With Mask and Mitt

by Albertus T. Dudley

The students appeared on the river bank beneath some tall pines, and looked up and down the wood road and pointed at the river and at some place behind them in the woods. Wally watched them in half concealment in the shelter of an old stump which projected into the river. They disappeared now and presently came out into view again farther up, where they again pointed and surveyed. Such conduct was incomprehensible, and therefore interesting to Wally, who had seen students up the river before and knew their ways. They usually came by twos and threes in boats or canoes, sometimes seriously with books, more often sprawling on the seats, laughing, singing, innocently engaged in killing time. If they went ashore they stretched themselves on their backs under the trees, or stripped and went swimming. These fellows were different; they seemed to be in search of something.

"Going to stay here all night?" demanded Sloper. "'Cause if you are I'm going to get out and walk."

"I'm going," answered Wally, swinging the bow again down-stream. He also had recognized Milliken and Barclay and the two Pecks, the first because he was the great back in the school eleven, known to every boy in town, the second as the captain of the upper middle eleven, and the Pecks—well, just because they were "the two Pecks." Wally's sympathies were not with the upper middle class. Next fall he was to be a junior himself, and as a junior would side with upper middlers against lower middlers and seniors. The present upper middlers would be the seniors of next year—hence his natural foes. Wally knew where his allegiance lay.

That night at supper Wally was subdued and meditative. Mr. Sedgwick asked him first if he were tired, and then if he had been swimming, both of which questions Wally answered with an indignant negative. The maternal suggestions were that it was too hard for him in the High School and that he didn't go to bed early enough. These explanations also displeased Master Wally, for he did not wish his work in the High School to be too closely investigated, and no boy likes to be sent early to bed. So he cut his dessert short—he didn't care much for that dessert anyway—and got excused to go to the post-office.

On the way he still wrestled with the problem of the students under the pines. At the supper table he had decided that they must be preparing for an initiation. On further reflection, however, this theory appeared untenable. The members of the fraternities wear flat gray hats with bands of special stripes. Wally had seen two different fraternity hatbands among the crowd. Besides, the fraternity fellows belong to different classes, and these were all upper middlers.

He took the letters from the box at the office, pushed them into his coat pocket, and sauntered up the lane and through the Academy yard. If he could only run across Eddy, now, or John Somes or French, all students of his acquaintance, he would ask them. It was just growing dusk. As he passed through the gate at the upper end he saw a hack drawn up beside the road. The driver, with his back to the street, seemed to be very busy with the harness. In the vehicle a man with gray hair and spectacles sat crowded into a corner.

Ahead Wally caught sight of the familiar figure of the baseball captain hurrying down the street toward him. He knew Poole, of course, as did every urchin in town; but he had the advantage of the other urchins in the fact that Poole knew him. Poole had made Wally's acquaintance at the birthday party of Wally's older sister. Since that time the baseball captain had never failed to recognize the boy. To-night, however, either from preoccupation or because he was hastening to meet an appointment, Poole passed him by without a word.

The disappointed boy turned and gazed after the retreating senior. The latter had gone but a few steps when he was apparently summoned by the occupant of the hack. Wally saw him turn to the carriage door and lean in as if to hear the words of the old man inside. Then two figures crept out from the yard of the house near by, stole up behind the unsuspicious Poole, seized him, threw him into the carriage, tumbled in themselves, and pulled the door to and the curtain down. Wally stood with bulging eyes, hearing the throttled yell and the sound of struggle within the hack, and seeing the driver whip his horses into a sudden gallop.

"Barclay and Milliken as sure as guns!" thought Master Wally. "They're running off with Poole!" and forthwith Wally began to run, after the hack and homeward where the letters must be delivered and where his bicycle still stood leaning against the fence, as he had left it when he came from school at one o'clock. As he plied his legs, his thoughts also were nimble, and he marked well the direction the hack was taking. That morning on the way to school Jack Sanders had told him that the seniors were to have a dinner to-night, and asked him if he remembered the time two years before when the middlers tried to bribe Shorty McDougal to sneak into the hotel kitchen and pinch the ice cream. Milliken and Barclay! It wasn't hard to guess now what those fellows were doing up river!

Wally threw his letters on the hall table—fortunately without meeting any inconvenient member of the family—and dashed out again. The entrance to the river road was through the Gilman farm across the bridge. The hack had gone down Elm Street, evidently taking a circuitous route to avoid passing through the centre of the town. If he sprinted, he could beat it to the Gilmans' yet!