soon as the door was closed behind his roommate, Gerald hurriedly removed his outer clothes, pulled pajamas on, found a book, and dashed into bed. As it proved, his hurry wasn’t necessary, for Dan didn’t return for over an hour, during which time Gerald, propped up in bed, read comfortably. When he heard Dan’s footsteps he hid the book under the pillow, turned his face from the light and feigned sleep. Dan pottered around quietly for some fifteen or twenty minutes convinced that Gerald was fast asleep, and then put out the light and crept into his own bed. Although Gerald didn’t dare turn over to make sure, he was pretty certain that Dan had, like himself, removed only his shoes, coat, vest, and trousers.

For the better part of an hour the two boys lay there silently and pretended to be asleep. I fancy it was harder for Dan than for Gerald, for the latter was entertained by the thought that he was hoaxing Dan. At last—it was some time after the clock had struck ten—Gerald heard his roommate’s bed creak, and then the soft patter of feet on the floor. Dan was getting into his outer clothes again. Gerald lay still and waited for a space, but Dan took so long that Gerald couldn’t resist the impulse to scare the other, so he yawned and stretched and turned over in his bed. Deep silence settled over the room. Gerald smiled in the darkness.

Finally, Dan took heart and continued his preparations, and presently Gerald heard the door open almost noiselessly and close again. At once he was out of bed and groping for his trousers. He had had the forethought to leave his clothes near by, and to arrange them so that he could get into them easily. He didn’t dare take time enough to lace his shoes. He merely thrust his feet into them, tucked the strings out of the way, and followed Dan.

Downstairs he crept. The door, locked at ten o’clock every night by Mr. Collins, the Assistant Principal, was ajar. He opened it cautiously and looked out. No one was in sight. The night was mild, and a half-moon sailed in and out of a cloudy sky. Closing the door behind him, Gerald crept along in the shadows of the buildings until he had reached the front of Oxford. He knew that the others would meet somewhere, and believed that from here he was certain to see or hear them.

And, as it proved, he hadn’t long to wait. Presently seven forms crept around the corner between Oxford and Whitson, and he buried himself more deeply in the shadow. They went by without suspecting him, and took the path that led down the hill toward Wissining. Gerald paused long enough to lace his shoes, and then keeping at a respectful distance, followed silently.

[CHAPTER IX]
A MIDNIGHT ESCAPADE

The seven Predatory Marauders went silently and rapidly down the path. Although only corridor lights showed in the dormitories, there was no knowing who might be staring out at them from some darkened window. Once over the crest of The Prospect, as the lawn in front of Oxford is called, the path fell quickly to the meadow below, and every member of the little band either expressed relief or experienced it. They might speak lightly of the risk and make fun of the consequences of detection, but the fact remained that they were violating two principal rules of the school, one forbidding students to leave the dormitories after ten o’clock, the other forbidding absence from the school grounds after supper-time without permission. To be found guilty of either offense might well supply cause for probation. But nobody was worrying. Without the risk, where would have been the fun?

In a few minutes they were climbing the fence into the road near the Wissining station, Alf and Harry Durfee in advance, Dan and Tom and Arthur and Chambers and Roeder following. If any one doubts my theory that the ending of a school term and the beginning of vacation produces a kind of mental intoxication, let me draw attention to the presence of Joe Chambers. Tom and Harry Durfee were fellows who might hesitate long before entering into such a madcap enterprise as that upon which they were bent, but Joe Chambers, Editor of The Scholiast, pink of Propriety and model of Culture, would no more have undertaken such a thing while in the full possession of his faculties than he would have appeared in public without his glasses, printed an advertisement on the first page of The Scholiast, or refused to make a speech! That is how I know that there is such a thing as End-of-the-Term Insanity, although that particular form of madness has not yet been recognized by the medical profession.

Once in the road all fear of discovery was left behind. Alf hummed a tune, Durfee whistled under his breath, and conversation began. They grew more quiet as they passed the station, although the platforms proved to be empty and the agent was doubtless napping in his room. The village proper lay a block away, and the road and the bridge which they presently crossed were alike deserted. Beyond the bridge the road forked, one route leading to Greenburg, and the other curving northward along the edge of Meeker’s Marsh and eventually leading to Broadwood Academy. The moon, which had obligingly hidden behind a cloud when they left the school, now appeared and lighted the road for them.

“It’s a peach of a night,” said Alf, approvingly, “but I hope Mr. Moon will take a sneak when we get to Broadwood.”

“Oh, the moon shines bright
On my old Kentucky home,”

sang Durfee, and the others joined in softly:

“On my old Kentucky home
So far away!”

They went on, singing, Alf setting a pace that if adhered to would cover the three miles to Broadwood in short time. Presently the old Cider Mill came into sight, a tumble-down two-story affair beyond whose empty casements the moonlight, entering through holes in the sagging roof, played strange pranks with the imagination. The old mill was popularly supposed to be haunted, and it quite lived up to its reputation so far as appearances were concerned. Weeds choked the doorways, and even grew from the rotting sills. Behind the mill lay the marsh, and a little stream that had once turned the stones murmured eerily as it wandered through the sluice.

“Why didn’t you find a more cheerful place to stow the things?” asked Dan as they drew up in front of the mill. “I’ll bet I saw a ghost in there then.”

“Bet you it’s full of them,” said Roeder with a shiver. “I wouldn’t go in there for a thousand dollars.”

“Don’t be an ass,” muttered Alf, crossly. “Nobody asked you to go in. I left the things just inside the door, and I’ll get them myself.”

“Well, hurry up, then,” said Tom.

Alf started through the waist-high growth of dead weeds, but paused before he had gone more than a dozen steps.

