With Mask and Mitt

by Albertus T. Dudley

And Donald proved a safe reliance. The Moons' door opened; voices and steps approached. Duncan had barely time to dart to his desk and seize a book when Donald burst in with Clarence at his elbow. In clumsily feigned surprise, the student looked up at the invaders, his glance resting but for an instant on the countenance of his brother, whose look of malicious joy, poorly cloaked by an unnatural trait of solemnity, would have aroused immediate suspicion in an acute observer. On Clarence's pink-and-white face anger and fright struggled together for expression. Both twins found relief in Donald's exclamation:—

"Some one has ripped up the Moons' room. Come in and see it!"

The trio hastened back to the dishevelled room.

"Gee whiz, what a pile!" exclaimed Duncan in a veritable shock of admiration as he came suddenly in sight of the desolation. He had looked upon his finished work but a few minutes before and found it sufficient; but now, as the scene suddenly flashed its fresh impression upon him, his surprise was almost real. As a monument of havoc the heap was a work of art.

"They didn't do a thing to you, did they! Who was it, anyway?"

"Some fresh guy!" came in answer from Clarence's trembling lips. "He ought to be fired!"

"That's right," declared Donald. "The only trouble is to find out who it is."

"About everything you own seems to be in the thing, doesn't it?" observed Duncan, throwing a glance about the denuded room. "Did they wet it down?"

Wet it down! Poor Clarence gasped with horror, but, recovering himself, sprang forward and felt anxiously about amongst the muddle of bedstead legs, bureau drawers, books, and blankets. There was no sign of water there. He dropped upon his knees and examined the floor. It was dry. Meantime Donald had screwed his face into a grimace and leered across at Duncan; his double had grinned back and chuckled. This chuckle and the tail-end of the grin Clarence caught as he picked himself up from the floor, and lost in consequence any comfort which he might have derived from his inspection.