With Mask and Mitt

by Albertus T. Dudley

So at least it seemed to the school at large. A few rash spirits, whose pretended resentment was but an excuse for a lark, thought otherwise. Acting on the principle that it is easiest to strike when the foe is least expectant, they prepared for war in the midst of peace. Poole, who was president of the class, was expected to preside at the senior dinner. This, of course, the conspirators knew; they likewise knew his habits and companions. He usually went from his room outside the yard to the post-office for the evening mail, and thence either to the school recreation room at Merrill Hall or to some friend's or to his fraternity house, to spend the hour before evening study began. On the night of the dinner he would be likely to make his visit to the post-office somewhat earlier. If he could be caught alone on the way thither, or while answering some fictitious summons, he might be seized, crammed into a hack, and driven to a place of security. If he should mysteriously disappear before the dinner took place, and stay disappeared a reasonable length of time, the dinner would be spoiled. For even if the seniors ultimately proceeded without their president, the feast must have lost much of its savor through delay, and how could the encomiums on the class be anything but flat with the proof of its inferiority so crushingly evident?

As Payner and Simmons came paddling down the river again that afternoon, they overhauled young Wally Sedgwick in his canoe voyaging homeward. Payner knew Wally, having run across him more than once on these expeditions, and found him possessed of much local information of a varied character.

"Hello!" shouted Payner, "been swimming?"

"Nope," answered Wally, poising his paddle. "My mother made me promise not to till it gets warmer. Have you?"

"Yes," lied Payner; "the water is great."

But Wally either didn't believe him or didn't care. "Say, did you see those fellows back there on the bank? What were they doing?"

"Oh, I don't know!" replied Payner, ungraciously. He had seen among them the Pecks and Milliken and Barclay, and that was enough. "Up to mischief, probably. Come on, we'll race you down."

"Thank you," returned the boy; "I guess I'm in no hurry."

Sloper Stevens, who lay outstretched in the bow, dragging his hands in the water, was in no hurry either, so, as the students passed out of sight around the next bend in the river, Wally turned the nose of his canoe up stream again. The suggestion that the knot of students he had lately passed were up to something wrong whetted his curiosity. What crime could they commit here? They weren't stealing wood or cutting trees.