“I can’t carry them all,” he grumbled. “One of you fellows come and help me.”

“Oh, go ahead,” laughed Dan, “don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared,” replied Alf, indignantly. “But one of you chaps might help lug the stuff out.”

“Don’t all speak at once,” begged Harry Durfee. Joe Chambers responded to the call and followed Alf to the door. Presently they came back with two poles about seven feet long, each sharpened at one end, and a roll of cotton sheeting. Alf also carried a smaller bundle which, when opened, revealed two dozen sandwiches.

“Refreshments,” he announced. “Who wants a sandwich?”

Everybody did. Alf opened the package and laid it on a rock by the roadside, and they stood around and munched the sandwiches. Suddenly Tom said:

“Look up the road, Dan. Don’t you see something near the fence there?”

Dan looked and so did the others, and there was a moment’s silence. Then,

“Sure,” said Roeder, “there’s something moving up there. Maybe it’s a fox.”

“It’s a person,” said Tom, “and I vote we get out of sight until he gets by. Now you can see him.”

“Right-o,” agreed Alf. “Let’s step inside the mill until the prowling pedestrian passes.”

“Gee, I don’t want to go in there,” objected Durfee.

“Come on,” Dan laughed. “Seven of us are enough to match any ghost that ever walked.”

“And seven’s a lucky number, too,” added Chambers, as they made hurriedly for the doorway. They stumbled over the sill and clustered in the darkened interior. From there they couldn’t see the intruder, and so they ate their sandwiches and waited impatiently for him to go by.

“Did any one bring the grub along?” whispered Dan, presently.

No one had. It was out on the rock in plain sight. Dan groaned. “If he sees it he will stop and eat it up, or take it along with him!”

“Like fun he will!” said Alf. “If he touches it we’ll scare the life out of him. Say, let’s do it, anyway, fellows! When he gets up here we’ll make a noise, say ‘O-ooh!’ and see him run!”

“He ought to be here now,” said Tom. “Sneak over there and look through a crack, Dan.”

“And break my neck! The floor’s all torn up and you can walk right through into the water in some places. You do it, Tom. You wouldn’t be missed the way I would.”

“Shut up!” commanded Roeder. “I hear him.”

They lapsed into silence, but no sound reached them.

“You imagined it,” grunted Alf. “Maybe he wasn’t coming this way at all.”

“Yes, he was,” said Tom. “I saw him.” They waited several minutes longer. Then,

“I’ll bet he’s found our sandwiches,” grumbled Durfee. “I say we sneak out and have a look.”

“You do it,” suggested Alf. “You’re small. Don’t let him hear you, though.” So Durfee scrambled across the sill and crept to the corner of the building. In a moment he was back and whispering agitatedly.

“It’s a kid, and he’s eating up the sandwiches, fellows! Let’s scare him.”

“All together, then,” said Alf. “O-o-oh!”

They all joined in the dismal groan, repeated it, and then listened for results. But there was no sound of frightened footsteps on the road.

“Has he gone?” whispered Tom.

“I don’t believe so.” Alf put a foot over the sill. “I’m going to see.”

“So’m I,” muttered Dan. They crept to the corner and then Dan waved his hand to the others, and one by one they followed. What they saw filled them with amazement. On the rock, his back toward them, sat a small boy. He had apparently taken the parcel of sandwiches into his lap and was very busy consuming them.

“The cheek of him!” muttered Alf.

“Let’s howl!” said Dan.

“All right. Now, one—two—three!”

It was a fearsome noise they made, but [the boy on the stone never moved]. He kept right on eating sandwiches.

[“The boy on the stone never moved.”]

“Gee, he must be deaf!” gasped Roeder. “Or—say, you don’t think he’s a ghost, do you?”

“Not with a Yardley cap on his head,” replied Tom, dryly. He stepped out of concealment before they could stop him.

“Help yourself, Gerald,” he said, politely.

“Thanks,” answered that youth, his utterance impeded by the process of eating, “I will. Walking does make you hungry, doesn’t it?”

“Gerald!” yelled Alf.

“Pennimore!” shouted Roeder.

They leaped to the rescue of the sandwiches and wrested them away. Dan confronted the culprit sternly.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I’m going along with you,” replied Gerald, unruffledly. “I’m an S. P. M. just as much as you are. I’ve been following you all the way.”

“I didn’t want you to come,” said Dan. “If I had, I’d have let you know. This isn’t any place for you, Gerald.”

“Guess I can’t go back now,” was the cheerful response.

“You can wait here, then, until we return.”

“Oh, don’t be a granny, Dan,” broke in Alf. “Let him come along if he wants to. What’s the difference, any way?” The sentiment was indorsed by the others, and Dan found himself in the minority.

“That’s so, Dan,” said Joe Chambers. “The little beggar has fooled you finely. He deserves to have some of the fun, I think.”

“All right,” said Dan, “but don’t blame me if you get into trouble, Gerald. Any more sandwiches, fellows?”

There weren’t, but Durfee shared the one he was eating and presently the journey began again. They took turns at carrying the three pieces of baggage, and Durfee was called down by Alf for using one of the stakes for a vaulting pole.

“I was merely giving an imitation of Mr. Thompson, our clever young athlete,” replied Harry, soberly. “If I can’t do as I want to with this stick some one else may carry it.”

“How did you happen to wake up?” asked Dan of Gerald. “I thought I was as quiet as a mouse.”

“So you were. I wasn’t asleep. I went to bed with my underclothes on and played fox.”

“The dickens you did! How did you know anything was up?”

“Easy! You all acted like a lot of conspirators in a melodrama, Dan.”

“Still, you couldn’t have known we were going anywhere to-night—unless you were told. Were you?”

But Gerald refused to answer that. He only laughed.

