Our hero also led the escape from the school, when the whole Latin division of the Freshman class was made prisoners. The boys intended to desert to town, and stay there until Mr. Skeel was removed, but they lost their way in a storm, and had to come back.
Tom, however, had prepared an effigy of the unpopular instructor, and in the midst of a blinding snowstorm this effigy was burned on the flag pole, Mr. Skeel trying in vain to stop the student’s fun.
Thus the strike was broken, and Tom and his chums won, a new Latin instructor being engaged, and Doctor Meredith, though somewhat startled by the curious revolt in his school, managed to get material from it for a paper which he read before a very learned society.
But it was not all unpleasantness and strikes during Tom’s time at the school. He had spreads, he took part in a big football game, and made a sensational run, and he was champion of his class in the annual skating race, though Sam Heller tried to trip him.
Mr. and Mrs. Brokaw Fairfield, Tom’s parents, had remained in Australia ever since September, when they went there, to settle up the matter of the property that had been left to them. Tom had spent the between-term vacations with Jack Fitch, but the Easter one, his parents wrote him, they wished him to spend with an aged aunt.
“And—and, maybe that’s the last letter I’ll ever get from them,” thought our hero gloomily.
He was, as I have said, on his way back to the Hall from the theatrical performance, when Jack Fitch had unexpectedly come upon the item of bad news.
“Say, maybe this is nothing but a newspaper yarn,” suggested Bert Wilson, for want of something better to say, after a period of tense silence.
“I wish I could think so,” answered Tom gloomily. “But this paper is a reliable one, and that cablegram came by the Associated Press. That organization doesn’t send out false news very often.”