"Humph! We've been Sophs such a terrible long time," murmured Tom with a smile.
Discipline was rather lax that night, and there was much visiting to and fro in the rooms. The proctor and the professors were kept busy registering new students and did not pay much attention to the older ones, including Tom and his chums, who made merry.
"Oh, you boys!" exclaimed Demosthenes Miller, or "Demy" as he was called—the studious janitor. "Oh, you boys! Will you ever settle down?"
"I'm afraid not," replied Tom, as he invaded the lower regions of the man who attended to the fires, to borrow a long poker. "We want this for some fun. There's a prof. who has a room just under ours, and he wears a wig. It's out on the window sill to air, and I think I can hook it."
"Oh, young gentlemen, don't, I beg of you!" expostulated the janitor. But they paid no heed to him, and hurried off with the long poker, while the studious janitor, to drown his apprehension, took up a Latin book which he was struggling through, endeavoring to educate himself in the classics.
Tom was engaged in the exciting, if forbidden, sport of trying to lift the wig of the unfortunate professor from the ledge beneath his room window, when there came a knock on his door.
"Oh ho!" ejaculated Bruce Bennington, as he entered. "Up to your old tricks, I see. Well I can't blame you. I did the same thing once. What are you after, a bottle of pop?"
"A wig," explained Tom, briefly. "Want a try for it?"
"Not me. I've got to walk pretty straight you know. I'm regarded as a sort of professor now, and I suppose, if I did my strict duty, I'd report you. But I'm off duty to-night. I say, Tom, are you ready now for that experiment I spoke of?"
"Sure I am. But—" and Tom looked suggestively at the poker and motioned downward to where the wig was still reposing.