“Huh, you fellows thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you? I was on to you all the time.”

“I might have suspected as much,” said Dan, thoughtfully, “when I found you’d packed your trunk. It isn’t like you to do anything of that sort until the last moment.”

“Where are we going, Dan?” asked Gerald. “Broadwood?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going to do there? What’s in the bundle that Tom’s carrying?”

“You wait and see,” was the answer. “We’re going to have some fun with Broadwood—that’s all.”

“Think you might tell me,” said Gerald, aggrievedly. “I’m an S. P. M., ain’t I?”

“You’re a butter-in, that’s what you are,” replied Dan, grimly; “and you’ll just wait and find out, my son.”

“I’ll ask Arthur; he’ll tell me.”

“So it was Arthur who blabbed, was it? I knew some one had.”

“I didn’t say so!”

“You don’t need to.”

“Well, he didn’t mean to tell, Dan; honest he didn’t. He forgot; and all I found out from him was that you were going somewhere to-night. He wouldn’t tell me anything else. You won’t say anything to him, will you?”

“No. I guess it doesn’t matter. Only thing is, Gerald, that if faculty gets word of this we’ll all get Hail Columbia. That’s why I didn’t want you to come along.”

“I know. But I’d rather have the fun, Dan. How much farther is it?”

“About a mile and a half, I guess. Getting tired?”

“Tired!” said Gerald, scornfully. “No, I could walk all night!”

“Well, don’t forget that we’ve got to get home again yet,” replied Dan. “I guess you’ll have all the walking you want, Gerald.”

To Alf’s relief the moon found another cloud to creep under just before they reached Broadwood. Even then it was much too light for safety. The grounds of the Academy are not very extensive, but they face the road for some distance, and an iron picket fence about eight feet high bounds them there. There is a carriage gate with a smaller gate beside it halfway along the line of fence, and just inside, nestled under the trees, stands a tiny gate-keeper’s lodge. The expedition, however, didn’t approach that. Instead, it halted at the corner of the Academy grounds and looked over the situation.

“The gates will be locked,” said Alf, “and even if they weren’t, the gardener might see us. We’d better shin over here, by this post, and keep along the shrubbery until we reach the buildings. Then we’ll have to come out in plain sight; but I guess no one will be up at this time of night.”

“How about getting back?” asked Tom. “Suppose some one gets after us?”

“Scatter and make for the side fence here,” answered Alf, promptly. “If we aren’t disturbed we’ll retreat in good order. Now then, give me a leg-up, Dan.”

One by one they crawled up by the stone corner post and dropped into the shrubbery beyond. Then, keeping as much as possible in the shadows, they made their way up the hill. The main buildings, five in number, form three sides of a square at the summit, with Knowles Hall, the finest of all, in the center. It was toward Knowles that their steps were bent, but they didn’t make a straight line for it for the reason that had they done so they would have been in plain sight for several hundred yards. Instead they kept along the school boundary on the east until a dormitory building was near. Then they slipped across to its protecting walls, went cautiously along the end of it, and halted there in the angle of a stone porch.

“Now then,” whispered Alf, “hand over the sign.” Chambers laid down the roll of sheeting and Alf whipped out a knife and slashed the strings. Then he drew a paper of thumbtacks from his pocket, and for the next minute or two worked hard. The poles were placed on the ground, and to each of them an end of the strip of sheeting was secured with the thumbtacks. When all was ready Alf took one pole and Dan the other, and with the rest of the expedition following, walked brazenly across the turf until they were in the center of the space between the buildings, and directly in front of the recitation hall.

“All right,” Alf whispered.

Down went the sharpened ends of the two poles into the soft sod under the weight of the boys, and Alf backed off to view the result.

“Thunder!” he muttered. “We’ve got it wrong side to. Pull it up fellows, and change ends. Quick!”

Up came the poles and down they went again. Then the boys gathered in front of their handiwork, chuckling and whispering. Behind them frowned the dark windows of Broadwood Academy. At that moment the moon, eager perhaps to see what was up, emerged from a cloud and shone down on the scene. Had any of the occupants of the buildings looked out just then they would have gasped with surprise, and doubtless rubbed their eyes, thinking themselves still asleep. For out there in the moonlight stood a group of eight boys exhibiting unmistakable signs of delight; and in front of them, facing the main entrance of Knowles Hall, stretched a ten-foot long strip of white sheeting. And on it, in blue letters a foot high, was printed:

“FATHER, IS THIS A SCHOOL?”

“NO, MY SON, IT IS BROADWOOD.”

O YOU APRIL FOOLS!

[CHAPTER X]
PURSUIT AND ESCAPE

“Can you beat it?” gurgled Harry Durfee, ecstatically.

“It’s the swellest thing ever!” chuckled Roeder.

“O you April Fools!” murmured Alf.

“Say, but I’d love to be here in the morning,” sighed Arthur.

“You’d get killed if you were,” said Chambers. Tom was looking uneasily at the buildings. To his imagination the entrance to Knowles expressed indignation and horror; and the empty windows, amazed and scandalized, seemed whispering to each other of the vandalism being perpetrated below.

“Come on, fellows,” he urged. “Let’s get out of this.”

“I hate to leave it,” said Dan. “It’s positively beautiful!”

“Tom’s right,” Alf said. “We’d better sneak before some one sees us. Come on, fellows.”

So they hurried back across the lawn to the shadow of the dormitory, and from there to the comparative safety of the shrubbery.

“We’ll get out where we came in,” announced Alf. “That’s good luck, they say.” They discussed the success of their enterprise in low voices as they crept along the edge of the bushes.

“I’d give a month’s allowance,” said Tom Roeder, “if I could only be hidden up there somewhere when they find it out in the morning. Say, won’t they be hot under the collar?”

“Rip-snorting!” agreed Durfee. “And the beauty of it is that they’ll know Yardley did it, but won’t be able to prove it.”

“How about the chap where you got the cloth, Alf?” Dan inquired. “Think he will tell?”

“Never. He’s a friend of mine.”

“How about the poles and the thumbtacks?” asked Chambers.

“I got the poles at the lumber yard. It only took a minute, and they’ll forget all about it. The thumbtacks I’ve had for a year or so. And the blue paint—” Alf chuckled.

“What about that?” asked Durfee.

“Found it in Mr. McCarthy’s room and borrowed it.” (Mr. McCarthy was the janitor, and had a repair shop in the basement of Oxford Hall.) “We’re safe enough if we can get back to bed without being spotted.”

“Hope so,” answered Chambers. “Wish I were there now. What’s that?” He stopped, and Durfee, colliding against him, said “Ow!” loudly, and was told to keep still. They paused and listened.

“Did you hear anything?” whispered Dan.

“Thought I did. I wish that moon would go home.”

“Come on,” muttered Tom, “and keep in close to the bushes.”

They went forward again, refraining from conversation now, and walking as softly as they could. The corner of the grounds lay only a hundred feet or so away, when, suddenly, from the shadow of a tall bush directly in their path, stepped a man.

“Here, what you doin’?” asked a deep and angry voice.

For an instant panic rooted them where they stood. Then Alf whispered hoarsely “Scatter!” and eight forms sprang away in almost as many directions. Most of the fellows made for the fence, crashing through the shrubbery at various points, but Alf and Durfee dashed straight past the gardener, who, having left the comfort of his bed in some haste, was only partly dressed, and eluded him easily. Of the number only Gerald made a wrong move, for which inexperience in the matter of midnight adventures with irate caretakers was to blame.

Gerald, who had been one of the last in the line, turned and ran into the open, possibly with the idea of escaping by the gate, which, had he reached it, he would have found to be tightly locked. The gardener made a grab at Alf as he slipped by, failed to reach him, started toward the fence, which seemed at the next instant to be fairly swarming with boys, and then saw Gerald out in the moonlight. Perhaps he preferred open country to the pitfalls of shrubbery. At all events, he set out after Gerald; and, being fairly long-legged and decidedly active for his middle age, soon began to gain on the quarry.

It was Dan, dropping to safety beyond the iron pickets, with only a rent in his trousers to show for the adventure, who first saw Gerald’s plight. To get back would be a much more difficult task than getting out had proved, and he knew that before he could gain the scene the chase would be over. So he raised his voice, and shouted to Alf, in the hope that the latter had not yet got out of the grounds.

“Alf! O Alf! He’s after Gerald!”

“All right!” came the reply promptly and cheerfully from toward the corner; and in a moment Dan saw both Alf and Durfee running out of the shadows toward where Gerald, terror lending him speed, was now almost within reach of the trees and shrubbery about the gate lodge, with the gardener still gaining, but a good ten yards behind.

“Come on,” shouted Dan, and raced along the fence with the rest at his heels, intending to reach the scene by way of the road. At that moment Alf called:

“Give him the slip, kid, and make for the corner!”

Gerald heard, in spite of the pounding of his heart, dashed through a clump of Japanese barberries to the detriment of his attire, and swung around back of the lodge house. He heard the pursuer floundering heavily after him as he raced across the avenue in front of the gate. One glance at the latter was sufficient to tell him that escape by that way was hopeless.

“Give up!” panted the gardener as he came after. “I seen yer an’ I know who you are!”

But Gerald had glimpsed Alf and Durfee at the edge of the trees near the fence, and he sped straight toward them. What happened after that was always a very confused memory to Gerald. He remembered hearing Alf say, “Make for the post in the corner and shin over quick,” as he reached him. Then there was a cry and the sound of some one falling, and hurrying steps behind him. Breathless and weak, he was trying vainly to climb up between the stone post and the nearest picket when help came from behind; and in a second he was up and over, and Alf and Durfee had seized him between them and were racing across the road into the darkness of the woods.

Then he was aware that flight had stopped, for which he was enormously grateful, and that the entire company was reposing on the ground, regaining breath and listening for sounds from beyond the fence.

“There he is,” whispered Durfee.

There was a rustling amid the shrubbery, and the boys hugged the ground.

“Think he can see us?” asked Dan in Tom’s ear.

“No, he won’t look for us here. He thinks we’ve hit the road, probably. Listen, he’s going back.”

Finding that his prey had escaped, the gardener was retracing his steps toward the gate-lodge. Once they heard him mutter something in very disgusted tones, and Alf chuckled.

“Right you are, old man,” he whispered in the direction of the retreating gardener. “Them’s my sentiments.”

“I vote we move on a bit,” said Roeder. “He might take it into his head to come out and find us here.”

“I guess he’s through for the night,” replied Tom, “but I think we might as well put a little more distance between us and the scene of the crime.”

They got up and made their way as silently as possible down the road toward home. It was not until they had put a good half mile between them and the Broadwood grounds that another halt was called, and they found seats on a bank where they could lean their backs against a fence and rest. The moon was well down in the west by then, and was slipping in and out of a bank of clouds. Chambers looked at his watch and said, “Phew!”

“What time is it?” asked Alf.

“Twenty minutes to one,” answered Chambers. “I thought it was about twelve! I’d hate to be seen getting back to the room!”

“Well, I don’t believe it would make much difference,” said Dan. “I fancy our goose is cooked anyway. That old butter-in saw us as plain as daylight.”

“I don’t believe he did,” answered Alf. “Not even as plain as moonlight. It was fairly dark down there in those bushes. The only fellow he might have had a good look at is Gerald, and even he was running away all the time. What the dickens did you run out onto the lawn for, Gerald?”

“I don’t know. I—I just ran anywhere. I think I had an idea of getting out by the gate.”

“I told you the gate was locked, didn’t I? Well, there’s no use crying over spilled milk. There’s one hope for us, fellows, and that is that the old codger may think we were Broadwood fellows out for a lark.”

“Don’t believe Broadwood fellows ever have larks,” responded Roeder, pessimistically.

“That’s so, though,” said Chambers, hopefully. “I hadn’t thought of that. Seems to me it would be a natural supposition, eh? That we were Broadwood chaps, I mean.”

“If we were we wouldn’t have made for the fence,” said Durfee. “We’d have made for the dormitories.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Think he saw you, Gerald?”

“I don’t believe he saw my face,” was the answer.

“I suppose,” said Alf, disgustedly, “that he will waltz up to the school and see that sign and yank it down.”

“Bet you he’s in bed and asleep long before this,” replied Arthur. “He probably thinks we were Broadwood fellows. In the morning he will go up and report us, and they’ll have a terrible time trying to find out who we were. Wouldn’t be surprised if they expelled the whole school,” he ended with a laugh.

“Well, meanwhile,” said Dan, soberly, “it’s up to us to get back to Yardley. First thing we know we’ll be meeting the milkman!”

“Wish we might,” said Alf, cheerfully. “I’d give a quarter for a glass of milk.”

“And a doughnut,” added Durfee. “Wish we had those sandwiches now. I’m beastly hungry.”

“And I’m beastly sleepy.” Tom yawned as he got to his feet and followed the others along the road. Gerald ranged himself alongside Alf.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“What happened to who, Gerald?”

“The gardener, when I passed you and Durfee.”

“Oh, nothing much. He came along and didn’t see us, and I happened to have my foot out, and he very stupidly fell over it. That’s all. Then Harry and I ran like thunder and boosted you over. You were apparently going to sleep on the side of the post; and we got over about six yards ahead of the gardener, I guess. It was a narrow squeak.”

“Do you think we will get in trouble?” asked Gerald, anxiously.

“Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” answered Alf, cheerfully. “If I fall asleep, Gerald, and walk into a fence, I wish you’d wake me up, please.”

That trip back to Yardley wasn’t much fun. They were all pretty tired and rather sleepy, and the four miles seemed like ten. Fortunately, they met no one on the way until they reached the station at Wissining. There a freight crew was busying itself about the platform, but it was quite dark by then, and they slipped past unheard and unseen. Once on school ground they stopped at the foot of The Prospect and held council. In view of what Alf termed the extemporaneous incidents of their visit to Broadwood, it had become more than ever desirable that they reach their several rooms unseen. To that end it was decided that they should gain their dormitories by way of the gymnasium, and should go one at a time. So they skirted the base of the hill until they were near the tennis courts, and then gained the porch of the gymnasium. From there, out of sight of any dormitory window, they made their way, one at a time, toward their rooms. The Yard was dark and, in the end, the last of the Predatory Marauders gained safety and seclusion apparently undetected.

In 28 Clarke there was little conversation during the hurried process of disrobing. It was practically all contained in two sentences, as follows:

“If anything comes of this, Gerald, please remember that I did my best to keep you out of it.” (This in a stern and somewhat displeased tone of voice.)

“Yes, Dan, I will.” (This very, very meekly.)

Then they both went to sleep and, in spite of the uncertainties of the future, slumbered as soundly as though there was no such thing as a conscience!

[CHAPTER XI]
GERALD VISITS THE OFFICE

The next morning the S. P. M. dispersed. Dan, Gerald, Tom, Alf, and Arthur traveled together on the early train to New York; but as the train was pretty well filled with other Yardley boys, there wasn’t much chance to discuss the subject uppermost in their thoughts. It must be acknowledged, however, that none of them, not even Gerald, appeared greatly worried or cast down. As Alf put it with fine philosophy, “It’s by me, fellows. Meanwhile I’m going to have a good time.”

At New York they separated, Gerald waving good-by from the window of his father’s electric brougham to the others, who were negotiating with a cabman for a trip across town. Gerald’s vacation passed quietly. He had a fairly good time, especially when he visited Tom overnight; but being quite alone save for the servants, wasn’t very exciting. He ran up a good-sized telephone bill in calling up Dan and Alf every evening in Philadelphia and having long talks with them by wire. It was from them that he first learned of the success of their Broadwood joke.

“It was in the evening papers last night,” Alf told him over the telephone. “Nearly a quarter of a column in the Bulletin here, and nearly that much in the others. It’s great. There isn’t anything about our being chased, though.”

“Do they know who did it?” asked Gerald, anxiously.

“Sure! That is, they know Yardley did it. ‘School Plays April Fool Day Prank on Rival,’ is the way the Bulletin has it. Look in the New York papers, Gerald, and if you find it clip it out and bring it with you, will you?”

Gerald did and carried quite a bundle of clippings back to Yardley with him at the end of a week. The prank had tickled the risibilities of the editors, and there was scarcely a paper that didn’t make some mention of the incident. They had a fine time reading the stories aloud the evening of their return to school.

“Bet you Broadwood will try to get back at us for that,” chuckled Alf. “Hope they do. It’ll be fun.”

“Here’s a clipping that says that what you printed on the sign wasn’t original, Alf,” said Gerald, indignantly. Alf shrugged his shoulders.

“Nothing is original in this age. All the good jokes have been joked and the songs sung,” he answered, lightly.

“What do you mean?” asked Dan. “Had you seen that somewhere?”

“Of course. Hadn’t you? I thought every one had heard that one. You have, Tom?” Tom nodded.

“I was brought up on it,” he drawled.

“The original form of it,” explained Alf, in response to Dan’s look of inquiry, “was something like this. ‘Father, may I go to college?’ ‘No, my son, your mother wants you to go to Yale.’ Not bad, what?”

“I suppose it was a Harvard joke,” grunted Dan, disgustedly.

“Yes; Lampoon. Oh, they say something cute now and then over there. Any one seen Collins since his return to the fold?”

Nobody had. “I think we’re safe,” said Dan. But Tom shook his head.

“Wait until after chapel in the morning,” he said. “Then, if none of us is requested to appear at the Office, I’ll breathe easy.”

“Gee,” murmured Dan, “if I get by this time I’ll never do it again!”

After that they told vacation experiences until it was bedtime, and Alf and Tom—the reunion had taken place in Clarke—rattled off downstairs. There were some anxious moments the next morning when, in chapel, Mr. Collins, the Assistant Principal, arose to read his announcements. But no one was summoned to the Office, and eight of the fellows, at least, experienced relief. That afternoon the baseball candidates and the track squad went back to work, and Yardley settled down into its Spring Term. Gerald was sent around the track at a fast jog for two miles, and, since he had done no running for more than a week, discovered that he was pretty well tuckered out at the finish. Andy, however, sent him off to the gymnasium with a word of approval that dispelled his weariness.

The school at large had learned of the Broadwood joke, and curiosity was rife. Strangely enough, and perhaps fortunately, too, the credit for the affair was popularly given to a First Class boy named Hammel, who was known to possess a veritable genius for practical jokes. Yardley was vastly elated over it and the question, “Father, is this a school?” with its appropriate answer, was heard on all sides, and in course of time became a school classic. Meanwhile the real culprits were congratulating themselves on a lucky escape. But, sad to relate, their satisfaction was short-lived, and ended the second day of the term.

“The following boys will meet me at the office at eight-thirty,” announced Mr. Collins at chapel: “H. L. Graves, Benton, Hale, and Pennimore.”

Gerald’s heart sank. When he glanced at Dan, that youth was frowning heavily at the scarred back of the settee ahead. Outside Dan and Alf awaited him. They went down the stairs together and out into the warm, foggy morning world, but no one said anything until they were half across to Dudley. Then,

“Of course he may want to see you about something else,” said Alf, with attempted cheeriness. “Think so?”

Gerald shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it can be anything else. I guess that gardener chap saw me.”

“But it seems funny,” Dan objected, “that he didn’t call you up yesterday.”

“That’s easily explained,” Alf replied. “Broadwood’s recess began and ended a day later than ours, and probably faculty over there forgot that and thought to-day was our first day of school.”

Tom was ahead of them in Number 7 when they arrived, and he looked quizzically at them and drew a finger suggestively across his throat. “Shall we pack now, Alf, or wait until after breakfast?” he asked.

“Pack?” said Dan, missing the point. “What for?”

“Because, Mr. Innocent Young Thing, I fancy we may be leaving these classic shades before long.”

“Oh, rot!” said Dan, uneasily. “They can’t do any more than put us on pro.”

“Anyhow,” said Gerald, “it doesn’t concern you fellows, Tom. He doesn’t know you were there or he’d have called you up.”

The other three looked at each other thoughtfully. Then,

“But of course he will find out,” said Alf, questioningly.

“Sure to,” Dan agreed.

“Will he, though?” mused Tom. “Who’s going to tell him?” Alf glanced at Gerald, and the latter flushed.

“That’s rotten, Alf!” he cried.

“Hold on, kid! I wasn’t thinking that, honest to goodness, I wasn’t!” declared Alf, earnestly. “You won’t tell, of course, but Collins will know that there were others—why, hang it, that wild Irish gardener saw us! He will tell them that there were a dozen or so of us, and Collins will ask you who we were, Gerald. What can you say?”

“Tell him he will have to find out,” replied Gerald, promptly. Dan groaned.

“Yes, and get fired like a shot!”

“I don’t believe so,” Tom objected. “Collins is pretty fair and decent that way. I don’t think he will make it any harder for Gerald if he refuses to tell on the rest of us.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell, any way,” declared Gerald. “He may do as he likes.”

“He will,” said Dan, moodily. “Don’t worry.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Alf jumped up.

“Well, let’s go to breakfast. There’s no use sitting here and borrowing trouble. Maybe it won’t be so bad, after all. I’m sorry I got you fellows into it, that’s all.”

“Pooh!” said Tom. “We went in with our eyes open, I guess. You didn’t kidnap any of us. We can take our medicine, eh, Dan?”

“Naturally; only—I wish Gerald had kept out of it!”

“I’m not scared,” answered Gerald, stoutly. “I think, though, I’d better get breakfast if I’m going to get to Office at half-past. They say Collins hates you to be late.”

“And say, Gerald,” Alf admonished as they went out, “whatever you do, don’t let him think you’re trying to be smart or fresh. He hates that, too. Now come on and eat all you can.”

“Yes,” murmured Tom, “eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.”

“Why to-morrow?” asked Alf, cynically cheerful. “What’s the matter with to-day?”

When Gerald entered the outer Office at precisely one minute before the appointed time, he found it occupied by seven persons. First, there was Mr. Collins, seated at his desk by the window; then Mr. Forisher, the secretary, settling down for his morning’s work; then three boys, Benton and Hale and Graves; and last but not least, occupying a chair in a corner, was a man of middle age with Irish features whom Gerald instantly guessed to be the Broadwood gardener. He was dressed immaculately and uncomfortably in his best black suit, and held a derby hat tightly in his lap. At Gerald’s entrance every occupant of the room looked toward him, but all removed their gaze after a second save the man in the corner. Long after Gerald had taken his seat, he was aware that the gardener was still regarding him triumphantly.

Presently Mr. Collins laid aside the work he had been occupied with and swung about in his swivel-chair. He glanced from one of the audience to another, and finally encountered the gaze of the man in the corner.

“Well?” he asked. “Is he here?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the gardener, decisively.

“Quite certain, Mr. Grogan?”

“Yes, sir, certain sure, sir.”

“Ah! And which of the young gentlemen is it, please?”

“It’s him, sir!” Mr. Grogan’s hand shot out at Gerald. Mr. Collins showed unmistakable surprise.

“What! Why—now, come, Mr. Grogan, isn’t there a chance that you may be mistaken? Remember that it was at night and, according to your own words, you didn’t see his face.”

“I seen his hair, Mr. Collins, and I seen the shape of him, sir, and that’s him.”

“Very well. Graves, you may go; you, too, Benton; and you, Hale. Sorry to have troubled you.” The boys filed out, unmistakable relief expressed on their features. And as they went Gerald understood for the first time why they had been summoned. Each of them had light hair, and each was about his own age and size!

[CHAPTER XII]
GERALD PAYS THE PENALTY

“Now, Pennimore,” began the Assistant Principal, kindly, “you and I have been pretty good friends so far, haven’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Gerald.

“Exactly. And I’m going to make this as easy for you as I can. Suppose you tell me how it happened.”

“Er—what, sir?”

“This—ah—this Broadwood escapade. Mr. Grogan here is quite certain that he chased you around the Broadwood grounds on the night of—let me see—the night of March thirty-first. Have you ever seen Mr. Grogan before, Pennimore?” Gerald hesitated. Finally:

“I think so, sir.”

“On that occasion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So. Then I won’t detain you any longer, Mr. Grogan. Thanks for your assistance, and you may rest assured that the culprits will be appropriately punished. Good morning.”

Mr. Grogan arose and made for the door. But after he had opened it, he paused and turned to Mr. Collins again. “You understand, sir, I’m not saying as ’twas this young gentleman as tripped me up?”

“Quite.”

“No, sir, ’twan’t him; ’twas another of them, a bigger fellow entirely. An’ as for me, sure, ’tis no harm I’m wishing any of them, failin’ him I’m tellin’ you of. Boys will be boys, sir. I know that. I’ve been with them for goin’ on seven years now; but the fellow that tripped me up was no gentleman, Mr. Collins. Take it from me, sir!”

“I will, Mr. Grogan,” replied the Assistant Principal, hiding a smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, sir.” Mr. Grogan passed out, and the door closed softly behind him. Mr. Forisher, busy with his files, seemed quite oblivious to anything that was going on about him.

“Bring your chair over here, Pennimore,” said Mr. Collins, briskly, “and let’s talk this over. Now, tell me, what was the—ah—the idea?”

“Just a joke on Broadwood, sir,” answered Gerald, eagerly. “We—I mean——”

“Don’t be concerned. I know already that there were several others in the affair. You say it was merely a joke?”

“Yes, sir. We didn’t want to have any trouble with that man, but he came along just as we were getting away and tried to stop us. And I ran and he chased me, and—and—some one tripped him up. It didn’t hurt him a bit, sir, because he got right up again and ran after us.”

“Possibly it was his dignity that was damaged,” returned Mr. Collins, dryly. “However, we needn’t concern ourselves with Grogan. I have received, though, a letter from the Principal of Broadwood, giving the facts and requesting that I look into the matter. Frankly, Pennimore, viewed strictly as a practical joke, the thing amuses me. It was well thought out and cleverly executed. Not your idea, I suppose?”

“N-no, sir.”

“No, it suggests older brains. I dare say your roommate, Vinton, might do as clever a thing as that?”

Gerald made no reply; only studied the cap he was twisting about in his hands. Mr. Collins, unseen, smiled and darted a look across at the busy secretary.

“Not Vinton, eh? Then let me see. Ah, I have it, I’m sure! Loring?”

Continued silence. Mr. Collins sighed.

“You won’t tell, Pennimore?”

“No, sir.”

“Um. Perhaps you don’t realize that you have broken at least two rules?”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“We’ve expelled students here for less, Pennimore,” continued the Assistant Principal, suggestively. Gerald said nothing.

“I was thinking, however, that if we knew the other members of the—ah—band, Pennimore, the punishment could be spread over a larger surface, and your share would be less. You get my meaning?”

Gerald looked up squarely.

“Yes, sir; I know what you want me to do, but—but I’m not going to tell!” Mr. Collins sighed again, but somehow the sigh suggested relief rather than disappointment.

“Well, that’s for you to decide,” he said, gravely. “I don’t propose to go into the ethics of it with you, or to try further to persuade you. I gather that you are willing to take the punishment for all. Is that it?”

“If—if I have to, sir,” replied Gerald, rather weakly.

“I fear you will have to, my boy. You knew, doubtless, that you were transgressing the rules when you left your room that night?”

“Yes, sir, I guess so.”

“Well, did you, or didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“That’s better. By the way, what time did you leave?”

“About half-past ten.”

“As early as that? And how did you get away without Vinton knowing it? For, of course, he didn’t know it. Otherwise he would have prevented you from going.”

“I—I went to bed with my underclothes on, sir.”

“And you managed to leave the room without awakening Vinton? Is that it?”

Gerald considered an instant. Then he nodded.

“Yes, sir. Dan didn’t know that I was going.”

“Hum.” Mr. Collins observed him sharply, but Gerald met his eyes without faltering. “Well, I have talked with Doctor Hewitt, and we have already determined the punishment appropriate. First, you will compose a letter to the Principal of Broadwood, apologizing for the act of trespass you committed. Draw it up and bring it to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you will go on probation until further notice. You know what that means?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hum, yes; I’d forgotten for a minute that you had had a trifling experience in that last year. Keep on school grounds, Pennimore, remain in your room after supper, stand high in your studies—nothing under a C plus will satisfy me, Pennimore—and take no part in athletics.”

“Oh, please, sir!” cried Gerald.

“Well?”

“Please, Mr. Collins, I’m trying for the Track Team. Couldn’t I go on with that, sir? Not if I promised to be awfully good and get A’s and B’s in everything, sir?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Mr. Collins, gravely. “You ought to have thought of that before you went in for practical joking. No, you must leave out the athletics, Pennimore. And now, what’s that you have in your hands there?”

“My cap,” answered Gerald, trying hard to keep his voice steady.

“May I see it? Thank you. Ah, I see you have your Y, Pennimore.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“For hockey, wasn’t it? I thought so. Proud of it, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Gerald, uneasily.

“Of course you would be.” Mr. Collins picked up an ink-eraser and bent over the cap. Snip went a stitch and off came the white letter. He replaced the knife, dropped the letter into a drawer, and returned the cap to Gerald.

“You see, my boy,” he said, gently, “we’re proud of that Y, too, and we don’t like to see it worn where it isn’t deserved. That’s all, Pennimore.”

Gerald groped for the arm of his chair, and pulled himself up with averted face, hoping that Mr. Collins couldn’t see the tears that were leaking down his nose. Mr. Collins arose, too, and walked to the door ahead of him and opened it. As Gerald went through, the Assistant Principal laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Pennimore,” he said, kindly. “Good morning.”

Then the door closed behind him, and Gerald found himself in the darkened corridor. For a moment he stood there struggling with the tears that would come, it seemed, in spite of everything. Then, mechanically, he put his cap on his head, but only to pull it off the next instant and stuff it into his pocket. He hated it now.

[CHAPTER XIII]
THE APRIL FOOLS

“Arthur.”

“Huh?”

“May I talk about them for just a minute?”

“No! I told you no!”

“Well ... but ... I’ve got a letter from Broadwood——”

“Eh? Broadwood?” Arthur Thompson turned from the window out of which he had been scowling for several minutes, and glanced at Harry Merrow in sudden suspicion. “What about Broadwood?”

“Why,” answered Harry, eagerly, fluttering the pages of a stamp album in his excitement, “there’s a fellow there named Cotton, and he’s written to me asking if I will exchange duplicates with him. How do you suppose he heard of me?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure. Dare say, though, he saw your name in the catalogue.”

“But I mean how did he know I was a stamp collector?”

“Oh, crime will out. Maybe he saw you and read your guilt on your countenance.” Harry chuckled. He had already discovered that laughing at a person’s jokes was an easy way to ingratiate oneself. In the present case, however, the rule didn’t work.

“Don’t do that,” said Arthur, sharply, returning to his moody inspection of the Yard, “you sound like a woodchuck.”

“I’m going to send him a list of my duplicates,” continued Harry, dodging the rebuff. “Maybe he has something I want.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Cotton.”

“Oh. Well, look out he doesn’t palm off forgeries on you. Cotton may not be as soft as he sounds. There’s Durfee.” Up went the window and Arthur thrust his head out into the rain and hailed the boy below. “Oh, Durfee! Go slow; I want to see you!”

“He can’t cheat me,” said Harry, nodding his head wisely. “I guess I know the value of stamps pretty well by this time, and if he thinks——”

“For the love of mud, shut up!” commanded Arthur, crossly, as he seized his cap. “You’d drive an angel mad with your silly chatter! Pitch that book down and get out of doors before I come back and tan your hide for you!”

“I can’t go out in this rain,” objected Harry.

“You’ve got a raincoat, haven’t you?”

“It isn’t here,” said Harry, triumphantly. “I loaned it to a fellow.”

“Then go and get it. If I find you here when I come back—” The rest was lost as Arthur slammed the door behind him. Harry grinned.

“My, but he’s in a nasty temper,” he murmured. “And he thinks I don’t know what’s up. I guess if he knew I knew what I know—” He paused a moment and pondered the construction of that sentence—“he wouldn’t be so fresh with me!”

Harry Durfee had sought the doorway for protection from the rain, and Arthur found him there. “I suppose you’ve heard about Gerald?” the latter asked. Durfee nodded gloomily.

“Yes, and I was going over to Alf’s. Come on over and let’s see if there’s anything to be done.”

They found Alf, Tom, Dan, and Gerald in Number 7. Only Roeder and Chambers were missing. For Durfee’s benefit Gerald again went over what had happened in the Office that morning. When he had finished Durfee asked:

“What do you think about that spreading the punishment, fellows? Think if we fessed up he’d be easy with the lot of us, or would we all get probation?”

“Blessed if I know,” answered Tom. “It sounds all right, but it all depends on what Collins calls a light punishment. I’m inclined to be skeptical, Harry.”

“Me, too,” said Alf. “It would mean probation for the lot of us. Mind you, I’m willing to take my medicine if it will do any good. Only I look at it this way, fellows. If Tom and Roeder and Thompson are put on probation, it spells defeat for the Track Team. If Harry and Dan and I are put on probation it means the same thing in baseball. No one is sorrier than I am that Gerald is in a fix, but I don’t believe that our owning up would make it much easier for him. And first of all, there is the school to think of. Maybe that sounds selfish, but it isn’t.”

“N-no, I guess it’s the sensible way to look at it,” replied Durfee. “I’m mighty sorry about you, though, Pennimore.”